Case Study

Westpac Bank Integrates And Deploys Customer Service Innovation In Just 5 Months With Ensemble

For Westpac Bank, attention to the basics while focusing on innovative services has kept them the number one choice for institutional clients in Australia and New Zealand. Westpac’s Custody division processes more than 1.4 million transactions annually, and assets under management are growing 30% per year.

Along with this rapid growth have come increasing demands from customers and staff for enhanced reporting and access to information that the bank’s transactional systems can’t provide. To meet the demand, Westpac needed a way to pull data from many sources and bring it together in one place. And because customers wanted access to this information on demand through several channels, Westpac also needed to automate its access, manipulation, and delivery. The bank needed to do it all quickly to keep competitors at bay, with an efficient interface to keep customers happy, and within a limited budget to please Westpac management.

Westpac looked at traditional integration and message broker solutions, but they were costly and limited primarily to sharing transactional data. Then the bank found Ensemble. “We were skeptical that Ensemble could live up to its claims of ease of use, rapid application development, and the ability to deal with complex environments,” said Adam Wilson, senior manager. “But two InterSystems engineers completed a proof- of-concept project in three days. And we had a working application we could demonstrate to key customers. So the project got off to a running start.”

“Our customers are happier because they get the information they need whenever they want it.”

-- Adam Wilson
Senior Manager
Westpac Bank

The Web-based project was completed in five months, from proof-of-concept to general release. “Functions that used to fill our employee’s time, such as billing, fulfilling requests for ad-hoc reports, and trade reconciliation are now done by the customers themselves, securely from our Web site,” says Wilson. “They’re happier because they get the information they need whenever they want it. We’re happier because Ensemble is serving as a flexible platform that can keep up with change and accelerate our business growth.”