About Finnova:
For more than 30 years, Switzerland based banking solution provider, Finnova, (previously FIS, Finis) has developed customized software solutions. The integrated modular banking solution Finnova currently provides improve and heighten efficiency in processing.  Using state of the art technologies and in depth knowledge of financial services, Finnova sets the standard in the Swiss banking industry.  Finnova’s solutions include applications that revolutionize customer services and banking transactions, while complying with and supporting current regulations and bank-proprietary processes.

Elixir Collaboration:
In the early 90s, Finnova commissioned an application solution that could tie directly into their data to produce personalized documents.
The requirement of an interface to their data would allow them to provide templates and personalized documents to streamline their processes.  They not only required the engineering to interface with their data, knowledge of the financial sector was essential. 

Enter:  Elixir’s Opus Document Designer:
The integration of Elixir’s solution into their process granted not only the flexibility to customize their documents through design and template usage, Elixir also provided a potent solution that would provide the platform for standardization. Complex designs were endowed as templates to provide to new banks, managing branding through simple look ups and dynamic processing. To alleviate transitional distress for new banks, Finnova provides customizable designs and templates, centrally managing layouts and design effort to further streamline the process.  They provide sophisticated banking applications for customer and banking services to include documents, balance sheets, and a variety of communications using business rules to define promotional messages (they were ‘transpromo’ before transpromo was cool.)


Opus allows Finnova to provide their documents in a wide variety of languages including: German, French, Italian, Roman and English.
Leveraging the potency and diversity of the Opus document system, Finnova has maneuvered the “on-boarding” of new banks to a science. The ability to easily navigate data, employ business rules and logic, Elixir’s solution has allowed Finnova to leverage the ease of design and reuse to streamline the design process to build efficiencies into their system, reducing errors, development time, and start up schedules.  Using the Opus Document system, Finnova is able to provide new banking customers with data integration and consistency in customer collaterals. Finnova started their modular banking solutions with three banks in 2003; they currently support more than 80 banks, including recent expansion into Germany.

An Elixir customer (using Opus for document composition and production)and a Xerox Czech Republic customer since 2001, Citibank a.s. realized it needed faster processing and quicker delivery of the 350,000 pages of corporate statements that it needed to print every month. This service had been outsourced to Xerox Global Services. The natural source for innovative solutions was with its existing outsource partner – Xerox Czech Republic.

Solution:
Using the services it was already providing as a base, Xerox Czech Republic devised a custom archiving and e-mail delivery solution for Citibank that offered Citibank a.s. significant cost savings.

All services are now performed on-site using a single DocuPrint 92c with highlight color, a Kern enveloper and Opus plus Blue Ocean DMS software from Elixir Technologies, based on Windows. Citibank a.s. corporate statements now cost 30% less to process than they did using the previous process, and the statements are delivered more quickly than before. Corporate statements are now archived electronically, and can thus be quickly and easily searched and located. Statements can also be e-mailed to customers. The new process uses an Open Source architecture that leverages and is compatible with new business requirements and trends. This solution also makes all cost allocations fully transparent. Finally, the new system was implemented overnight. This nearly instantaneous transition was critical to the bank, which could not afford any interruption of service to its demanding corporate
customers.

Benefits
Citibank’s customers never
felt the transition to the new orporate statement
processing system. It
happened overnight!

Statements
formatted and distributed to
print, email, and archive all
from one Elixir Opus design
file.

Situation:
The design and proof process for the bank ’ s statements was code-intensive requiring considerable programming resources making to make any changes to the document often taking days or weeks. The bank statement utilized a variety of AFP resources including pagedefs and formdefs which required PPFA coding, and overlays which called for a developer with expertise in OGL. During the design process repeat tests were conducted to ensure the code was free of errors and to validate the data merge process.

Goal:
The bank wanted to reduce the time required to prepare a document for print with a focus on the costs associated with the programming group.

Solution:
DesignPro Tools offered the bank the opportunity to move their document design process away from the development group and allowed them to utilize non-programmers for the same tasks. Now all AFP resources are created and edited within a single software application.

IBM ’ s ACIF utility is used to preview the document for proofing. This method displays the document exactly as it will print with 100% fidelity. The entire document proofing process can be done onscreen or to a local print device eliminating the need to upload resources to the mainframe each time a proof is needed. This proofing method has added value in that the file can be converted to PDF and emailed to others during the approval process.

It has empowered the bank to leverage their valuable programming resources to other projects and streamlined the design and proofing process by keeping the process within the group that is dedicated to document design and production.

Benefits

Time for document modifications reduced from hours to minutes

The bank ’s mainframe is not needed for the proofing process

Valuable programming group can be utilized elsewhere in the organization which reduced operational costs

Situation:
Situation: When a major financial company went public, business grew tremendously. The need to handle the increase in billings, statement production, and correspondence became a critical issue. COBOL programming of document applications was too cumbersome, time-consuming, and expensive.

Goal:
The company needed a solution that made it easy to develop and print one-to-one documents. The system needed to be extremely scalable to handle projected growth.

Synopsis:
The volume of letters created and processed has increased threefold in the past year alone. The company was able to move from hundreds of letters to Opus designs using multiple conditions in complex logic to consolidate the versions. This reduces the overall costs for maintenance and represents a huge savings in processing time.

Benefits

Letter production increases three- fold in one year and the Opus production solution keeping step with increased volumes

COBOL programming not required any longer, all documents are created and edited the Opus graphical interface without coding

Consolidation of many documents into single versions by applying business rules in Opus to determine which forms can be brought together

Situation :
Political changes opened the door to economic globalization. To handle the resulting rapid growth, this large bank required new infrastructure to handle high volumes of customer communications.

Goal:
To implement a scalable printing solution that could not only design documents quickly, but also operate in tandem with their Oracle database and various high speed printers.

Synopsis :
The financial institution has successfully handled the tremendous growth brought about by economic globalization. Opus document system is an essential part of the new infrastructure that allows them to keep pace with the rapidly increasing volume of customer communications.

Benefits

Bank is able to handle the higher volumes that new customers represent

Bank utilizes all available printers

Situation:
An aggressive merger schedule meant this bank needed a streamlined method to market to customers of the newly acquired banks and bring those systems under the bank ’ s umbrella.

Goal:
Reduce 6-month lead time. Eliminate reliance on IT. Find alternative to paper. Reduce costs related to future acquisitions

Synopsis:
Development time down from 6 months to 2 weeks. Programmer-level expertise not required due to graphical UI. PDF delivered for archive and proofing simultaneously. Bank data now integrated with newly acquired customer data.

Benefits

Reduced acquisition
for additional mergers