Deutsche Bankhas cut its IT costs by
30% and doubled the performance of its IT department over the past
five years by using outsourcing and partnering relationships to
free up staff for development.
The bank has just added more of its
legacy applications and IT infrastructure to its outsourcing
contract with India's HCL Technologies. The bank said the deal
reflected its confidence in its relationship with HCL that goes
back to 2001, and which has been worth more than £100m.
Speaking via a TV link to an HCL user conference in New Delhi,
Hermann-Josef Lamberti, the bank's group chief operating officer,
said the deal would allow the bank to concentrate on new systems
development. It spends 10% of its software budget on new
applications. Outsourcing has helped it to cut costs by 30% while
doubling its performance between 2001 and 2006, he said.
The bank's experience in India goes back to 1992 when it opened
a captive software house, Deutsche Software Ltd, in Bangalore. It
sold a 51% share to HCL in 2001, with DSL becoming a wholly-owned
HCL subsidiary later.
Deutsche Bank is a "lighthouse" client for HCL, said Rajeev
Sawhney, the firm's president for Europe. "We have a strategy of
targeting very specific clients in each country in one of six
sectors: financial services, retail, aerospace and automotive,
telecommunications, life sciences and utilities."
HCL's UK clients include DSG, which owns the Dixons and Curry's
chains of high-street retailers music company EMI BT and insurance
firm Skandia.
Sawhney said HCL is also now looking for government business,
adding it has just started a pilot project with the
Wiltshire Police Force to enable police to use their PDAs to
receive all the criminal investigation data normally available to
them only in the squad room.
The aim is to improve police productivity by reducing the amount
of time they spend in the office researching cases and increasing
the time they spend on the street.
Sawheny said this was potentially the start of a shared national
system. "There are 45 more police forces," he said.