Italy's Credito Emiliano licenses Global 360 BPM technology

"Such an ambitious project was not prompted by our IT Department alone, but came about after long exchanges with the entire management of Credem. Trained to use workflow tools since the early 1990s, many managers began expressing the need, albeit in a de-structured way, for a solution that would allow them not only better control over processes, but also to meet the needs of different lines of business in an integrated way. Therefore, we tried to understand how we could successfully adopt BPM technology in our organisation," said Ivano Filippi, IT Department Manager in charge of a development area at Credem.

As a result of internal debate, the decision was made to start the project on the management of mortgage sales, as this is the most representative business in terms of volumes and marketing impact. Selling mortgages actually implies a very lengthy and complex process, which requires extensive documentation and involves many users – as many as one thousand, at both the headquarter and branch levels.

"The strategy we had in mind immediately made the deployment of a common architecture to be used for all the bank's processes our main option. This is the true nature of the investment we are making," explained Filippi.

"Global 360 was chosen from a short-list of nine BPM providers, six of which included in Gartner's BPM Magic Quadrant, adopting a method that assured us the most neutral and impartial evaluation. This was no easy task: we ranked approximately 60 different items, addressing four main issues: the company, the product in terms of its references, installations and diffusion, the product's technical features, and its functional aspects," said Emillo Catellani, Project Manager at Credem.

"Obviously, the aspects related to functionality were the most important and this is where we found almost total correspondence between our needs and expectations, and the features offered by the Global 360 solution. Our choice was based on important factors such as: the document management feature included in the suite; ease of use, based on application-oriented rather than system-oriented technology; the availability of process-monitoring tools and predictive tools on process completion times," said Catellani.

Added Filippi, "We are currently implementing this solution in the mortgages business area, supported by the Global 360 certified partner Make It. To this end, we have considered the specific needs both our sales and back office colleagues. Also, we will shortly be ready to start up the application for the management of credit/debit cards."

"From a technological point of view. This product provides food for thought, as we believe IT system architectures will be very strongly influenced by these tools in the coming years, and they will have to be introduced and integrated in corporate systems in a rational, non-invasive way," remarked Catellani.

"From an organizational point of view,we are expecting efficiency gains, as well-monitored and protected process automation will allow us to eliminate unnecessary and repetitive operations which are costly in terms of time, mistakes, and so forth. In other words, from a business point of view, we will improve competitiveness, assuring our customers a better service," added Filippi.

"We are very pleased to cooperate with Credem, one of the most active and dynamic banking groups in Italy, and we are confident that by that leveraging our BPM solution properly, Credem will achieve excellent results in managing its own business processes.

These results will also allow the bank to optimise the quality of its customer service, improve working conditions for its employees, and improve its standing in the increasingly competitive financial services market," concluded Riccardo Demaria, Regional Director of Global 360 for Southern Europe.