Achmea - Developers at Dutch Insurance Firm Boost Productivity with New Monitoring System
With 22,000 employees and a turnover of €12 billion in 2005, Achmea is the largest insurance company in the Netherlands. It wanted to increase the responsiveness of its IT department by improving the transparency of development projects. Partnering with Avanade and Microsoft, Achmea successfully implemented Microsoft® 2005 Team System, which provides administrators with access to detailed, accurate information across multiple systems. Projects can now be tracked from beginning to end, making it easier to maximize efficiencies in the development process. And with Visual Studio 2005 Team System, the company’s 200 developers have increased productivity.

Raymond James Financial - Global Financial Services Firm Improves Customer Service with Ease-of-Use Solution
Raymond James Financial is a global financial services firm with more that 4,600 Advisors. Because 80 percent of these Advisors are independent contractors who operate remotely, the company found it chellenging to share business and customer information. Raymond James needed a customer relationship management solutions that could support its remote workforce, integrate easily with existing business systems, and offer compelling capabilities to encourage widespread adoption. The company adopted Microsoft Dynamics™CRM as a global standard, with more than 1,800 current users, and with plans to make the solution available to nearly 5,000 people across its branch offices.

ROI Case Study Microsoft Visual Studio Team System and KBC Bank
KBC Bank used Microsoft Visual Studios Team System and Team Foundation Server to improve application-building methodologies, increase productivity, and accelerate application deployment.

Leading Insurer Boosts Productivity, Cuts Costs with Quickly Developed Mobile Solution
Leading Romanian insurer Allianz-Tiriac Asigurari needed to provide its field staff with real-time access to its enterprise applications. Without access to current customer data, the field employees could not accurately calculate premiums for offers or determine whether customers had valid claims. The company decided to give its field staff Windows Mobile® powered devices. In October 2006, it began developing a client application to connect the devices to the company’s internal systems by using the Microsoft® .NET Compact Framework. The project was completed in just one month. Today, field employees get the information they need to make accurate offers and notify claims, saving the company money and improving accuracy. Productivity has risen by 30 percent and costs have fallen 20 percent by eliminating duplicate data entry, and the company has a solution it can extend in the future.

Local Bank Improves Customer Service and Competitive Advantage with Upgrade
American National Bank of Fremont has grown from U.S.$30 million in assets in 2000 to $150 million in 2007. To continue its growth, the bank chose to focus on personalized customer service to differentiate itself from the region’s larger banks, many of which are becoming more impersonal as mergers consolidate the industry. That focus required a computer system that fulfilled two important functions. It had to be fast enough that employees could find information and answer questions quickly, and it had to be secure and reliable enough that the bank’s one-man IT department could support it easily. To meet those goals, American National Bank decided to upgrade to the Windows Vista® operating system. Now employees use the Instant Search capability to find files easily and get faster display of images such as cancelled checks, while IT enjoys better security controls.

Wachovia Enhances Security, Manageability of ATMs While Reducing Site Visits, Costs
Wachovia wanted to reduce the time and expense of managing its ATM network. So, the company added that network to the Active Directory® service in Windows Server® 2003 that it was already using to manage other lines of business. Company executives say that they gain “peace of mind” from the benefits of centrally managed security and that they can cost-effectively use the same knowledge and help-desk expertise throughout the corporation. Moreover, central manageability and remote troubleshooting reduce the need for site visits, cutting costs and boosting availability. Microsoft and NCR provided best practices, technology, industry expertise, and support for the solution.

Leading New Zealand Bank Manages Rapid Growth by Using Modern Programming Model
Kiwibank has quickly grown to become a leading New Zealand retail bank with half a million customers, largely due to a strong brand proposition, rapid product deployment, and a "can-do" attitude. When the bank wanted to deliver a better, more consistent customer experience, it turned to the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 programming model. In-house programmers relied on Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation to simplify, automate, connect, and future-proof disparate services and systems. Now, programmers, business analysts, and IT staff alike can be more productive and efficient. More importantly, with a seamless, secure, and reliable connection across product channels and platforms, Kiwibank can provide a superior customer experience.

