Integration or merger of two companies is not only about data migration and process sharing. It is also a necessity to function during the so-called transition period. In the time between the announcement of the merger and the full integration of both stakeholders.
Integration processes between two financial institutions, such as banks, are among the most complex undertakings in the BI industry. They include challenges related to combining different organizational structures, business processes and their different reflection in data. Harmonization of IT systems and integration of huge volumes of data from different sources are equally important.
In such ventures, tools that allow for effective data management are key, including:
- allowing for a detailed audit of applied transformations,
- enabling business analysts to easily edit mapping parameters,
- minimizing operational risk,
- supporting compliance with regulatory requirements.
Managing the complexity of integration processes and consolidation during the transition period
Integration of two banks’ systems is a gradual process, often stretched over time. It requires adaptation to the changing environment and business needs. Before the systems are fully integrated and unified, the integrating institutions often operate on the basis of their different transaction systems for many months or even years.
It is like two cities that are located close to each other growing rapidly, and are just starting to build a common infrastructure – for years, residents use old roads and different communication systems before common motorways or combined public transport are built. At the initial stage of integration, it is easy to have communication gaps, lack of compatibility and other inconveniences for residents.
It is necessary to create mechanisms that will allow you to look at two completely different parts of the organization as a whole. During the preparation of such processes, a mechanism for mapping parameters between the systems of both banks must be developed.
For example, attributes describing financial products in one bank may have completely different counterparts in the systems of another bank. In such cases, the ability to accurately map these dependencies in a dynamic and easy-to-manage way is extremely important.
What tools should be used?
Defining mapping dictionaries that allow for transparent management of such dependencies is possible with Metastudio DRM. These dictionaries can be filled in by business users who know the specifics of products and processes in both institutions. Without the need to involve IT teams at each stage.
Functionalities supporting the integration of financial institutions
Among the capabilities of Metastudio DRM that accelerate and facilitate integration processes are:
- Management of mapping and control dictionaries: the ability to define lists of values, validation rules (e.g. regular expressions, masks, ranges) and default values for individual fields.
- Versioning: the ability to create different versions of the same dictionary with the functionality of copying and comparing versions.
- Separation of permissions: the ability to define the scope of access in such a way as to divide the permissions to enter and approve changes between different user groups. This introduces the possibility of the so-called: “dual approval”. Functionality supported by additional mechanisms, including the Workflow Management panel allowing control over all dictionaries of the selected type.
- Avoidance of errors and data standardization: mechanisms blocking users from entering unwanted or incompatible values.
- Automatic notifications: editable notification schedules, e.g. about new attributes that require completion of mapping rules.
- Syntactic validations: the ability to define rules for data stored in dictionaries, such as fragments of SQL codes or other languages, which allows for control of the technical correctness of the entered data.
- Audit / Change Log: Change audit function that records information about the user who made the change, the date and time of the change, and the nature of the change (update/insert/delete). Additionally, information about previous/current values is stored.
Support for regulatory processes
The financial sector is subject to numerous regulations that require high-quality data and proper process documentation. Metastudio DRM supports these requirements. It allows you to manage dictionaries, parameters and mappings in an auditable manner that complies with current regulations.
Implementation
Launching Metastudio DRM in an organization is quick and does not require the involvement of significant resources. Thanks to the intuitive interface, business users, after a short training, can start working on data harmonization.
Dictionaries managed in the Metastudio DRM repository are physically reflected in relational tables. This significantly facilitates their integration with the existing infrastructure of the organization. Thanks to this, ETL (Extraction, Transformation and Loading) class tools, commonly used in data migration and integration processes, can easily access this data using standard SQL queries. The direct relational structure of dictionaries allows for the avoidance of additional translation layers and complicated access mechanisms. This translates into more effective handling of data transformation and migration processes between banking systems.
Practical examples of using Metastudio DRM in integration, migration or consolidation processes confirm the increase in the efficiency of such processes, improvement of their quality and minimization of risks.
Summary
The implementation of a merger or integration project can be more effective, better organized and less error-prone, which translates into a smooth connection of processes and systems. A useful tool supporting users in the processes related to the integration of two financial institutions is Metastudio DRM.
Its use greatly facilitates the functioning of organizations still operating on the basis of different IT environments during the so-called transition period.
Metastudio DRM, as a dedicated solution, will effectively support integration processes by providing functions for managing data dictionaries, mappings and validations. This solution is particularly useful in the context of the integration of two banks, where it is necessary to reconcile different data structures, diverse dictionaries of attributes of similar financial products, terminology and IT systems.
Grzegorz Orłowski
Product Manager
Would you like to learn more about how Metastudio DRM can support complex processes such as integration or merger?
Contact us! Together, we’ll explore how we can achieve similar results.
