SOFT2go for Bankdata

Accelerating the Collaboration

Thus, Bankdata and Kenneth needed to select a partner to assume the task of creating their platform. “We launched an internal project which we called Accelerator Weeks. We brought 16-18 colleagues together in a basement for a month to see how far we could get with this project on our own. This was a large internal project of the utmost importance since many things will not work once you start to move things around,” he says. A basic premise in most IT organizations is to create valuable partnerships in order to free up resources, however, for Bankdata, there are external influences which make it so that not everyone is able to assume the task.  

Managed Services  Digital Workplace

Development of the Collaboration – Development from the Collaboration

From the get-go, Kenneth was aware that it was important for the team to be put together correctly in order to achieve the desired result because of the high level of control and security as well as the need for highly specialized skills. The process was important and it needed to be handled as a collaboration. “We are a development house and we have some insanely high security requirements in addition to being very strictly regulated. Therefore, we needed to have our own developers included in the process with Danoffice IT. The solution needs to work in their everyday practices. That brought about a bunch of hurdles to jump. There is not a quick solution because the Danish Financial Authority is often times in control of what is permitted and what is not. However, it went really well and Danoffice IT took the process and the requirements very seriously,” he says.

Could You Maybe Hold Off a Bit?

The myth of the successful IT project lives on and serves as a source of inspiration and frustration for IT departments all over the world. The favor of the users and agreement of the company require that one is constantly ahead of the game. That was certainly also the case for Bankdata’s SOFT2go solution, however the outcome far exceeded the expectations: “We had somewhat of an aha moment,” Kenneth says and elaborates: “We were worried that we would be falling behind in our roll-out of the applications, however, our fears were put to shame. We have had meetings with several banks during which they say: Could you maybe hold off a bit?” Since not everything is standard as we know it from elsewhere, there are plenty of challenges. “Some of the packages our banks request from us are old home-built packages, but even those they can handle without issue. We get really great support from Bo Uhrskov and the others, and sometimes, all it takes is for them to go change some parameters or add a component and then we are back up and running.”

SLA Reduced to Less Than Half

“Before we had SOFT2go, the deployment and roll-out ran on certain days and were handled by our supplier, but now, we do it ourselves when we are told the package is ready in the system and we install it ourselves. That is a big change since we used to be dependent on our supplier. We had a SLA for ten days and now it is much less than half of that. It is usually only a few days,” he says. We had a specific example where we had a product owner of Bankdata. He was used to waiting 10-14 days for a package. Now, he had them after two days of waiting and therefore, he was pleasantly surprised by the workflow. Things like that spread in an organization and it provides a completely different agility in the collaboration,” Kenneth Jensen, Senior Consultant, End User Tech Services at Bankdata, says and concludes: “This makes us an attractive partner for the financial institutions and when the owners are happy, we are happy.”