Cutting-Edge Financial Software Puts Asset Managers in Control
Over the past 20 years, asset managers at hundreds of firms have relied on Thomson Financial PORTIA® to securely and reliably account for and manage portfolios. Although PORTIA’s functionality is second-to-none, Thomson felt that customers and prospects needed a more modern approach to workflow. In two days, Thomson worked closely with architects at the Microsoft Technology Center in Waltham, MA, to design the future of PORTIA workflow, called PORTIA Workspace. In just six months, designers and programmers created the Workspace by using the Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.0 application programming interface and cutting-edge Microsoft design and development software. The highly customizable PORTIA Workspace is poised to take advantage of advances in the Windows Vista™ operating system, extend the value of a trusted Thomson brand, and help asset managers achieve unprecedented efficiency.

CRM Solution Supports Insurance Company Growth and Offers Seamless Integration
The IT architecture at Endsleigh Insurance, which was based on Lotus Notes, was stifling the company’s ability to take on new prospects. Employees were frustrated by the time-consuming nature of the system, and the reliance on paper-based processes was impacting security. Working with Microsoft® Gold Partner Ciber, Endsleigh Insurance implemented Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM as part of an overall initiative to standardise on Microsoft technology. Having installed the solution, the group then upgraded to Microsoft CRM 3.0 to give each team access to information relevant to their division, without having to search through an entire database. The upgrade also lets the teams benefit from the seamless integration of Microsoft CRM and Microsoft SQL Server™ Reporting Services, improving the efficiency of staff and letting them take on board a wave of new prospects.

GarantiBank Improves Security and Mobile Access With New Messaging Environment
GarantiBank International is a Dutch financial institution with customers throughout Europe. Messaging plays a big part in the daily lives of GarantiBank employees. They communicate with each other and customers through e-mail and voice mail, and they also use mobile devices to stay connected to the office while away on business or working from home. The bank needed to upgrade its messaging environment to offer these employees a more secure system that would also provide them with better integration and reliability. The bank recently deployed a prerelease version of Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007. With this new solution, GarantiBank has greatly improved mobile access for its employees. The bank has also been able to take advantage of new enhancements and features that have improved IT management and security.

ACMN Vie Deploys New Solution, Boosts Available Messaging System Memory
ACMN Vie, part of the Crédit Mutuel Nord Europe group, is a leading French corporation that handles life insurance policies sold by hundreds of agencies in France and Belgium. The organization’s employees depend on messaging for internal and customer communication. Because ACMN Vie had been growing rapidly, the number of e-mail messages had been increasing, and the company was searching for a new messaging solution that would allow for more memory space. In September 2006, the company deployed Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 running on the Windows Server® 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition operating system. As a result, ACMN Vie increased its available messaging system memory. The company experienced an easy migration and excellent overall interoperability between the new solution and the existing messaging environment.

Banco Compartamos: Expanding financial institution in Mexico improves operational processes and eases growing pains with 2007 Microsoft Office system
Banco Compartamos, S.A. Institución de Banca Múltiple, the number one financial institution in Mexico and Latin America for granting micro loans to small independent businesses, has an aggressive goal of increasing its customer base by over 1 million new customers by 2008. Compartamos was recently authorized to become a bank, which means it will need to develop a completely new product and service portfolio. To ease growing pains for its staff and to ensure it remains compliant with federal regulations as it undergoes the transformation, Compartamos must upgrade its current document management solution to a more standardized and automated solution that improves collaboration and enables sensitive information to be protected.

