Bank of America will further integrate and enhance the
its internal reporting systems with an ERP system.
The ERP system, provided by SAP, includes features to support
the bank's long-term financial systems requirements, including:
- Enabling a unified, global financial management process
- Providing a flexible operating model to quickly respond to
changing regulatory mandates and shifts in the marketplace
- Incremental enhancement packages without comprehensive system
upgrades
"As our company has grown, so has the size and complexity of our
technology infrastructure," said Milton Jones, Bank of America's
finance services executive.
"SAP will help streamline and simplify our financial systems,
support timely analytics and provide better process insights to
drive more effective business decisions," said Jones.
News of the Bank of America deployment comes as
SAP and Microsoft form an association to help banks move
towards a service orientated architecture (SOA).
The association is backed by other technology suppliers and
banks, including Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, ING, Deutsche
Postbank, Standard Bank and Zürcher Kantonalbank.
The new Banking Industry Architecture Network has the aim of
helping banks ease the transition to an SOA by gathering together a
community of firms that will openly share domain and technical
expertise to apply SOA principles and methodologies.
In employing these principles, banks globally will be able to
better respond to changing customer needs, and reduce risk and cost
of re-engineering legacy systems towards a more flexible
operational environment, said SAP.
"Credit Suisse sees the creation of this association as a
significant milestone for not only ourselves, but for the industry
as a whole," said Claus Hagen, head of integration architecture at
Credit Suisse.
"The association will create an open environment of members that
begins with an idea and takes it all the way through to execution,"
he said.