Caixa Catalunya: Application Outsourcing and Alnova Financial Solutions

Accenture helped Spanish bank Caixa Catalunya to initiate technological changes through application outsourcing. These changes led to a structured, solid information base that equipped it with key strengths in its growth strategy, including flexibility in the launch of new products, better information about customers and the possibility of quickly incorporating new distribution channels.

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Caixa Catalunya is the third largest savings bank in Spain and operates as a nonprofit, public-service institution with a deep sense of social responsibility to the areas its serves. As of December 31, 2004, Caixa Catalunya had more than €35 billion in consolidated assets, an extensive network comprising 1,004 branches and 1,318 ATMs, and more than 6,000 employees.

When Caixa Catalunya decided it needed help to reduce costs, streamline business processes, create custom IT solutions and improve service quality, it called on Accenture.

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Accenture's ongoing research into the industry-specific characteristics of high performance reveal that leading banks establish robust business systems and are highly skilled managers of technology and operations.

In its efforts to achieve high performance, Caixa Catalunya recognized the need for IT excellence, especially given market conditions that required more speed and flexibility than was needed in the recent past. Moreover, it recognized the fact that any product or service offered its customers needed to be "right the first time," every time. In short, the bank wanted to achieve new levels of speed, flexibility and responsiveness for every function, every system, and every process.

To help design and implement this transformation, Caixa Catalunya wanted to tap the expertise of a service provider with deep industry skills and the range of capabilities needed to deliver a project of such broad scope. Accenture was the logical choice. In addition to meeting Caixa Catalunya's stringent selection criteria, Accenture had repeatedly demonstrated its ability to help banks transform their operations to achieve high performance.

Accenture teamed with Caixa Catalunya to help reduce costs, streamline business processes, create custom IT solutions and improve service quality within existing existing business functions—while also helping the bank extend its offerings into new product areas, including insurance policies, pension plans, securities and investment funds. A key component of this improvement program involved building and deploying Accenture's Alnova Financial Solutions™, a core banking application with a special focus on retail banking needs.

To further reduce its IT costs, Caixa Catalunya decided to outsource application and infrastructure support to Accenture for seven years. Together, the bank and Accenture created Informació Tecnologia of Catalunya (ITC), which they jointly own. Accenture provides the management; the bank continues to own the assets. ITC maintains the Alnova Financial Solution, as well as all departmental applications and the technical help desk, and provides full support for Caixa Catalunya's infrastructure technology. Based on the success of this outsourcing model, Caixa Catalunya extended the arrangement for an additional 10 years.

With Accenture as its service provider, Caixa Catalunya has flexible access to world-class business and information technology. As a result, the bank now enjoys a higher service level, with fewer incidents, and greater platform availability. The bank has improved its operating efficiencies, as well as its sales and risk management capabilities. Also important, the relationship between Accenture and Caixa Catalunya has led to a 29.5 percent reduction in service costs and a 30 percent reduction in the bank's total IT budget. In fact, Caixa Catalunya outperformed its savings bank peers by reducing its cost-income ratio by 14 points in three years. In the coming years, Accenture looks forward to helping Caixa Catalunya build on these successes to forge a path to high performance.

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