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Company Profile
US Bank
is a diversified financial services company with headquarters in Minneapolis,
Minnesota. US Bank offers a comprehensive range of financial solutions to meet
the needs of individuals, businesses, institutions and government entities.
With assets of $207 billion, it is the 6th largest financial services holding
company in the United States. The company operates 2,411 banking offices and
4,999 ATMs providing a full line of banking, brokerage, insurance, investment,
mortgage, trust and payment services products to consumers, businesses and
institutions. Their premier Five Star Service Guarantee assures customers of
key valuable banking benefits and services or customers will be paid for their
inconvenience. U.S. Bancorp is the parent company of U.S. Bank.
Critical Issue
The
U.S. Bank treasury department had been relying on several Microsoft Access
databases (97 version) and applications to manage accounting, payments,
and reporting for a large portion of their derivative and debt
transactions. These transactions represent billions of dollars in
securities. The MS Access databases and applications had evolved over 10
years time as new transaction types were added, new accounting demands
arose, and regulatory reporting requirements multiplied. The applications
have been in constant flux, and that situation is expected to continue.
The
applications and data required constant maintenance, and the IT support team
was being overwhelmed trying to meet the support needs as well as trying to
implement new features requested by the users. Business logic and processes had
become increasingly complex and intertwined while spread over many objects
(code modules, code behind forms and code behind reports, Access queries,
stored procedures, and user documentation). This evolution created a system
that was difficult to understand, easily broken, and time consuming (i.e.
costly) to troubleshoot and extend. In addition, these critical business
applications did not meet the basic security and audit requirements implemented
by the bank’s regulatory teams.
Alto’s Solution
Alto recommended that the debt and derivatives systems undergo detailed
analysis in preparation for a redesign in a .NET platform against a set of
SQL Server 2000 databases. A planned upgrade to Access 2003 would not
alleviate the support and maintenance problems discussed above. Many of
these problems were exacerbated by using Access as the platform. The
detailed analysis was also necessary to untangle the complex web of
dependencies that made the old systems so fragile and hard to change. Once
the current system was fully understood, a new application could be built
from the ground up to meet the following requirements:
1.
Consolidate
business logic and documentation into discrete processes that can be more
easily changed, added, or removed with a minimal impact on the system as a
whole.
2.
Design these
processes so they have at least a minimal awareness of their own dependencies
(i.e. a process knows it can’t run if it depends on another process that has
not completed successfully).
3.
Create standardized
testing procedures for new processes or for significant changes to existing
processes.
4.
Design the data
store so that daily and month-end transformations are saved and automatically
archived after a certain amount of time.
5.
Design the
development and test environment so changes can be fully tested before
implementation.
6.
Improve data
security.
7.
Increase control
over data integrity so critical data entry errors or omissions are caught at
the database level.
8.
Increase auditing
and logging of user data changes to meet regulatory requirements and as an aide
to troubleshooting and support.
9.
Increase logging of
automated processes to meet regulatory requirements as an aide to
troubleshooting and support.
The redesigned system
centered on a modular task execution engine with a standard interface that made
adding, moving, modifying, and deleting functionality faster and less prone to
side effects.
Development on the new
system has been done with Alto developers in partnership with the US Bank
Treasury IT support team. This means that those tasked with supporting and
extending the new application have an understanding of how and why it’s built
the way it is.
Resulting Benefits
The
redesigned system exceeds the new regulatory requirements being
implemented throughout the bank and is far easier to extend and support.
All data generated and maintained in the new system has a full audit trail
so US Bank Treasury management can sign off their reporting numbers with
greater confidence and peace of mind.
Troubleshooting problems takes far less time and guesswork because of the
extensive logging in the new system and because of the careful
compartmentalization inherent in the new design. New functionality can be
developed and tested without disrupting the existing system. Once accepted,
this functionality is simply plugged into the open architecture of the new
system. New features that have been in the development queue for years can now
be implemented in days or weeks.
Standardized and
professional development practices are now in place. A phased approach had been
taken so all developers involved have gathered a great deal of experience with
the full life cycle of software development, and the IT support team now has
proven processes for continuing to extend the application.
Technologies Used
-
VB.NET (2003 version)
-
QL Reporting Services
- SQL Server 2000
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