First, be wary if consulting organizations point out their experience in
the world of SOA by putting up past projects as proof of their experience.
Most, if not all, of these past projects are really JBOWS (just a bunch
of Web Services) and have no underlying mechanisms to provide agility, which is
a core benefit of SOA.
Add Sticky Note
- Past experience is no indicator of future outcomes? Sounds odd. Is this to say that no past project experience is better? A mind unclutered by practicsal application!
  posted by whertha on 2008-02-01
Second, many consultants are a bit too chummy with vendors. Thus,
you'll find that they implement the same vendors and technology each and every
time
Add Sticky Note
- SOA is an architectural style, not a product suite so what do products have to do wiuth anything? Regardless, a company's purchasing process should be able to overcome personal preference as a bias. if not that process needs repair.
  posted by whertha on 2008-02-01
The most troubling aspect of all these issues is that most organizations won't
understand the impact of leveraging less-than-stellar SOA consultants until it's
too late. Indeed, the full impact of the architecture is years, not months away,
and selecting the wrong technology, or getting the wrong strategic advice, won't
be obvious until it's too late. At least until the checks for the huge fees have
cleared the banks, and the consultants are on to their next project
Add Sticky Note
- For such companies their evolutionary fate is well described by Darwin.
  posted by whertha on 2008-02-01

8Expand

Integrating IT > Development Environments > Masters of Understatement

Tags: soa on 2008-01-21 -All Annotations (0) -About

more fromwww.itworldcanada.com

Improving the customer experience, making it easier to do business, reducing
operating costs
Implemented between December 2004 and January 2006, the Personal Deposit Account
(PDA) Paper Statements project was a make-or-break initiative for a new business
architecture implemented throughout Royal Bank
It was designed to improve the experience that the bank delivers to clients
through the innovative use of technology.
The first test for this new architecture was to improve communications with
RBC’s personal-deposit clients, and particularly to reduce the amount of paper
they receive.
RBC produced and mailed more than 60 million statements to personal-deposit
account customers every year
Customers with more than one account received multiple, separate mailings.
Clients can choose to sign up at www.rbcroyalbank.com to receive electronic
statements
Through an “electronic filing cabinet” capability, clients can store images of
statements and cheques in an electronic archive for up to seven years.

10Expand

Wells Fargo

Tags: soa on 2008-01-18 -All Annotations (0) -About

more from209.85.165.104

Wells Fargo wanted to transform its Private Client Services (PCS) business from

product-centric to relationship-centric to help the bank deepen its relationships with

its most valuable customers
new sales and improved customer satisfaction, and resulting in higher margins and

increased profitability for the Wells Fargo PCS business.
Specific examples of opportunities that could be created by this relationship-centric

approach include:

•

Increasing cross-sell and up-sell rates (“sell to the client’s full balance sheet”) by

exposing clients to the bank’s entire range of solutions in a context-appropriate manner

•

Enhancing customer profiling by bankers to facilitate needs-based selling rather than

product-based selling

•

Collecting customer information once, thereby improving the customer experience by

eliminating frustrating duplicate processes

•

Improving efficiency, which could enable the bank to grow sales without having to

increase headcount at the same pace

•

Building customer confidence by demonstrating a real understanding of their

situations, and by making each meeting or Web visit more relevant and meaningful.
“Our banking systems were extremely complex and

disjointed,” said Baines. “Each system was built with a different technology (e.g.,

COBOL, .NET, J2EE). Applications were isolated, and there was no interface to

connect most of them. In many cases, data was replicated to suit various formats or

applications. This resulted in significant inefficiencies, an inability to provide our staff

with the most productive user experience, and the lack of a comprehensive view into a

customer’s entire portfolio.”
“Before marching down the SOA path, we analyzed the requirements that were

compiled by the business team,” said Baines. “We then created a high level straw-man

strategy in coordination with the business. This defined the major pieces necessary to

achieve the desired end. The next step was to perform a gap analysis against our

current capabilities and applications. At that point, we understood what was needed,

and we developed an infrastructure roadmap to get us there.”
“Equally important is the fact that we can connect users to more data,

faster than ever before. This makes us more agile, and we can bring new capabilities to

market rapidly.”
“Rather than having the value of legacy systems minimized by isolation and a lack of

accessibility, the systems are becoming more valuable because they can be utilized by

more users for more purposes than was previously possible,”
PCS personnel now have consolidated access to a customer’s entire portfolio of

accounts at the bank, including loans and current investment positions. The SOA

facilitates a number of automated business processes that assist relationship managers

in identifying cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, streamline many tasks, and enable

bank employees across lines of business to enter and share important customer

information.
The entire infrastructure was built and launched in less than a year, and currently

supports more than 1.5 million customers. Because it leverages existing assets, the

SOA is allowing the bank to extend the usable life of its older investments by enabling

systems that had been buried in the back office to present data on demand via the

Web to personnel who can use it to make fast, smart decisions.
n addition to the immediate results, Wells Fargo will be able to leverage its SOA-based

infrastructure to accelerate the introduction of new services by reusing proven software

Customer Case Study Wells Fargo

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components.