BANKING SPECIAL
Jos Mijnen
At Rabobank International the rele
vant departments responsible for
IT, Operations and Services towards
corporate customers work together
under the umbrella of ITOPS, headed
by Ralf Dekker, COO of Rabobank
International. That collaborative effort is
needed to deliver joined-up availability
of services, to make the bank future proof - or simply
to solve problems that arise in the chain quickly.
Within ITOPS, Jos Mijnen is Head of IT Infrastructure,
Eelco Kaan is Global Head of Corporate Banking Services
and Armand van Wolferen, Global Head Corporate
Banking IT at IT Systems Development. All three
departments are part of Rabobank International (Rl), and
they are used to working in the background. "ITOPS works
best when nobody talks about us,"jokes Mijnen. But the
service desks, system architects, developers, engineers
and support workers that assist in introducing new
services and systems play a vital role in the whole orga-
nisation. Rabobank Netherlands uses systems that have
been developed under the Rl umbrella - for instance,
the services for Rabo Cash Management offered through
the Rabo Financial Logistics Portal.
Two years ago, the corporate payment service Rabo
Cash Management was facing serious challenges in
meeting customers' expectations on service and speed
as well as on stability of the system. As a result of the
decommissioning of the RTE system both member bank
SME customers and large wholesale customers were
moving forward into the Rabo Cash Management system
and service offering. But that portal, together with the
corporate services offered to our customers, was not
fully prepared to meet the major increase of 'different'
customers with various expectations in service levels.
The three support departments within ITOPS (Rabobank
International), Operations, IS&D and ITI, together with
Group ICT (Rabobank Netherlands) and the business,
worked together to face the challenges in a newly formed
taskforce. Together with the member banks, they devised
a gradual and guided introduction of new customers into
the Rabo Cash Management services, together with major
improvements in customer services and IT performance
and stability. Since then, most of the problems have been
solved.
In April, the IT development and service organisation
for RCM were moved outside Rl to Rabobank Nederland
Bedrijven. This move demonstrates the importance of
Rabobank Cash Management for our member bank
clients.
Initially, this system and these services were designed
and tailormade for large wholesale clients, but when
Rabobank Netherlands decided to increase its efforts
to gain market share in the markets of small and medium
enterprises, that cash management service was inte-
grated within the Rabobank Netherlands offerings to their
customers. This had a major impact on development,
infrastructure and operations. "We had always been
working with Rl clients, but as a result of that decision we
had to reinvent our total chain of services to meet the
expectations of more and different customers. This had
its impact on the first line support, fulfillment, processes,
availability, customer interface and overall performance
of the service offering. Both at our traditional large
wholesale customers and at the member banks in the
Netherlands and their clients," explains Van Wolferen.
ISSUE 27 MAY 2011 Rl WORLD
