All this does not just provide time benefits, but also ensures better controllability of processes.
Agility is the key to success for Business Process Outsourcing service provider Quion in Rotterdam. The more flexible the business processes at Quion, the better the company is able to be of service to its customers. To increase the internal flexibility further, Quion enlisted Inter Access for replacing the entire infrastructure and for developing new applications based on a Service Oriented Architecture. “We can do considerably more now,” says Henk Verkolf, unit manager ICT at Quion.
People who have a mortgage regularly receive overviews from their mortgage providers. There is a big chance that these overviews were drawn up and sent by Quion in Rotterdam. With approximately 250 employees, Quion carries out back-office and mid-office activities for various mortgage providers. The company has been active since 1993 and has operated completely independently on the market since 2002 under the name of Quion. By leaving aspects such as guidance of mortgage processes, development and labelling of new products, financing, distribution and securitisation to Quion, mortgage providers can fully focus on sales and marketing.
“In doing so, we always look for the optimal balance between customer intimacy and operational excellence,” says Henk Verkolf. “Up till now we have tried to achieve this by optimising processes. Due to the state of technology, there were limits to this. However, with the latest technologies you can divide processes into steps better and in more detail and improve them or offer them modularly that way. That is why, at Quion, we made the strategic choice to migrate to a new Service Oriented Architecture that makes us more flexible. In the past, IT could sometimes be a blockade for responding quickly. We wanted to lift that blockade.”
Quion chose to start with the necessary replacement of the existing IT infrastructure. To do this, the company invited several IT service providers, including Inter Access, to make a proposal. “We had made the explicit choice to completely base the new infrastructure on technology of companies that are denoted as market leaders by the research organisation Gartner,” states Verkolf. “That way, you are ensured of good products and the right support in the long term as well. Practically speaking, for us this meant a choice for the pSeries of IBM on AIX and Oracle technology, including the database, Oracle Application Server and Oracle BPEL Manager.”
Out of the proposals Quion received after the RFI process, Inter Access’ proposal was the best match with the needs and demands Quion had. Inter Access started with the migration of the existing Sun Solaris/Sybase environment to the new IBM/Oracle platform. This happened in one go. Verkolf: “You run the risk that both environments slowly but surely grow apart. This is something we definitely wanted to avoid.” Verkolf points out that the new environment is built up as one large Enterprise Service Bus, a core infrastructure for a service oriented architecture. “Now it is possible to select sections, make changes and reintegrate the section as a service.” This has been done in the meantime for the Bouwdepot (Building depot) module, which was developed by Inter Access using J2EE and has been taken into production by now. In the following stages of the project, the modules for passing deeds at the solicitor’s and for processing interest reviews will follow. These processes are also ‘lifted’ from the ESB, developed and placed back again. “As far as this is concerned, we worked incrementally,” says Verkolf. “That is to say, we fully close a carefully described stage per quarter and then enter the next stage. This approach provides many benefits. We do not only achieve concrete results regularly, for example, but we also remain flexible. Furthermore, you simply avoid development projects to drag on or become difficult to control. Now, there is clarity at both ends. As a customer you expect a working solution at the end of a stage and as a supplier you can focus on that completely during the quarter.”
Verkolf considers the increased processing speed and the extra flexibility as important benefits of the new SOA infrastructure. “Because we now use the latest technology all processes run faster. In addition, we benefit a great deal from the possibilities to incorporate processes into workflows, so they can be automated more than before. By now, numerous documents are scanned and can then be processed without further manual actions. The chosen modular approach and the use of process management thereby offer optimal possibilities to include all sorts of steps, for example for verification. The system recognises exceptions and then ensures that an employee checks a document and takes action if necessary. All this does not just provide time benefits, but also ensures better controllability of processes. We also possess better management information, which is generated automatically.”
Verkolf is positive about the cooperation with Inter Access. “Inter Access possesses a lot of specialist knowledge, also in the field of SOA, and turned out to be able to provide a compact organisation such as ours with good services. There has always been a focus on results in order to get things done. All in all, this entire project is characterised by a good balance between ourselves and Inter Access.”