When Information Systems support Sales Strategies

Transcription

1 When Information Systems support Sales Strategies The Benefits of a Service-Oriented Architecture for the Lending and Asset Finance industry By: João Violante

2 About the author João Violante, Manager of the Lending, Asset Finance and Leasing product line for. João is a graduate of the French Engineering School École Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Métiers. He started his career with Sovac in 1990 which was taken over by GE in 1995 where he implemented Consumer Credit, Vehicle Financing and Mortgage Financing systems. After a 2-year experience as a Project Manager with Transiciel, he joined Ingenetudes in 1998, which later became part of the group in There he stayed for 7 years and gained valuable expertise with EKIP, s flagship product dedicated to the Lending, Asset Finance and Leasing industry. He then gained further experience in 2004 when he founded the Blue Caravel Company, where he performed a variety of tasks, such as defining target architectures, selecting and implementing software packages or measuring the value of Information Systems. João returned to in September 2010 where he is now in charge of defining, approving and supporting international strategic initiatives for all Lending, Asset Finance and Leasing products. About is a global solutions provider with 700 clients operating in 50 countries. With more than 900 employees across the globe, is dedicated to the investment management and credit community. has been at the service of the financial industry from day one, and applies its market and client insight to provide innovative and tailored mission-critical software and services that help its clients grow. As a pioneer for over 10 years with the setup of SaaS infrastructure for the financial industry, has preached and spread this model throughout the global financial community, for its full range of products. 150 lenders and asset finance institutions in 32 countries choose for their core IT system, a comprehensive software platform dedicated to the lending and asset finance industry with two wellknown software solutions: Ekip and Profinance. s offering manages the entire life cycle of a contract, from the first customer contact through to accounting. Its integrated workflow streamlines and optimises business processes. This multi-country, multi-currency, multi-channel, multi- GAAP offering handles more than 8 million contracts on a daily basis.

3 When Information Systems support Sales Strategies Traditional architectures: A deterrent to competition and product innovation Finance institutions currently use numerous applications that are connected together within their information system architecture: these applications are for day-to-day contract management, accounting, risk management and reporting, third party database management etc. and they all interact with each other using specific interfaces. In traditional enterprise architecture, applications interact with each other in pairs. System A Interface A System B These restrictions, which are due to the IS architecture, build up inertia and are a major obstacle for the Sales and Marketing departments, which have to wait until the new software versions are finally deployed. In a market where laws and regulations are subject to frequent changes and competition is fierce, this type of architecture is a deterrent to competition and product innovation. This is why more and more IT directors are now turning towards a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) 1, in which the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is the core messaging backbone. This approach has limitations because of the number of interfaces that need to be developed as the number of systems increases. As a result, upgrading these applications is a difficult task: the upgrades must be synchronised and they add significant testing costs as well as major operational risks. Modifying one of the applications might involve modifying interfaces, and, in some cases, modifying one or more partner systems. System A System B System D System C Federate and simplify communication with Service Bus With the Service Bus 2, all software applications in the Information System no longer communicate directly with each other, but via a standardised and shared communication service. This means that information is collected, transferred and published by the Service Bus, whose task is to forward it to the relevant applications. Ekip Front Ekip Middle Service Bus Ekip Back 1. SOA: Service Oriented Architecture. 2. Service Bus: the most common implementation of SOA is based on a Service Bus. This bus acts as middleware between service consumers and providers. 3

4 Used as a central communication channel, the Service Bus provides a directory service for finding all the information you need. Many value-added services are offered: If one of the systems is unavailable, the Service Bus will try and find information in other back-up systems. If the information you are looking for is stored in different applications, the Service Bus will find and aggregate the data in a transparent way for the user. Once the information has been found, it needs translating. The same information can have very different names depending on the application used. Translation will be based on a glossary that stores repositories translations for all in-use applications. What are the advantages of ESB? s can be updated independently through the service Bus without impacting others: this results in the updating of the application glossary (Metadata manager/wsdl 3 ) in the Service Bus. In addition, implementing services and new work methods will help to better define and structure processes, which will also ensure sustainability. It is important to consider: how the application will interact with other applications how to differentiate, from project conception, which data is public and which remains private determine what is in or out of the application s scope. Services Buses unmistakably bring greater flexibility and responsiveness to data, but they also bring additional security. When upgrading versions, live deployments can be spread over time and might involve only a portion of the portfolio: it then becomes possible to have several versions of the same Front Office application working in parallel. These are different versions of the same software package that are deployed at the desired pace. Service Bus Ekip Front V1, 1 Ekip Front V1,2 Ekip Middle Ekip Back 3. WSDL: Web Services Description Language: an XML-based language that provides a model for describing Web services. 4

