Forward-thinking Expertise Helps Citizens Modernize Its Software Application Roadmap | BANKING
- CASE STUDIES | 4 min read
CUSTOMER PROFILE
Citizens Financial Group, Inc. operates as the bank holding company for Citizens Bank, N.A. It is one of the oldest and largest financial institutions in the U.S., with $226.7B in assets and more than 5M customers.
Headquartered in Rhode Island, Citizens offers a broad range of retail and commercial banking products and services to consumers and businesses. The company reaches beyond its 1,200 physical branches across 14 states by using digital platforms to deliver customers its banking, loan, and savings products.
INDUSTRY:
Banking
COMPANY SIZE:
Large
LOCATION:
United States
PRODUCTS
IBM® Db2 IBM® Content Manager OnDemand IBM® Tivoli Storage Manager IBM® WebSphere IBM® MQ IBM® Tivoli® Netcool®/OMNIbus IBM® Cognos IBM® MFT File Gateway IBM® InfoSphere IBM® FileNet IBM® App Connect IBM® Sterling
Continuous innovation helps Citizens modernize and maintain its competitive edge. But since newer platforms don't always play well with long-standing IBM® systems, it counts on Origina to minimize interoperability challenges.
THE PROBLEM
INTEROPERABILITY CHALLENGES THAT UPGRADES AND FIX PACKS WON’T RESOLVE
Well-established banking institutions face tremendous competition from newer digital native banks that offer users innovative tools and platforms.
A full 83% of business leaders said they expect their bank to leverage the latest technological tools to help their business compete.
Citizens is well aware of this shift in customer expectations. The company has been expanding its digital strategies for years in an effort to deliver customers a seamless experience across all channels and services.
The company launched its digital savings bank, Citizens Access, in 2014 and rolled out a platform that provides a highly personalized and integrated banking and investing experience.
Continual innovation helps Citizens maintain its competitive edge. But the company knows its newer platforms don’t always play well with its long-standing IBM® systems.
It moved support from IBM to Origina to prepare for a shift toward open architecture and ensure it would have access to responsive software support with proven IBM® expertise at half the cost.
This proved a wise choice on more than one occasion, including during a particularly busy time of year when the company was experiencing a massive file loading slowdown. Teams reported a 24-hour load time for a single 6GB file.
The impact was huge across the organization and customer base. They were tempted to upgrade to the latest version of IBM® Db2, but with no guarantee of a fix and exposure to risk, Citizens chose Origina instead.
THE SOLUTION
THIRD-PARTY SOFTWARE MAINTENANCE RESTORES UPTIME AND IMPROVES STABILITY
Origina’s team of independent IBM® product experts dove in to investigate. Their mission was not just to determine the root of the problem and apply a fix, but to consider the best long-term solution that would prevent a recurrence in the future.
They examined the existing architecture of Citizens’ IBM® deployment and found that its Content Manager OnDemand (CMOD), Db2 database, and Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) were all deployed on the same server. An incongruency between IBM® CMOD and Db2 was causing stuck sessions.
The Origina team delivered Citizens a high-level document that mapped out the problem and recommended moving Db2 and TSM to a separate server. They had referenced the proposed IBM® fix pack but saw no evidence that it would resolve the issue.
There also was no business case or ROI to support an upgrade in this situation. As a matter of fact, any upgrade would most likely destabilize Citizens’ otherwise stable environment, exposing the company to unnecessary, ongoing risk.
Origina deployed a highly customized independent solution that allowed for a reconfiguration of the system architecture between CMOD and Db2. The team wrote third-party open-source code that effectively addressed the issue, while maintaining a stable environment across Citizens’ systems.
The ARS loading time immediately went from 24 hours to 15 minutes — a 96% reduction.
Origina’s ability to extend the life and value of Citizens’ current IBM® versions not only lowers risk and improves overall performance, it also helps the company shift a huge percentage of its software budget away from unnecessary upgrades and toward a brighter digital future.
THE RESULT
Origina understands Citizens’ digital transformation needs and goes beyond simple break/fix support to help the company optimize its hybrid IBM® estate as it modernizes its software application roadmap.
Citizens’ partnership with Origina gives it the flexibility, stability, and expertise it needs to:
- Integrate new platforms and ensure interoperability
- Deliver an outstanding customer experience
- Ensure uptime and enhance IBM® product performance
- Free up funds and redirect resources to propel digital initiatives
- Save substantially on costly, low-value upgrades
Origina's mission was not just to determine the root of the problem and apply a fix, but to implement a long-term solution that would prevent a recurrence in the future.
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