Wealthcraft: Wealth-Management Solution Provider Expands Market Reach with Integrated CRM
Executives at WealthCraft, a provider of single-solution fully integrated wealth-management solutions to financial institutions throughout Asia, wanted to build on the success of the company’s flagship product with a new update featuring customer relationship management (CRM) functionality. By becoming a Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM Partner and integrating Microsoft® CRM into its Advisor Workbench solution, WealthCraft faces significant growth in revenue and rapid market reach.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia launches CommSee, and integrated Branch Teller/Seller solution based on the Windows Platform and .NET
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) is one of Australia’s leading financial institutions. CBA provides more than 10 million global customers with integrated financial services such as retail, business and institutional banking, and funds management. Like many large banks, CBA has relied on disparate systems to manage customer accounts. For example, employees used manual, paper-based processes and multiple systems to gather customer information. CBA recently deployed a Microsoft® .NET-connected solution that combines its separate systems into a common application, giving employees an integrated, single view of each customer.

Turkish Bank with Assets of U.S.$8.9 Billion Moves Core Banking to SQL Server 2005
DenizBank, one of the largest private banks in Turkey, needed to find a more flexible infrastructure for its core banking to make it easier to integrate and deploy new solutions to help it keep pace with its rapid growth. The bank is replacing its old core banking platform, which was based on UNIX and the ADABAS database, with a new solution that uses Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 as the database and Microsoft development tools, including the Microsoft .NET Framework version 2.0. The company has found it significantly easier to create new banking applications since moving to SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition (64-bit) and the new unified development environment. The solution has given the bank the agility it needs to quickly develop new applications to respond to market opportunities. DenizBank plans to use SQL Server 2005 Database Mirroring to enhance high availability of its data.

Healthcare Solution Provider Enjoys Flexible Development, Competitive Advantage
To continue meeting its mission of connecting healthcare providers with timely and comprehensive patient information, executives at Misys Healthcare Systems wanted to replace the Java environment in which they had developed the company's flagship electronic health record product family. Seeking an environment that would support interoperability, ease of enhancement and maintenance, and simplified user accessibility, they selected Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 and the Microsoft .NET Framework. Consequently, developers have taken advantage of a service-oriented architecture and XML Web services model to make their product highly interoperable with diverse hardware and software alike. They have built equivalent functionality with half the code and in half the time as in the Java environment. And, they have delivered to customers a product that is easily usable in virtually any healthcare setting.

Swiss Bank Streamlines Shareholder Voting at Annual General Meetings and Reduces Costs
UBS is one of the world's leading financial firms. It manages assets of more than 2,600 billion Swiss francs (U.S. $1,980 billion) and employs approximately 67,000 people worldwide. The company operates a Shareholder Services unit responsible for managing shareholder information, delivering communications, and paying dividends. Historically, this group operated manual card-based systems to record shareholder votes at UBS Annual General Meetings. To increase efficiency and reduce vote processing times and costs, it deployed a bespoke software system called the Annual General Meeting Manager (AGM Manager), based on the Microsoft® .NET Framework and Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET 2003. This system provides secure wireless voting for up to 16,000 shareholders and publishes results quickly and effectively. The system has already been deployed at 80 external companies.

Fidelity Information Services Saves 18 Months, $4 Million in Migrating Loan Software
Fidelity Information Services wanted to make its flagship loan origination software, Empower, fully Internet enabled and more scalable, as well as make it easy to integrate with a customer's other systems and easy to customize with new and additional services. To meet those objectives, Fidelity worked with Avanade and Microsoft® Services to migrate the Delphi-based solution to a service-oriented architecture running on the Microsoft .NET Framework. Today, Empower supports a range of Internet-based front ends, including smart clients, Web browsers, Web services, and external services. The .NET-connected Empower is expected to boost revenues for Fidelity by up to U.S.$30 million, and its development has already shaved 18 months and $4 million off the time and cost of developing on an alternative platform.

Insurance Leader Enables Business Users, Frees IT Staff with Data-Reporting Services
The Life Division of Pacific Life Insurance Company had a strong dependency between its business and information technology (IT) workers. The executives, business analysts, finance personnel, and customer service representatives who rely on corporate data to do their jobs had to frequently employ IT specialists to help access the desired data and put it into meaningful reports. The process was slow for business users and exceptionally time-consuming for the IT staff. To enable its business groups to be more self-sufficient and free its IT personnel from constantly creating business reports, Pacific Life deployed Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Enterprise Edition with Business Intelligence features. The new solution has helped the company's Life Division standardize its data infrastructure, ease data access and business reporting, improve business and IT efficiency, and reduce costs.

