Financial Services
Microsoft Dynamics AX

?The ambitious project goals were reached; the planned launch date was met. The start of operations was pleasingly quiet and was tied to very little follow-up work.?

Dirk Blumenthal, Manager (CIO) at Swiss Bankers

Business Needs

The Swiss Bankers Prepaid Services AG is a Swiss service business by the Swiss banks with an international orientation. In recent years, the Swiss Bankers Prepaid Services AG has successfully managed a diversification into new branches of business.

The core business of the Swiss Bankers Prepaid Services AG is the development, sales and processing of prepaid cards. As this industry?s leading company, the Swiss Bankers Prepaid Services AG strives to continue to expand its market position

In the course of the project, several thematic subjects were pursued:

1. Complete take-over of externally developed Dynamics AX 2009 installation.
The goal was to rework all areas of the application that were still unknown, to better understand the content of existing solution paths and to provide an even better, more efficient support in the future. That way, a new foundation was meant to be formed, in order to be able to more easily migrate to a new AX version in a subsequent project.

2. Raising the performance and improving the stability. Based on the solution paths so far, performance fluctuations occurred periodically, even system crashes. Only a limited number of orders could be processed per day ? a severe restriction for future-oriented planning.

3. Process optimisation. In addition to points 1 and 2, a new design of the core process was aspired to. Leaner and more efficient with a high degree of automation.

4. Expansion of the application.?In addition to the process- and performance-topics, expanding the scope was also planned, which also included a consistent cancellation process as well as a stronger connection to the customer service ticketing-tool service centre.

The Swiss Bankers? business needs:

• Continuous growth
• Cost-efficient corporate structure
• No increase in number of staff for core processes
• High automation and quick processing times
• Process improvements
• Future-proof investment and a quick ROI
• Product development and marketing

The orientation of the company on the future will continue to be strongly fixed on growth. In order to pursue this goal, the question regarding a stable and future-proof business software solution came up in addition to the classic corporate questions.

In recent years, massive performance and stability problems occurred time and again. There were only limited options concerning new market situations.

Solution

Criteria for the selection of a solution:

• Flexible and transparent system
• Adaptable to the needs
• Agile, quick and high-performance solution
• Future-proof investment
• Quickly reach ROI
• High availability and stability
• Free choice of partner (risk minimisation)
• Low training effort
• Low licensing fees
• Preparation for a simple migration to the new AX version

The idea to search for a new ? i.e. improved ? solution already began four year ago. Based on a cost-intensive integration of a new market, the inadequate options in the created solution were detected. The same followed in the case of a new installation of products and currencies.
The system?s further development as well as the constant adaptation to market realities were always at the forefront.

Swiss Bankers is now betting on?Microsoft Dynamics AX?and will continue to do so in the future. In order to be flexible and thus able to unproblematically switch from the currently utilised version 2009 to a new version, the plan was to clean up and optimise the old system in a first step, to be ready for the switch.

The fact that we as AlfaPeople were completely occupied, is due to a very positive and constructive collaboration that lasted more than 6 years. And from the perspective of the Swiss Bankers, we were the only possible and competent partner, who was in a position to deliver an implementation within a period of 12 months at that.

Benefits

Costs and profitability, ROI

The investment will amortise in the mid-term, as the high stability and massively improved performance will especially pay off during the summer peak. Already after the start of the new application, more than 75% of the orders were processed automatically in the background.

Added value

Thanks to the acceleration of the order process to less than 5 seconds? Swiss Bankers is in a position to implement multiple more amounts of orders than before. Peaks can be better balanced, resource commitments can be planned better at fixed times.

From today?s perspective, adapting to market changes that arise at short notice can now be accommodated without problem.

Future-oriented technology

By using Microsoft Dynamics, Swiss Bankers is betting on a future- oriented solution and in terms of Microsoft is relying on a solutions provider that also allows for long- term planning. What is more, Swiss Bankers is now absolutely in a position to switch partners thanks to a solution that is established on the market.

The ability to upgrade and continuously evolve were and are reasons, why Swiss Bankers decided in favour of this product and all the related peripheral systems such as SQL, WinServer and Office.