Little Falls, New Jersey-based Bisys Group Inc has introduced a series of data warehousing tools for the banking sector which it says will enable managers and analysts to gather information and run reports much faster than before. It’s counting on a lucrative market mining banks’ vast data sources. The TotalVision software suite consists of four integrated applications. Executive Desktop is designed for senior financial executives. According to Gil Anderson, VP systems and technology, the software allows them to access, and drill into, detailed information that in the past, was very difficult to get hold of quickly. It lets them set up performance level indicators, which can notify the user, on screen, when a certain, predefined threshold has been reached. For example, if the return on assets of a particular branch go beneath a certain level. The software also facilitates the production of board and management reports as well as providing the capability to drill down into the database and quickly extract the relevant information. The second application, PeerAnalayzer, enables executives and analysts to set up and categorize multiple peer groups (details of other banks for example) and to chart their performance in key areas against the competition. The drill down facility also enables users to make individual bank-to-bank comparisons. On Demand, the third application, is a query and reporting tool that is augmented by a Bisys model that Anderson says allows users to become instantly productive without having to have an in-depth knowledge of the underlying technology. He said it typically takes analysts at least three to six months to learn how best to extract the data they require from the warehouse. But using Bisys’ new model, users can pull off the information they want within 30 minutes to an hour. The fourth application, AppRecon, simplifies and automates the daily account reconciliation process between the central ledger and core applications. Anderson said the reconciliation process usually took a couple of staff six to eight hours to complete, whereas AppRecon gets it down to just 30 minutes. The TotalVision suite is offered as an outsourced service which means the datawarehouse is set up and managed off- site, at one of two Bisys-run datacentres; in Cherry Hill, New Jersey and Lombard, Illinois. Bisys already runs an extensive outsourcing service, called TotalPlus, which includes running front and back office applications for banks and building societies as well as managing mutual funds, providing retirement plans and ATM processing for some 9,000 financial institutions and corporate clients. This is the company’s first full datawarehousing suite.
