UK bankAbbeyhas acknowledged that service to
customers has been disrupted as it grapples with migrating to a
"state of the art" core banking system.
Abbey's parent company, Spanish banking group
Santander, is migrating the UK bank to its Partenon global
banking system, in what the bank says is the largest IT project of
its type in the UK.
The bank said only a small number of customers had been
affected. But staff say they are under pressure because of
difficulties with the roll-out.
Linda Rolf, general secretary at the Abbey National Group Union,
said, "I am aware of the system problems and we have discussed it
with management. The systems are improving and will improve
further."
The project, which will replace 30-year-old legacy systems, will
help Santander cut IT costs by £305m following its acquisition of
Abbey in 2004 for more than £8bn.
Abbey said in a statement to Computer Weekly that, "Our staff
are working hard to ensure a smooth transition. In a project of
this scale and complexity there will be some disruption to the
service we offer while we adapt to new ways of working and serving
our customers.
"While this is in no way acceptable for those customers who may
be affected, we know it has impacted a small number only, and in
the majority of instances it is not a system problem, but more to
do with the change to the processes and the logical learning curve
after a change of this magnitude."
Abbey said the project required immense effort and was
exceptional in the finance industry. The project is 70% complete,
with major milestones, including creating a resilient datacentre,
renewing branch communication infrastructure and creating a single
database, complete.
Some customers have complained about difficulties accessing
services and long queues in branches as the new system is rolled
out.
A handwritten sign at one branch of Abbey last week read: "Due
to system problems your queuing time may be in excess of 25
minutes." It recommended alternatives such as the cheque deposit
box, depositing cash or cheques in the cash point and in-branch
phones for transfers and account card enquiries.
Partenon is an online banking system with what is known as
straight-through processing capabilities, where every relationship
a customer has with the bank is on the system, offering customers
access to everything they need from one point of contact.
This is an advantage to banks in today's multi-channel banking
environment and was one of the reasons Abbey's sale was
approved.
Project milestones achieved
●
Business continuity risk cut by new resilient datacentre
infrastructure. Project involved replacing more than 18 tons of
cable.
● Single database created to hold all customer data. Some 52
million customer records consolidated into 18 million to enable
single customer view.
● Migration of 10 million savings accounts, four million current
accounts and eight million card accounts to new software
platform.