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Success Stories: Credit Card Processing
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SES Establishes Off-Site Development Center for International Banking Organization!
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For this Global 100 Banking organization, SES provided an off site development facility with over 60 SES consultants who worked as an integrated team with approximately 30 key client employees to ensure knowledge transfer.
This integrated team supported a quarterly release process for four major “legacy” applications (which are listed below); as well as the development and integration of their B2B and B2C applications.
The target was a J2EE-compliant environment, based on Java, Rational, Web Sphere and MQ Series, with full integration to their legacy systems (primarily “blue”).
In addition to providing business analysts, developers, quality assurance testers, and production support personnel, SES provides project management and coordination with over 20 other applications across 6 geographic locations, for 3 consecutive years.
SES systems engineers were on call 24 X 7 to support production applications, all via pager and cellular phone.
Project improvements were reviewed, prioritized and justified by an executive steering committee in conjunction with our Client’s Development Center and assigned to a release program for full development.
During the release development project, all phases of the project were managed via the customers Project Work Bench System including labor distribution/ billing and actual-to-estimate variance reporting.
- Government Card Services -
SES provided release enhancement, development, and implementation support for the government credit card service of this financial organization.
Each release was comprised of multiple projects targeting specific service line improvements or replacements.
The projects varied in size from small enhancements (approximately 300 man hours) to full service line improvements of 1,000 man-hours.
SES consultants also provided on-call support for online systems as well as production support for assigned batch applications.
- Consumer Card Services -
SES also provided release enhancement, development, and implementation support for the consumer credit card service for this Client with more than 4 ½ million active accounts.
Each of the four releases per year was comprised of multiple projects targeting specific service line improvements or replacements.
These projects varied from small enhancements (approximately 300 hours) to full service line improvements of 5,000 hours or more.
- Merchant Conversion Project -
SES systems engineers worked on this project converting existing Merchant VSAM systems to a relational database (DB2) and enhancing the base set of applications to allow for future growth and improve the functionality of transaction processing.
- CDB (Centralized Database) -
SES provided development and implementation support for our Client’s centralized database.
This database served all applications focusing on customer care support via the Internet.
Projects included implementing the DB2 database as well as the development of Internet applications to create connectivity.
- Transfer Agents System & Broker Commissions Systems -
SES Systems engineers were tasked with converting an old DOS, VSE, CICS, Assembler/VSAM system to and enhanced version rewritten into MVS, CICS, and COBOL/DB2.
The system processed trades for mutual funds and offered money market sweep functionality.
The team was seeded with several key client managers to assure knowledge transfer and communicate business knowledge.
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Fortune 100 Financial Institution Outsource’s Legacy Systems to SES !
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This Fortune 100 Financial Institution requested a proposal from SES to maintain and enhance their existing legacy systems in order to re-direct their existing employees to work on other mission critical projects.
SES responded with a recommendation that SES set up a remote project center in the Denver area where IT professionals were abundant and less expensive than their home city.
SES provided the facility and all the necessary equipment and connectivity for the project center and staff.
The project center was fully established and staffed with 50 people within 90 days of acceptance and SES consultants were striving for their first deliverable.
The project center was later expanded to over 100 SES consultants and seeded with several key managers of the clients IT organization to assure knowledge transfer.
The staff was dedicated to managing and delivering the Client’s bank projects on time and under budget.
The SES staff included a site manager, several project managers, 2 systems administrators, an administrative support team and 5 distinct teams all working on the following projects:
- Modification and Enhancements for International Business -
SES consultants were responsible for modifying and developing the following systems; Credit Card Authorization, Billing Statements, Accounts Receivable, and Customer Service for Portugal, Italy, and Columbia.
The entire effort was successfully completed in 22 months.
Each system was primarily written in Assembler.
- Interchange Tracking System (ITS) -
SES consultants were responsible for modifying the system based on semi-annual regulatory releases from associations (MasterCard & VISA) and for making system enhancements to improve tracking capabilities.
SES worked in collaboration with this financial institution on this effort for 18 months.
- Credit Protector -
SES consultants were responsible for making enhancements to the Domestic Accounts Receivable system for a new credit insurance product, called Credit Protector.
This project required eight individuals working for four months to complete a major rewrite of the A/R system and specific credit insurance processing functions.
