Project management specialist, Protegic, has completed a major, 18-month business solution initiative for Health Super, in which it selected Bravura Solutions as the vendor for Health Super's new eBusiness solution.

2 March 2010 10:42

One of Australia's top superannuation funds, Health Super Pty Ltd, has just completed one of its largest business technology projects in recent years.

As the industry fund for Australia's health and community services sector, Health Super has assets of more than $8 billion and is ranked among the top 15 per cent of super funds by SuperRatings.

The project saw the replacement of a legacy e-business system with a packaged application from Bravura Solutions, which handles the full transaction lifecycle of superannuation for fund members, employers and its call centre. The application delivers 24/7 web access for more than 220,000 fund members and 3,500 employers that pay super contributions into the fund.

Project management specialist, Protegic, was appointed to manage this 18-month business solution initiative. This included requirements definition, which commenced in July 2008, request for proposal, vendor selection, contract negotiation, planning, mobilisation, full implementation, testing and training.

Health Super chief operations officer, Carol McKelson-Timmins, said the project gave an immediate and important benefit and significant business improvement as the fund looks to its longer term strategy for technology platforms over the next 12 months.

"We needed to improve the web services offered to members and employers and upgrade the integrity of data that enters the organisation from external sources.

"In addition, we have implemented new policies and business rules for the management of members' contributions and employers' payroll submissions and these had to be taken into account in the system," she said.

The new and improved systems now support, streamline and automate the management of all contributions, as well as providing end-to-end member account transacting on the web.

"Protegic delivered the project on time and on budget and with all the features and functions we requested," said Ms McKelson-Timmins. "They worked closely with Bravura who provide our superannuation applications, and it resulted in a very effective project partnership.

"Extensive risk analysis was undertaken by Protegic project managers at the commencement and during the course of the project, ensuring a successful outcome," she said.

Business benefits for Health Super include the replacement of an aging system with Bravura Solutions' ePASS, improved members online facility, improved batch employer contribution processing facility, improved call centre back office support facility and reduced workloads for the administration and IT teams.

"In addition, our internal staff acquired considerable project management expertise and skill having worked with the three Protegic project managers for the duration of the project. And knowing that the project was being managed professionally provided a higher level of confidence in a successful outcome with excellent documentation, training and post implementation review.

"While using professional project managers is a significant investment, it is unlikely that this project would have been delivered on time and on budget without Protegic running it. We appreciate that project management is a specialist skill and as soon as it was implemented, we started reaping the benefits," added Ms McKelson-Timmins.

Jahangiri: Your background includes working as CIO for Business and Government for Telstra, CIO at Ticketek and senior roles with IBM Global Services. What are some of the critical parallels that you can draw from these roles; and how has this helped empower you in your current position?

Pancino: The most common thread of these roles was that successful delivery was always defined by having teams of talented people with clear objectives. Simple to say, hard to create. At Perpetual, we have spent a lot of time putting the right team in place and providing the tools and environment to develop the right delivery processes. This has required us to re-think every element of operating our business:

1. How do we serve our customers best?
2. How we hire, develop, and engage our people?
3. How much we invest in tools and process?

Customer satisfaction, project delivery and operational performance are only outcomes of getting the team right, they don’t happen otherwise.

Jahangiri: Tell us about Perpetual’s key IT initiative, Project Beethoven?

Pancino: Project Beethoven can be best described as a classic legacy system transformation. We took several disparate unit registries with different product sets and services and consolidated them onto a single platform from Bravura Solutions. In addition, we integrated into a new workflow management system, a large reporting datamart and re-built our customer correspondence engine. In the end, we had to migrate 400,000 customers, 500 number of funds and $280 Billion worth of historical financial transactions. That’s just the technology piece, the change program had to pretty much re-engineer every business process our Operations team used. It wasn’t a project for the faint hearted, however it’s enabled us to have:

1. A single view of our customers and their products with us.
2. Better servicing performance via our key channels
3. A technology capability and architecture that will serve us for the foreseeable future
4. Increased productivity and significantly lower IT costs

Jahangiri: Following Perpetual’s successful consolidation of its three disparate unit registry technology applications into a single platform, you were recently quoted as saying: "We are one of the few organisations that can route work to particular people who are skilled to do it." Can you elaborate?

Pancino: Sure. Effectively our customer service and administration staff  are able to perform work based on their skills, rather than the team they belong to. Traditional administration back office teams tend to be siloed by the types of systems they use. How many times have you called a call centre to do something and have to be transferred to another department?

The limitations of this environment include the inability to handle variable capacity, higher turnover and limiting people’s career progression. Our new system can deliver different types of work not only to based on demand, but to those who are qualified to do it.  Staff start at Perpetual performing very simple customer service tasks, as they improve their skills they can quickly be allowed to perform more complex functions across a wider set of products without having to learn a new system. As the system tracks timeliness and quality we can manage with very clear performance objectives.

Jahangiri: What are your technology priorities for the year ahead?

Pancino: Our priority is using the capabilities we have to improve Perpetual’s customer service experience. This is reflected in our current program which includes re-engineering our Private Wealth business and supporting the launch of our new platform offering, Wealthfocus Investment Advantage.

Jahangiri: What do you consider to be the emerging technological trends set to further impact the wealth management sector, particularly within the context of the global climate, in the short- to mid-term?

Pancino: It would be no surprise that in the near term technologies that enable cost reduction are influencing our agenda. Infrastructure simplification has been in focus. At Perpetual , we have implemented a network enterprise storage environment which reduces our costs significantly and makes our risk environment easier to manage. We have further pushed the boundaries of infrastructure by recently purchasing one of our key customer applications from the cloud. By doing this, we have effectively avoided infrastructure costs altogether and have far greater ability to variables our costs as the demands from the business change. I think this will be an ongoing trend in the industry for sometime to come.

While the IT industry has been excited about collaboration technologies for some time, I think it will take more time to affect the wealth management industry given the nature of the customers we deal with. With respect to web integration technologies, there is a massive latent demand to reduce complexity in our industry to gain efficiencies, however it will require adoption of standards that let organisations interoperate before it this gets real momentum, something the industry body, IFSA , is actively working on, but again,  it will take some time to mature.

Jahangiri: From an innovation standpoint, banks are perceived to be lead as early adopters in the broader financial services sector. What are your thoughts on this, and how different is a stereotypical wealth management IT mandate different to that of a banks, if at all?

Pancino: I don’t really think about trying to be an early adopter too much, it’s great to be an early adopter but to what end?  I’m more interested in how we use technologies (new and old) to serve our customers. Banks aren’t the only ones who can innovate and I’d argue that some of the best innovations come from the smallest of organisations. New technology only creates possibilities, it’s great people who deliver on its potential. In terms of mandates, banks and wealth management companies both share the tremendous responsibility of managing our customer’s finances, this drives much of what we do.

Jahangiri: An outstanding leader is only as good as his or her team. What qualities do you look for in an aspiring protégé?

Pancino: All of the normal qualities you would expect regarding leadership, communication skills, and execution abilities.  However perhaps the most differentiating quality is those who have commercial acumen, an understanding of the issues the business faces and the ability to provide effective and realistic solutions.  These are the people who are able to make IT the trusted advisor of any business.

Jahangiri: Every IT leader, particularly at your level, has a legacy they wish to be remembered for. What is yours?

Pancino: I haven’t finished my career yet, I’ll let you know when I’m done.

Equity Trustees  successfully completes the first stage of its systems upgrade in partnership Bravura Solutions, with the introduction the Talisman.

http://www.superreview.com.au/Article/Equity-Trustees-upgrades-platform/217246.aspx