Sal. Oppenheim: Enhancing Flexibility with Murex Core Trading

With a current staff of 3,800, equity capital of €2 billion, and a balance sheet total of €41 billion, Sal. Oppenheim is Europe’s leading independent private bank.

Including BHF-BANK AG, which was acquired at the beginning of 2005, Sal. Oppenheim manages total assets of €152 billion.

Before collaborating with Accenture, Sal. Oppenheim’s Murex trading application was maintained by bank employees and freelancers. Since the maintenance workload varies greatly during the year, Sal. Oppenheim sought a solution that would allow the support team to scale up and down with demand, while reducing costs and improving cost predictability. By co-sourcing its Murex application management, the bank hoped to achieve cost reductions, improve time to market for new products, extend flexibility to meet demand peaks, and increase the quality of services and development.

Accenture was selected for this project because of its in-depth Murex application expertise, capital markets industry know-how and its application outsourcing and delivery experience. Sal. Oppenheim already was a long-term client of Accenture.

Accenture’s service model includes an onsite team in Frankfurt, Germany and a near-site team in Accenture’s Capital Markets Center of Excellence in Madrid, Spain. The overall team is a combination of Accenture and Sal. Oppenheim employees. Accenture provides deep expertise in Murex, flexible staffing, a multisite infrastructure, a strong background in application outsourcing (AO) service delivery as well as a competitive and predictable pricing model.

Accenture’s role specifically includes:

• Transition responsibility for a three-month transition phase, during which the transfer of knowledge to the Accenture team took place. During this time, the operating model was detailed in close collaboration with the client team. Workshops were organized and initial reengineering tasks were performed to optimize service delivery.

• Murex enhancements and small developments performed by the near-site team.

• Maintenance, small developments and service management done by the joint onsite team.

• Onsite service management, which included responsibilities for governance processes (i.e. status reporting and committees), demand planning, project assignments and staffing, and managing the transition of work between the onsite and near-site teams.

Accenture’s deep Murex expertise has led to higher quality deliverables, reduced time to market with new investment products and profound decisions on strategic changes to the application (i.e. market data infrastructure, interface design, reporting methodology). Specific results included a demand management process that supports flexible scaling of up to plus or minus 30 percent of the current team size. Accenture’s scalable resourcing structure means that Sal. Oppenheim is able to optimize its support organization budget and meet business demands by scaling the support teams according to current needs within a 30-day time frame.

All agreed service levels reached or exceeded the target level foreseen for the first year of service delivery (maintenance and development key performance indicators). With reduced IT support costs, enhanced time to market and high-quality support services, Sal. Oppenheim has taken one step closer to becoming a high-performance business.