- SES also Managed Several Small Projects over a 2 year period, such as, the removal of accounts from the bank’s system and documenting the account’s new owner for future reference.
The re-coding of millions of accounts to reflect a new price code that indicates monthly versus daily compounding.
The construction, testing, and implementation of a marketing tool to capture data for statistical analysis of population segmentation and marketing focus.
All delivered successfully!
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Death March Converted to a Day in the Park… for National Credit Card Processing Company
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SES' Collaborative InSourcing approach has been very successful with this domestically based credit card processing company.
Our Client and SES have successfully partnered on numerous projects over the past several years and SES has helped this organization develop solutions for every business challenge along the way.
For example, our Client was faced with a difficult business challenge, a project that was estimated at nearly 40,000 man-hours beyond the required deadline.
In order to finish the project, a number of people (50) would need to be added to the project for nearly six months with excessive overtime.
SES worked with them to establish a bonus program as incentive for these individuals to work extra hours towards meeting the deadlines for deliverables, assured all team members from SES were committed and worked collaboratively with our Client and another key vendor to assure a successful delivery.
The project was a success with all tasks completed on time.
This newly developed system won IBM’s highest design commendation for a DB2 application and our Client’s IT executive was awarded this commendation at IBM’s national convention that year.
Other IT projects where SES has worked collaboratively with this Client, by providing management and IT expertise, are as follows:
- Retail Money Order Support -
SES has been assisting this credit card processing company with the maintenance and enhancement of their Retail Money Order (RMO) system, which is the backend of their payment services product.
The largest single effort that SES performed for them on the RMO system was the Y2K conversion.
SES conducted an enterprise-level assessment of the effort, determined its impact and issues, and developed a solution for ensuring Y2K compliance.
The Y2K conversion project was successful due to the creation of tools by SES for this organization that automated the process of changing code.
These tools were instrumental in speeding up the process and lowering the possibility of manual errors.
The technical environment for this system involves COBOL II, DB2, and CICS.
- Cash Tax Conversion and Maintenance Outsource -
Our Client outsourced the conversion and maintenance of their Cash Tax system to SES.
SES quickly took on the responsibility for multiple projects within the Cash Tax system and continues to support this system today.
SES provides a project manager and 25 consultants to work on the following projects:
- Convert States Tax Systems -
SES consultants worked on the analysis, design, and coding of COBOL programs in the conversion of the tax system.
- TTax to TTax Plus conversion -
SES converted the tax system for 180 banks from a client/server platform to an IBM mainframe including the analysis, design, and coding of COBOL/DB2 programs.
Also, the Audio Response Unit system was incorporated with a PC-based path to make tax payments.
- Cash Consolidation System -
SES converted 45 major corporations and banks from a non-Y2K compliant system to a new, compliant system.
This effort consisted of the analysis, design, coding, and testing of COBOL programs on the mainframe and PC-based systems.
- Maintenance of Cash Tax System -
SES applied fixes to COBOL/DB2 programs according to problem tickets and enhancement requests.
- Project Office - DR/BCP -
For the last 4 years SES has been providing consultants to work in the project office for this company’s credit card processing Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Planning (DR/BCP) initiative.
Through this project office SES is providing expertise in the areas of project planning, configuration management, and technical guidance.
The project office team regularly presents project status and strategic recommendations to this Client’s executive management.
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SES takes Visa Around the World
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SES has been providing consulting services to this credit card processing company for the past several years and have had as many as 20 consultants at one time working on the following projects:
- SES consultants have worked on the credit card processing system that the Client sold internationally to large banks to handle credit card processing for Visa/MC overseas.
The system was written in COBOL with VSAM and some DB2 for the database.
SES was involved in every phase of the project’s life cycle from design to on-site implementation in different countries around the world.
We successfully established an Resource Development Program for our Client to develop their personnel’s knowledge in order to generate a smooth transition in the operation of this system.
- SES consultants have also played a major role in the development of a front-end system for this Client, which was written in TCL on UNIX platforms.
This system was basically a screen scraper that takes data from the phone / data entry people and enters it into the credit scoring system for a credit card.
It could also be used for a number of different business models (i.e., utilities, telecomm, healthcare, etc.) where data has to be entered tracked and or scored.
Again, SES also successfully established an RDP for our Client to develop personnel to work on this system.
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