​Teachers Mutual Bank completes customer service overhaul with Dell Boomi

Teachers Mutual Bank (TMB) has executed the final piece of its digital strategy focused on overhauling its customer service capabilities, implementing an integrated platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) solution from IT services provider Dell Boomi.

Recognising the need to provide an omni-channel, mobile-first experience for its customers, the bank developed a digital road map in 2013. Since commencement, the project has included initiatives such as connectivity to operate third-party management campaigns, the integration of enterprise data warehouse inbound data feeds from cloud-based sources, and SMS integration with webforms.

In implementing the Boomi iPaaS solution, TMB has created an enterprise-wide data environment that links its customer management system and services layer with its internal processes, TMB explained, which has boosted the bank's competitiveness against the big four by allowing it to easily capitalise on new technologies, including those emerging from fintech players.

The bank has already engaged with Spriggy, a mobile app which offers a digital wallet for parents and a Visa prepaid card for kids, and TMB is considering personal financial management applications that will deliver additional secure, customer service capabilities to its members.

"When we kicked off our long-term digital project, it was clear that mobile platforms were going to be the prominent platform of choice for our members' interactions with the bank," TMB CIO David Chapman said. "In particular, we correctly anticipated that the integration [of] best-of-breed apps from third-party developers would provide the best platform to deliver omni-channel experiences on customers' terms."

According to Chapman, once the AU$6 billion financial institution modernised its environment through the introduction of "best-of-breed" apps, it needed the critical component to tie all the data together on an ongoing basis, and, as a result, turned to Boomi.

TMB is now embarking on larger programs of work that are built into a three-year road map for development. In total, TMB expects project costs of the seven initiatives to be approximately AU$860,000, with a calculated ROI over three years of AU$3.48 million.

Speaking with ZDNet in December, Chapman explained that his bank had launched a shared digital services offering that allows customer-owned banks in Australia to enter vendor contracts as a group.

"It's not rocket science -- it really comes down to economies of scale," he said at the time. "Individually, we are relatively small companies to the big four banks."

According to Chapman, the use of shared services could potentially create a multibillion-dollar consortium that can tender as a whole and allow each participant to enjoy significant reductions in operational costs. By partnering, such arrangements could also see the sharing of digital services and third-party information access among one another.

He expects embracing shared digital and data services to revolutionise the way mutual banks do business, and add a critical competitive edge for the mutual sector as a whole.

Touching on the Boomi relationship previously, Chapman said his organisation had developed a technology that pulls data out of an Ultrax back-end banking system -- which the vast majority of mutuals use -- and produces a standard SQL warehouse, with an extensible data model built in.

"We've also developed some really nice technology based on the Dell Boomi product that allows us to connect that to more internal data sources or external data sources and deliver it to whatever application requires it -- classic example these days being the fintechs that are all coming along and saying: 'We want to plug in to your organisation, how do we do it?' We've got the answer to that and we intend to share that out as a service," Chapman said.