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Organisation and IT
Following the bundling of all tasks related to the operating
model, responsibilities in the Organisation and IT division
remained largely unchanged in 2005. These responsibilities
range from the organisation of the entire settlement and production
apparatus, prioritisation and assignment of organisational
and IT projects within BA-CA AG and its CEE subsidiaries to
ongoing support of business initiatives in the retail banking
sector. The range of activities includes the negotiation and
monitoring of Service Level Agreements (contracts specifying
the parameters and quality standards of services) as well as the
ongoing standardisation and improvement of processes (i.e.
industrialised processes) and technical and organisational
infrastructure. Security is always given top priority throughout
the Group. Analysing procurement markets, selecting suppliers
and implementing procurement policies by drafting contracts
and monitoring activities are among the division’s strategic
tasks.
Implementation of the successful model for the targeted division
of labour – which concentrates sales activities in special sales
units and bundles settlement operations in specialised units –
continued in 2005. This effort to enhance the transparency of
internal service flows and processes throughout the bank has
started to pay off in the form of higher productivity, improved
quality and specialisation gains.
On the back of numerous mergers in CEE countries, in 2005
the ORG/IT division again experienced a busy year of largescale
projects and integration activities. In Austria efforts
focused on the “Fit for Sales” project in sales, the TELOS backoffice
operations project (automation of back-office activities),
BASEL II and the integration of the different settlement subsidiaries
into a single unit. Major challenges in CEE included
the technical and organisational merger of the new banking
subsidiaries in Serbia and Montenegro, Bulgaria and Romania,
and the continuation of the project of bundling the settlement
of foreign payment transactions for CEE in Prague.
96 Organisation/IT
Strategic objectives and projects
The further entrenchment of the process model was once
again a milestone project in 2005. The end-to-end view of
banking processes across structural and organisational boundaries
and interfaces makes it possible to identify potential for
process and structural improvements more easily and to
enhance efficiency in overall banking processes. To this end,
staff members with process responsibility were designated in
all the divisions of the bank.
Service Level Agreements specify all service flows and thus
help to establish transparent and easily trackable and comparable
quality standards throughout the bank.
We are still working to replace the major blocks of fixed costs
with variable costs wherever possible. To achieve this goal on
a sustainable basis, we are outsourcing non-core activities to
subsidiaries that were established for this purpose and which
will also offer their services on the general market in the medium
term.
Back-office reorganisation
After one year of successful operations BA-CA Administration
Services GmbH (AS) was merged with DATALINE Zahlungsverkehrsabwicklungs
GmbH and DATA AUSTRIA Datenverarbeitungs
GmbH, both wholly-owned subsidiaries of BA-CA,
as of 1 October 2005. The joint use of available infrastructure
and improved balancing of resources will help to further
enhance efficiency and improve customer service. The new
subsidiary, which was conceived with the aim of achieving a
competitive edge in terms of processes and technology, now
offers the full range of settlement services of a universal bank.
The TELOS project focuses on the automation of back-office
activities and should set new standards with regard to the settlement
of financing transactions. TELOS is based on three pillars
– the Workflow Management System (WfMS), the Document
Management System (DMS) and a tool which supports the
automated generation of contracts – and will unlock further
synergies. DMS supports electronic storage and archiving of all
documentation required in lending processes. It thus helps reduce
transport costs and wait times and increases document security.