National City Corporation - Bank Improves Communication, Enhances Customer Service with Collaboration Solution
Informing employees of changes to retail services, new promotions, and sales quotas can be a challenge, especially when those employees are spread across a large geographical area. National City Corporation—with 15,000 retail bank employees in 1,200 branch locations—suffered from the technical limitations of its intranet, and sending paper updates just wasn't fast enough. Seeking a better way to communicate with and empower its staff, the company developed a portal solution to deliver role-based information directly to employees using Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003, Windows SharePoint Services, and Microsoft Content Management Server 2002. The result is improved employee knowledge, leading to better customer service and, ultimately, increased revenue as customers take advantage of the bank's additional services.

DenizBank Turkish Banking Group Grows Securities Transactions by 30 Per Cent, and Cuts Customer Waiting Time for New Credit Cards by 94 Per Cent
In any bank, IT has an important role to play in supporting compliance and providing the agility to adapt to changing regulations and competition. This is especially true for a young bank such as DenizBank. Its IT infrastructure needs to be able to support change and grow quickly to yield rapid returns and business benefits. It also needs to be scalable so the organisation can manage rapid growth in both customers and transactions. Since its inception as a privatised entity, DenizBank's IT infrastructure has grown rapidly alongside its business. As it went from 13 branches to over 200 in just 8 years, and added new business lines and subsidiaries, it has remained committed to using Microsoft® technology. At first this was mainly on PCs, but the bank has also realised cost and business value benefits from standardising much of its infrastructure on Microsoft server technology.

The Use of Microsoft Architecture and Technology in U.S. Bank's .NET Shared Server Environment
U.S. Bancorp, with assets of $204 billion, is the sixth largest financial services holding company in the United States. The company operates over 2,300 banking offices and almost 5,000 ATMs in the U.S. Midwest with headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota and offices in 24 states coast to coast, from California to Pennsylvania. The company provides a full line of banking, brokerage, insurance, investment, mortgage, trust, and payment services to consumers, businesses, and institutions.

NASDAQ Deploys SQL Server 2005 to Support Real-Time Trade Booking and Queries
NASDAQ, which became the world's first electronic stock market in 1971 and remains the largest U.S. electronic stock market, is constantly looking for more-efficient ways to serve its members. As the organization prepared to retire its aging Tandem mainframes, it deployed Microsoft SQL Server 2005 on two 4-node Dell PowerEdge 6850 clusters to support its Market Data Dissemination System (MDDS). Every trade that is processed in the NASDAQ marketplace goes through the MDDS system, with SQL Server 2005 handling some 5,000 transactions per second at market open. SQL Server 2005 simultaneously handles about 100,000 queries a day, using SQL Server 2005 Snapshot Isolation to support real-time queries against the data without slowing the database. NASDAQ is enjoying a lower total cost of ownership compared to the Tandem Enscribe system that the SQL Server 2005 deployment has replaced.

Citigroup TreasuryVision—Managing Corporate Cash Around the World
"Large companies, whether they are multinational or regional, have banking and financial accounts all over the globe," explains Gary Greenwald, Managing Director of Information Products at Global Transaction Services, a division of Citigroup Corporate and Investment Banking. "They range from Demand Deposit Accounts, to short-term investments, to debt. A major corporation could have thousands of accounts with many, many banks. One of the challenges of almost every treasurer I talk to is visibility into and control of the information and processes around their cash and investments."

First American Title Insurance Company Supports 12,000 Users on Mission Critical Application
First American Title Insurance Company, a subsidiary of The First American Corporation, is the second largest title insurance company in the United States, with 2004 revenues of U.S $6.7 billion. In 2002, the company deployed First American Software Technology (FAST), an integrated title and escrow system that unified disparate systems into a centralized database hosted on a 32-bit computer with 32 processors. But with the rapid growth of the FAST database, CPU utilization soon surpassed 80 percent. The company upgraded its mission-critical FAST to a 64-bit solution with Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003, Datacenter Edition and Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000 Enterprise Edition (64-bit), running on an HP Integrity Superdome with 32 Intel Itanium 64-bit processors. Today, the centrally hosted SQL Server database, with more than 1 terabyte of information, supports 12,000 users in 1,300 offices.

