Westpac powers through transformation
The top brass at Westpac have today announced that they are making headway with the company's multibillion-dollar transformation program, adding hundreds of staff to the technology ranks in the 2010-11 financial year and crossing six projects off its Strategic Investment Priorities (SIPs) to-do list.
(Credit: Suzanne Tindal/ZDNet Australia)
At the announcement of the bank's $6.3 billion full-year profit, it revealed that so far, it has completed six of its 14 technology projects at a cost of $1.1 billion. The bank has budgeted a total of $2 billion for the 14 projects through to 2014.
Westpac said in its annual report that it had begun a pilot roll-out of its platform for customer-facing staff, Spider@Westpac, in New South Wales and Tasmania, with a plan for a full Westpac branch deployment in mid 2012. The bank also said that it has rolled out a beefed-up service application to its call centres, as well as a new collections case-handling platform to speed up the resolution of arrears.
Westpac Group customers are now on a single credit cards platform after the decommissioning of the St George legacy cards platform and the revamping, integrating and upgrading of the group's various trade platforms, BPAY capabilities and ATM and EFTPOS terminals.
Westpac has also made headway on its datacentre modernisation program, with the build of its Western Sydney facility complete. Migration is set to get underway in early 2012.
Projects still to be delivered include Westpac's new online and mobile banking platform, coming in financial year 2012, a new CRM suite that will take advantage of the bank's recently completed customer master file and its broad deployment of BankSmart — the bank's new call centre and teller software.
The bank also revealed that it has added hundreds of staff to work on its technology undertakings. According to Westpac's annual report, 736 staff joined the bank's technology unit due to "project demand predominately related to the SIPs program and the direct employment of IT support staff previously supplied by an external vendor".
Westpac's chief information officer Bob McKinnon has spoken previously about maintaining a close relationship with his vendors in order to keep the bank's multibillion-dollar IT investment on track.