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Case study | Last updated: 09 Sep 2003 |
The 50 billion checks written each year must be handled several times, by both the check issuing and receiving banks. As a result, check processing costs are high, and delays in check retrieval along the processing chain are common. Viewpointe Archive Services allows banks and their customers to process and retrieve check images more quickly. |
Business need Viewpointe Archive Services wanted to offer banks a way to automate processing by transferring check and other images digitally. |
Key challenges Banks are hesitant to outsource services without high levels of protection. The solution had to handle petabytes -- thousands of terabytes -- of storage, with fast-growing demand anticipated in the near future. Both Viewpointe and potential bank customers were reluctant to make substantial up-front investments in storage technologies. |
Solution IBM On Demand Business IBM developed an innovative e-business on demand storage solution that enables Viewpointe to offer its customers security-rich, usage-based digital archiving and retrieval. Banks send digital images of checks (and other documents) to Viewpointe's archive facilities located in two IBM e-business Hosting Centres. To support redundancy, data is mirrored between the two sites. Checks are processed only once, and the image shared by both the receiving and issuing banks while bank tellers and customers as well can rapidly access check images via the web and other technologies. |
Results The flexible e-business on demand framework lets Viewpointe use only the storage it needs. To handle skyrocketing requirements, Viewpointe can quickly and easily expand archive capacity without large, up-front costs in storage hardware, software, integration and expertise. Usage-based pricing, backed by IBM's substantial storage capability, reduced risks and initial costs for banks, allowing Viewpointe to attract bank customers quickly. "Instead of paying hundreds of millions of dollars to get into imaging," says John Lettko, CEO of Viewpointe, "banks only pay us for the length of time an image is stored on tape or disk." |
Benefits Check processing costs are reduced by as much as one-third, and banks save money as well by outsourcing expensive storage and retrieval. Customers of member banks can view check images almost immediately from PCs and web-enabled ATMs, instead of waiting five to ten days for check copies. Fraud prevention is enhanced. Bank tellers can quickly compare signatures or see if a check number has already been used. |
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