Townsend Analystics, LTD - Data and Trading Technology Firm Gains 20 Percent Performance with SQL Server 2005
Townsend Analytics, Ltd. (TAL) has brought innovation and efficiencies to electronic trading with its RealTick suite of applications for analyzing, tracking, and trading stocks, futures, options, foreign exchange, and fixed income instruments for North American and European markets. TAL requires ultimate speed and flexibility of its infrastructure to consistently exceed the needs of its diverse client base. To enhance performance, TAL recently upgraded its databases to the beta release of Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005. TAL saw an immediate 20 percent increase in performance compared to SQL Server 2000, and faster query performance from using the new Table Partitioning feature. The 1 terabyte, single-instance SQL Server 2005 database supports 90 million equity quotes per day, with peak volumes reaching well over 60,000 quotes, or "ticks," per second.

Reuters Research Enjoys High Availability for 10 Terabytes of Financial Information
Reuters Research uses more than 700 database instances of Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000, hosted on 150 computers running the Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 Standard Edition operating system, to support customer access to the more than 10 terabytes of financial information in its flagship Reuters Knowledge service. Reuters Knowledge, a global information and analytics service for research and investment banking professionals, provides a centralized source of information including fundamentals, earnings estimates, and financial reporting from industry analysts. Using SQL Server 2000 as a foundation for the Reuters Knowledge application has provided the company with efficient data replication used for populating a secondary datacenter, backup copies, and special-purpose clusters; high availability; easy administration using SQL Server Enterprise Manager; and an easy upgrade path.

GMAC Commercial Mortgage Reduces Cost of Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance by 50 Percent
Facing the need to track more than a thousand business controls and manage several times as many documents for compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, GMAC Commercial Mortgage (GMACCM) knew that it would need more than spreadsheets and file shares. Risk Management Compass (RMC), developed using Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 and the Microsoft .NET Framework, gives the company a comprehensive and robust solution for mapping, assessing, managing, and reporting on all risk categories. GMACCM saved 70 percent by developing its own solution instead of purchasing one, and the solution's rich functionality has helped the company to reduce the cost of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance by 50 percent. GMACCM now enjoys improved visibility into its risk and controls environment, as well as increased ownership and accountability from the people who play a role in it.

Fidelity Investments - Tool Helps Financial-Services Firm Reach Out to High-End Brokers and Customers
Streetscape for Windows, a system developed by Fidelity Investments, gives brokers using Fidelity services the ability to easily manage customer accounts while gaining real-time access to Fidelity financial products. Drawing on the flexibility and power of Web Services Enhancements for Microsoft .NET and smart-client design, Streetscape for Windows is an easily deployed, powerful system that enables Fidelity and its brokers to better serve customers while improving the sales of financial products.

Visa International Creates Support System to Monitor Its Pilot Program with Customers
Visa International is recognized worldwide for the huge role it plays in enabling commerce. An association of 21,000 member financial institutions, Visa supports worldwide sales of more than U.S.$3.4 trillion. It's constantly exploring new products and services to bring to market. Visa wanted to find a way to better monitor and report on a pilot program for its Data Services concept.

JPMorgan Processes More Loans Faster with Streamlined Loan Automation System
Managers at JPMMC, a division of the JPMorgan Chase banking corporation, wanted to improve their loan processing rate to increase the company's responsiveness to competitive and regulatory changes. They turned to RDA, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, to redesign their existing loan processing system. Built on Microsoft Windows Server System software, the new system is helping JPMMC process more loans in less time with the same amount of staff, while reducing the time spent by the IT department on minor tasks.

