I bank with Lloyds TSB. Before they merged, I had a business account with Lloyds and a personal account with TSB. After they merged, the paperwork (such as statements and chequebooks) all looked the same, but underneath the water the duck’s legs were going like billio; the Lloyds systems and the TSB systems were still separate and didn’t talk to each other. I can remember that it took about 12 – 18 months before they had ironed out the integration issues (delays when transferring money, and problems with signature recognition) that affected me.
Although this ‘merger’ (I forget who bought whom) was a pretty big one, it was only between two companies each with their own well defined systems.
Now think about the aggressive companies that have grown through acquisition or ‘consolidation’ as some call it. Each time company ‘A’ buys company ‘B’ to help grow it’s book, it takes on another set of systems, some of them ill chosen, most of them outdated, and none of them communicating with each other.
I have heard stories of major financial players such as Prudential, AXA, Norwich Union, Skandia and the like ending up with literally hundreds of systems, with major projects under way to try and get the number of systems down.
If only it was like the movies… …the kid in Jurassic park that logs onto the park security system with the line “It’s a UNIX system! I know this”, or the clever scientist that docks his Mac with an alien spaceship computer to upload a virus in Independence Day. Understanding systems and getting them to talk to each other is never that easy; it takes lots of clever people lots of time.
In some cases, systems are so old that no one really understands how they work; they just do: ”don’t touch that machine, if it breaks we don’t know how to fix it”. Or a single person understands the system: ”Ask Bob, he’s the only one that understands the X52-S”.
I was tickled to hear that when applying for a job recently with an ex-government institution my nephew was asked what his Fortran knowledge was? Fortran, for those not au fait with computer languages, was invented in 1956 when a building was filled by a single computer, and although it has been updated from time to time, it is hardly ‘chic’. Fortran is not something that a bright graduate would want to shackle himself with.
Most of the time the duck above the water gets away with it, you don’t see the feet, but on occasion the complication of wires breaks through to the surface. Instances such as “Why do I have to sign on again?”, “Why can’t I see all my clients details”, “Why do I have to re-type that again; you already have that information” are common, and 9 times out of 10 are caused by multiple systems that do not speak the same language.
So the nimble, single system players that burst onto the market that are not hamstrung by a legacy of antiquated systems, and focus on providing ground breaking service are a threat to the big boys? I put this to a senior member of one of the big providers recently and received the reply: ”Yes, they would be a threat…right up until we bought them”. Ho hum.
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