Introducing new technology

Abbey targets cost and service gains from IT overhaul - article on computerweekly.com on 4 December 2007 by Karl Flinders.

Abbey have developed 'The Partenon' banking platform to replace 30-year-old legacy computer systems and provide the bank with a single view of its customers for the first time. It is hoped to reduce costs to the business by £300m. Abbey has consolidated all of its customer records on to a single database. Eliminating duplication has allowed the bank to reduce the number of customer records it stores from 52 million to 20 million.

The article goes on to say "Training and getting users to buy into projects is an important competency which is often overlooked in the banking sector, according to Ralph Silva, analyst at TowerGroup."

He said human error is responsible for 40% of the failures of major IT projects in the European banking sector. Only 5% are caused by problems with the technology.

"Almost every major failure of any significant IT project in the European financial services sector can be attributed to human error," said Silva. "The human element is always the last one to be considered, and yet it is the highest cause of failure."

Abbey's training programme

* Face-to-face tuition and e-learning on tools and ways of working delivered to 25,000 staff
* Support for staff in branches and contact centres
* Dedicated single point of contact helpline
* Comprehensive pilots before full roll-out
* Post implementation consolidation training
* Training includes "contingency" processes to minimise service disruption
* Training is piloted with focus groups
* Senior Abbey management sent to Santander to meet colleagues and see Partenon working.

Andy Brazier