5 When Information Systems support Sales Strategies ESB is the key to SOA In a traditional architecture, applications talk to each other, know and understand each other. Interaction standards have to be defined when creating the interface. In a Service-Oriented Architecture, the Service Bus acts as middleware: it can, for example, link a Front Office system request to a service provided by the Risk Management system. In order to provide communication between the two systems, the Service Bus must be able to translate the request made by the Front Office into a language understood by the Risk Management system. In addition to being a service directory, the Service Bus is also a multi-language translator, capable of managing metadata. Can the Service Bus process high-volume data? ESB is particularly suited to real-time data management. Constraints are different for batch data management. Real-time data management systems process various transactions one by one. Batch data management systems process identical transactions in bulk. All too often we forget that this is a critical issue for information systems in which the back office is at the core of the management system. Enhancements can be made to the Service Bus to improve performance significantly. For example, caching 4 can be used: If two applications request the same information for the same client at an interval of a few seconds, the system can return the first result directly, without the need for a new request. In addition to these enhancements, Extract, Transform and Load (or ETL 5 ) technologies can also be used. These technologies offer exactly the same benefits as the previous ones (i.e. they can link two systems that don t know each other and provide directory and messaging services), but with different technical constraints. 4. Caching: component that improves performance by storing data onto the hard drive such that future requests for that data can be served faster. 5. ETL (Extract-Transform-Load): Process in data warehousing that involves extracting data from outside sources, transforming it to fit operational needs and loading it into the end target (database or data warehouse). 6. Golden copy: Trusted copy of a master dataset They are very powerful technologies that can batchprocess large volumes of data. The ETL process works in the same way as the Service Bus used for mass-processing. It also organises the caching concepts. An invoicing batch needs client data. Before this is processed, the application will request information on all clients to whom the process applies, and will cache this data into a golden copy 6. An application is therefore meant to store: the data it processes a copy of the data it needs to work properly (and which it does not own). Ekip Front V1, 1 Ekip Front V1,2 Service Bus Ekip Middle Ekip Back Repository synchronisation Operationnal data Golden copy 5

6 Managing repositories in a SOA Within SOA architecture, the lending process lifecycle is managed by successive applications: it is first sold in the Front Office, validated in the Middle Office and managed in the Back Office. It is therefore important that repositories are shared between applications and that upgrades are synchronised (when initiating a new offer, for example). The most natural approach is to provide a Central Data Repository. This is both a performance issue (containment node) and a system reliability issue (e.g.: if the repository is down, all systems directly dependent on it will also be down). The Golden Copy approach is therefore preferable. This implies that repositories should be managed externally by a dedicated application. Initiating an offer involves placing offer-related data into the Golden Copies of target systems. Offer management Ekip Front Service Bus Ekip Middle Ekip Back Repository synchronisation Switching from a traditional architecture to SOA The trend is not towards major overhauls but progressive changes that are better managed and more sustainable. The aim is to capitalise upon the years of investments that have been made in applications that used to run separately. Priority will be given to replacing point-to-point interfaces by interfaces connected through the Bus. Defining a reference glossary of the data shared by all applications seems to be the best starting point before development. Core business software can accelerate the delivery of your projects by providing a consistent basis. Choosing Service-Oriented Architecture will ensure the durability and flexibility of your Information System and increase your current and future competitiveness. This is an important decision that requires the participation of business and technology specialists such as s, who support clients every day in implementing their IT software solutions. Along with Ekip360, s software package dedicated to the Lending, Asset Finance and Leasing industry, also provides a Service Bus with its glossary. This Service Bus can be used to connect different Front, Middle and Back Office applications. Using the glossary as the basis of corporate glossaries will allow you to adjust gradually to the Service Bus. s can be connected to the Service Bus according to your needs. 6

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