CheckFree - Windows Nets 24 Percent Lower TCO over Linux for IBM Mainframe Migration
CheckFree is known for its high-quality electronic commerce infrastructures used by financial institutions. The company seeks to deliver innovation and quality while lowering TCO for customers. In one of its core businesses, CheckFree uses IBM zSeries mainframe computers, but it sought to lower cost per transaction without sacrificing performance or availability. It conducted a study of two solution stacks: one using the Red Hat Linux 9.0 operating system, IBM DB2 Universal Database, and IBM WebSphere; and the other using Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Microsoft SQL Server 2000, and the Microsoft .NET Framework. The result: CheckFree chose the Microsoft solution for one of its next-generation platforms, finding that it delivered 14 percent faster performance and an anticipated 24 percent lower TCO while delivering levels of system reliability that are the hallmark of its business.

Bank of America Division Automates Forecasting, Cuts Time on Reports by 98 Percent
The Consumer Real Estate (CRE) Division of Bank of America provides mortgage loans to homebuyers, and adjusts its staffing levels according to fluctuating interest rates and real estate. But manual data collection and analysis were slow and inaccurate, leading to either high employee costs or lowered service quality. To automate its loan forecasting, the company installed OutlookSoft Everest, a Business Performance Management (BPM) solution based on Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000, Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services, and Microsoft Office Excel 2003. As a result, Bank of America has achieved a return on its investment and reduced the number of hours it takes to create reports by 98 percent. The bank projects annual savings of U.S.$4 million to $5 million.

Citigroup CitiVision Integrates 270 Different Sources of Information for 12,000 Global Users in Investment Banking
Using Microsoft Windows Server System, Citigroup created a Web-based information delivery system for access by employees around the world. The information delivery framework is highly secure, configurable, and easy to administer, and offers an unprecedented degree of agility and responsiveness for corporate clients.

AllState Uses Web Services to Launch Policy Management Solution in Two Months (PDF)
Learn about how Allstate used Web Services Enhancements for .NET to leverage its existing application, providing access to customers, and creating a security Web service available across the enterprise.

Insurance Company Streamlines Claims Processing with Web Services-based Solution (PDF)
Read how Farmers insurance Group of Companies streamlined its claims management process to eliminate inefficiencies by making better use of claims staff and adding new functionality to key systems.

Credit Card Processor Gains Flexibility, Cuts Development Time with Reporting Solution (PDF)
Learn about how TSYS, one of the world's largest third-party processors of credit-card transactions created a new reporting solution that helps it better respond to customer needs, based on Microsoft SQL Server 2000 reporting services.

Reuters Lightweight Architecture Improves Manageability and Expands Market Reach (PDF)
In the past, Reuters solutions for off-trading floor departments at financial institutions required Reuters or its clients to maintain on-site technicians for system management. The company's new architecture for presentation-oriented applications, based on Microsoft® Windows Server System™, removes that constraint. The new architecture delivers superior manageability and boosts business efficiencies at all levels of the solution life cycle: development, deployment, integration, troubleshooting, and day-to-day system management. By enabling new solutions to be built faster, integrated with ease, and managed with minimal resources, Windows Server System is helping Reuters and its customers devote more resources to the delivery of new business value.

H&R Block Takes Advantage of Technology Investments with New Smart Client Application (PDF)
H&R Block Financial Advisors (HRBFA), a division of H&R Block, needs to improve how it produces and distributes client form letters and is currently preparing to introduce a new smart client application—the new class of applications that take advantage of the user's powerful desktop applications and use XML Web services to deliver new functions and features to a familiar work environment. HRBFA will be able to quickly respond to ever-changing industry demands, ensuring that the information shared with the public is service-oriented, accurate, and legal. The decision to pursue a smart client solution is allowing HRBFA to maximize the value of its current technology investments.

Dell Commits to a .NET-Connected Web Services Architecture (PDF)
When Dell began using Microsoft® .NET-connected software to create a series of Web services for its e-commerce division, the number of calling customer service contacts decreased at the same time the number of orders was rising significantly. Based on the clear success of a pilot project, Dell has committed to developing a .NET-connected Web service architecture throughout its global enterprise.