Investitionsbank Schleswig-Holstein opts for ITP
Without documents everything at Investitionsbank Schleswig-Holstein would come to a standstill
Whether it concerns contracts, sharing of information, applications or letters of commitment regarding developments, without written correspondence and documentation in "black and white", business at Investitionsbank of Schleswig-Holstein (IB) would be almost impossible. The institution is the central development bank in the state of Schleswig-Holstein and provides support for public and private investment projects. The bank is primarily a provider of loan services at very competitive rates and also offers tailored and professional advice in the areas of finance and development.
With some 400 staff IB looks after approximately 60 different development programmes and products. Alongside the head office in the state capital of Kiel there are also 13 regional offices throughout Schleswig-Holstein ready to help clients. Besides this IB has recently been getting involved increasingly with regional EU activities which are becoming more and more important. To this end the bank offers a wide range of advisory and financial services in its role as an important financial institution in the EU area of the Baltic Sea region.
On average about 1,500 separate documents are created daily by its staff. On the busiest days this can easily reach 3,000 items per day. This large volume alone means that the creation of correspondence and documentation is of critical importance for Investitionsbank, in terms of IT, for the satisfactory performance of business.
Up until spring 2005 an IBM OfficeVision application was used for these processes. Initially the introduction progressed by way of two AS/400 systems for the production and development of documentation: this was put in to operation using process-driven electronic workflow. Investitionsbank was forced to bring its IT infrastructure up to date since IBM had stopped further development of OfficeVision some time ago and the application was no longer supported by them. A suitable alternative had to be found which had at least the same functionality and which would be supported in the future AS/400 operating system environment.
The essential basic requirements were that it must remain possible to process a large amount of documentation without problem and that a high degree of automation had to be available to cope with of an increase in production volumes. The existing document templates and information in OfficeVision format had to be transferable on a 1:1 basis to ensure that the new solution could be used immediately and in full. Above all there had to be a graphical user interface (GUI) which would make the changeover and subsequent use of the new system as straightforward and easy as possible for staff.
In the search for a suitable solution IB conducted market research whereby several products from different manufacturers were considered. After an extensive survey it was clear that ITP ("Intelligent Text Processing") from Aia Software was functionally the most capable of satisfying the pre-defined requirements. "Ultimately their years of experience was a decisive factor for us. Aia Software was able to demonstrate this clearly with respect to OfficeVision", says Lutz Suhr, who is head of IT at Investitionsbank and responsible for the documentation creation changeover project. "We couldn't afford and didn't want to become a 'test case' in this very critical area of our business."
During implementation of the solution Investitionsbank Schleswig-Holstein was supported on site by Aia Software consultants. The most time and effort was put in to the migration of extremely complex combined documentation in OfficeVision format. After the initial consolidation phase there were still well in excess of 1,000 templates to transfer. "Because of the multitude of different and sometimes rather cumbersome document templates the migration process ended up requiring a huge effort; it needed time and couldn't be accomplished just like that", says Suhr. "But we are extremely pleased with the result now the changeover is complete."
Following the successful changeover, in terms of software two ITP servers (for production and development) running Windows 2003 Server are being used. Alongside this there are five dedicated ITP workstations where the relevant templates can be managed. As before document processing begins on the AS/400 system, immediately after which the ITP application is started. Investitionsbank staff work with the new system using around 400 Windows XP client terminals and utilise Word as a familiar interface for word-processing, as it is suitable for this purpose. ITP automatically combines the required information from the IB database (for example, product information, client details, address information, etc.) with more than 1,000 pre-defined text modules so that personalised documents can be created within a matter of seconds. In special cases, after the combination process is complete, the user can still amend the document. For this purpose the document is automatically opened up in MS Word and where it can be completed as desired. The majority of documentation, however, is generated automatically without the worker having to worry about the layout, legal requirements or unambiguous design and company logos. Subsequently, for documentation management and legal reasons, each document which is printed is automatically sent via an interface for storage centrally in an electronic archive system.
"By using ITP we have already achieved our primary objective. We've implemented a replacement for OfficeVision which enables us to switch to an up to date operating system and we can continue to generate our routine correspondence automatically", confirms Suhr, head of IT. "At the same time we've created another big benefit by adapting word-processing to suit the AS/400 and the PC environment. Our staff particularly appreciate the fact that the relevant document appears directly in Word."
Appendix
Problem statement:
- To phase out OfficeVision as the documentation system
Requirements:
- System must be able to handle a large amount of documentation
- Automation of document generation
- Simple to use/ graphical user interface (GUI)
Implemented solution:
- ITP (Intelligent Text Processing) from Aia Software
Benefits:
- Automatic combination of information
- Evident increase in speed of document creation
- Support of current operating system for AS/400
- Staff are able to use Word as a familiar word processor
- Ability of the application to handle future increases in workload