ABN Amro Services Company Banks on Novell exteNd for Treasury Management Portal

Using Novell® exteNd™, ABN Amro Services Company, a subsidiary of ABN Amro Bank N.V., one of the world's largest banks with 100,000 employees in 70 countries and assets of more than $500 billion, built a dynamic treasury management portal to help their customers complete a wide range of business transactions. With an easy-to-use interface that enables the marketing department to update content without involving the IT department, updates can now be made in a matter of minutes rather than weeks, saving thousands of dollars and improving IT staff productivity by 30 percent.

The main challenge faced by ABN Amro Services Company was a legacy application development platform that made updating the bank's Web site a time-consuming and cumbersome process, often requiring up to three weeks to publish a new product announcement. With 22,000 treasury managers visiting the site each day to complete a range of transactions from cash management to investments and foreign exchange, the bank had to find a way to enable transactions over the Web and provide timely content to its customers. After evaluating other leading vendors, ABN Amro Services Company selected Novell exteNd for its standards-based approach, intuitive application platform and security capabilities like single sign-on, to build its mission-critical portal.

"The big difference is that Novell exteNd is an integrated suite, not a group of piecemeal applications," said Milton Santiago, senior vice president and department head of electronic banking for ABN Amro Services Company. "Other platforms seemed clumsy and non-intuitive by comparison. With Novell exteNd, all the pieces fit together for a comprehensive solution."

Over a period of six months, the bank's developers used Novell exteNd to design, test and roll out their CashPro Web portal. The intuitive interface of Novell exteNd made it easy to learn, enabling the team to get started after attending a four-day training class. The bank seamlessly converted its customers to the new site, providing them with greater functionality through a similar look and feel.

"For a solution as sophisticated as a cash management site, a six-month time frame was remarkable," said Gary Maguire, vice president of Electronic Banking Systems at ABN Amro Services Company. "Novell exteNd helped us deliver a huge amount of content and functionality in a short period of time. Even more impressive is that we were able to do it all on our own, without the need for any subject matter experts or consultants."

With a flexible Web site, ABN Amro can quickly update customers regarding enhancements, new offerings, changes in legislation or notices in times of crisis. The bank can easily personalize Web sites for different markets and audiences, as well as implement new cross-marketing and selling opportunities, without lengthy development schedules. The ability to make Web changes in minutes, rather than weeks, has eliminated thousands of dollars in updates and thousands of man hours.

"Building our flagship portal and converting an existing customer base of 27,000 made this a mission-critical project," Santiago said. "If this didn't go well, there was a lot at risk. Novell exteNd has given us great peace of mind and allows us to focus on our business, rather than technology."

For more information about Novell exteNd solutions, go to http://www.novell.com/extend.