Applications in hundreds of Bank OCBC NISP’s branch offices all over Indonesia can be managed in a matter of minutes

In the past couple of weeks, Filipus H. Suwarno and his team are finally able to get a good night’s sleep, as many of their IT issues are resolved. Together with his team, Filipus, the head of Information Technology Division at Bank OCBC NISP, is responsible for managing a secure, fast and reliable information system powerful enough to collect and process large volumes of data. It is not an easy task, especially as the bank, which was formerly known as Bank NISP, now has 352 branch offices scattered across the archipelago.

In the past, branch offices had to wait for the completion of parameter copying processes at the bank’s head office in Bandung, before they can get up and running with the day’s business operations. As every process had to be initiated with proper access and application authorization, it was always impossible to deliver services to their customers on time.

”We were frequently delayed in serving our customers because the available bandwidth was insufficient to enable us to quickly download large amounts of data,” said Anthonius Satryo Wibowo, Head of Research and Planning, Bank OCBC NISP. A lot of times, the bank had problems downloading such huge numbers of parameters that the head office had to distribute to the branch offices. Initially, the data size was 5 MB, but it continued to rise until it reached 25 MB and even 27 MB. It could take one to two hours just to download the data ― that was, if they were lucky enough not to experience any time-out errors.

The other challenge they faced was managing and controlling the applications and databases at the branches. The problem culminated when Jakarta was hit by a flood in February 2008. One of the branches was completely crippled because its servers were “flooded” too. “Our vendor almost threw in the towel as it tried to fix it,” said Filipus.

To solve the problems, Bank OCBC NISP decided to find an easy-to-use and integrated system that would help it manage the local applications and centralize them at the head office.

PT Mitra Integrasi Informatika (MII), a subsidiary of PT Metrodata Electronics, Tbk., came to their rescue. It introduced Citrix XenApp to Filipus and his team. Citrix is a virtualization tool at the strategic access level that effectively meets the requirements of a company with a large number of branches in widely dispersed locations.

Today, an increasing number of businesses require a solution that will support their existing systems, easy to implement and accelerate business processes. With the Citrix solution, the applications at the branches can reside at the head office where they can be managed centrally. It eliminates the complex updating and versioning of user applications at each of the branches. The solution works very well with a bandwidth of 128 kbps for a branch office with around 10 workstations. This translates into substantial cost-savings in communication costs between the branches and the head office. Productivity, control and availability are significantly improved while operating costs are reduced.

Following this model, Bank OCBC NISP relocated all their database and application servers from the branches to the head office. It allows the IT team to manage the applications and databases from a single point. As a result, the services to the customers can now be provided on schedule and the branches can start operating on time.

Within just six months after implementation, Bank OCBC NISP saw multiple benefits. With the Citrix solution, they no longer had to worry about the impact of natural disasters such as the flood experience, as the branches no longer need to have their own servers, there is no need to download the parameters from the head office and the users are not limited to their local applications anymore, as they can now work and access their applications at any branch, allowing them to be more mobile. The solution has solved around 80% of their problems.

Now, at exactly 8.00am each day, all the branch offices can open their doors and start serving their customers punctually. In addition, efficiency is also felt every time the bank opens a new branch, as they no longer have to install the applications at the new premise. All the applications can simply be published out of the head office. ”Today, it will take us only two days to get a new branch ready for operation. Formerly, we would require at least seven days to install all the applications, one at a time,” said Roy.

Another key benefit they experienced is prominent each time the bank has to upgrade its systems or applications because today, it only has to do it once on the servers at the head office. Within just a couple of minutes, all the branch offices that are using the same applications will have the latest updates. In the past, the upgrade had to be done on each and every computer. Imagine how un-productive it will be if this process has to be repeated for 4,000 computers, and make things more complicated, the process has to be repeated to one or two servers at each branch.

Citrix also helped shorten the response time for transactions that require approvals. Before, a branch manager, who might have to supervise 3 to 5 service points, had to be in his base office to perform such approval requests. Today, he can do it at the nearest branch offices. The same is true with their marketing teams, who are highly mobile employees―they no longer have to return to the office where they are based, to enter data of prospect customers.

As far as Filipus is concerned, the Citrix deployment is highly strategic and it has helped his team manage the bank’s daily operations both from the IT and the user’s perspective. ”Now everything is running faster and management is a lot easier. The support from MII has also been excellent. We were also very impressed that the Citrix team made an effort to us when we encountered some issues with the implementation, we truly appreciate that” he said.

Bank OCBC NISP, the recipient of the Banking Service Excellence Award 2008, is the first bank to use Citrix for its core banking applications. It has become the benchmark for other banks in Indonesia. “For us, providing full support to the branches and the users with high availability is crucial, as it ensures the readiness of our system every time a user has to use it in serving our customers,” said Filipus.

For more informtion, please call:

PT. Metrodata Electronics, Tbk.

Wisma Metropolitan I, 16th Floor

Jl. Jend. Sudirman Kav. 29-31

Jakarta 12920

Telephone: (62-21) 252 4555, 570 5998

Facsimile: (62-21) 570 5998

E-mail: info.metrodata@metrodata.co.id