Thoughtware Worldwide’s clients use these fact-based research reports to help their end customers reap additional value from their investments. Using our proprietary research database and our extensive network of industry leaders, we:

• Advise our clients and their customers on industry-standard best practices
• Help these companies seek opportunities to increase and elevate awareness of the business value achieved
• Determine the best approach for new or additional purchase justifications
• Identify opportunities for our clients to create additional value by using our proprietary, prescriptive guidance database.

Here's how we measure success:

Thoughtware Worldwide also provided prescriptive guidance on the value still to come from further automation of GE’s payments value chain.

In 2004, GE Corporate Treasury (a unit of General Electric Company, a diversified technology, media and financial services company) was, like most large multi-nationals, wrestling with multiple banking relationships and connections to execute their cash-management strategies.

GE Corporate Treasury’s information technology group was maintaining multiple systems across 200 banks in more than 30 countries. The limitations of a disparate, fragmented and constrained technology infrastructure impeded GE’s ability to execute the millions of payments it makes each year to its customers and suppliers.

Optimizing this daunting task required a new, industry-leading solution. GE evaluated its banks’ own systems and was ultimately introduced to the SWIFTNet C2B solution.

Thoughtware Worldwide’s study findings showed an impressive 406% Return-on-Investment for GE after implementing the SWIFTNet C2B solution, The study found that the increased reliability, security, and controllership of SWIFTNet allowed GE to free up IT and business resources for more value-added activities, creating opportunities for GE to optimize its working capital for greater financial efficiency.

GE Corporate Treasury used the study to drive further consolidation, centralization and cash pooling. Leveraging Thoughtware Worldwide’s findings, GE and SWIFT are now identifying additional opportunities to collaborate and further optimize GE Treasury management.

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SWIFT and Arcelor Corporate Treasury
Thoughtware Worldwide, LLC, completed a study that measured the value achieved by Arcelor Corporate Treasury unit after implementing the SWIFTNet Corporate-to-Bank (C2B) solution from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication.

Thoughtware Worldwide also provided prescriptive guidance on the value still to come from further automation of  Arcelor's cash aggregation and reporting.

In 2002, Arcelor Corporate Treasury recognized a fundamental need to streamline its infrastructure to achieve greater visibility into cash receipts. The Arcelor Treasury was spending significant time in maintaining multiple systems and connection points (ETEBAC 3,5, ISABEL, proprietary bank system, fax, telephone, Internet) each with totally different characteristics (i.e., processes, data quality, availability, timeliness, security level). Additionally, Arcelor was spending an inordinate amount of time and money on maintaining Security protocols for the various connections, which were not consistent and required a growing level of resource commitment. Moreover, any expansion process proved to be tedious. New links with banks were difficult to implement, both in terms of time and cost. Finally, Arcelor Treasury had a Disaster Recovery (DR) plan per geographic location. Testing and maintaining each location’s DR plan was both costly and time consuming. It was impossible to plan for the infinite combinations of bank availability.

Thoughtware Worldwide’s study findings showed an impressive 605% Return-on-Investment for Arcelor after implementing the SWIFTNet C2B solution, The study found that the increased reliability, security, and efficiency of SWIFTNet allowed Arcelor to increase exceptions management  activities, simplify IT security levels  and optimized their working capital through better cash pooling.

Arcelor Corporate Treasury used the study to drive further consolidation, centralization and cash pooling. Leveraging Thoughtware Worldwide’s findings, Arcelor and SWIFT are now identifying additional opportunities to collaborate and further optimize Arcelor Treasury management.

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Hewlett Packard and Helvetia Patria Versicherungen
Thoughtware Worldwide, LLC, completed a study that shows Helvetia Patria (HPV) has achieved significant financial and strategic benefits from their investment in HP Consulting & Integration services and technologies. In collaborating with HP, HPV found a true partner that enabled the organization to leverage on a number of significant synergies.

In 2000, Helvetia Patria Versicherungen (HPV) recognized a fundamental need to conduct business differently. Historically, HPV operated regionally in an autonomous fashion, but HPV saw an opportunity to move away from these regional silos, to centralize and collaborate across the organization. Given HPV’s large geographic footprint (different languages, cultures, and business practices), HPV envisioned a centralized Internet-based platform (the eBusiness Center) as a way to bring people together while leveraging technology to standardize and open new distribution channels. Additionally, HPV wanted to expand data sharing and process automation, while maintaining strict data security. HPV saw the eBusiness Center as a way to improve consistency and high-touch quality service, its core differentiators. Given the magnitude of investment, HPV was concerned that any decision could lock them into obsolete technology and become a barrier to future opportunities.

Thoughtware Worldwide’s study findings showed an impressive 201% Return-on-Investment for HPV after implementing the industry leading e-insurance solution, The study found that the expanded partnerships, lower transaction costs and enhanced development and maintenance created synergies between HPV's disparate subsidiaries.

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IBM and the Belgian Ministry of Finance
 

In 2002, BMoF realized it was time to do things differently. Facing an ever increasing backlog of tax reclaims, fragmented across multiple tax regions and with limited visibility into the process, resolution or citizen communication, BMoF knew there had to be a better, more efficient way. The physical aspect alone of creating and moving citizen files through the process made it quite difficult for BMoF to track — file location, status, resolution or volume of claims. This ever increasing problem was further complicated by new legislation and restructuring (“Copernicus Project”) mandating that the taxpayer be placed in the center of the process. Historically, BMoF had been a very decentralized organization, which resulted in the unique treatment of each case by location, constantly ‘reinventing the wheel’ without the
benefit of organizational learnings. This required BMoF to rethink their process and approach, causing them to develop a holistic, innovative solution, whereby BMoF could ‘digitize’ its workflow; thus increasing visibility, transparency and accountability along the entire end-to-end process. 

In searching for a solution, BMoF turned to IBM, a proven partner used elsewhere within the ministry and its partner, Getronics, to develop a complete integrated solution for tax administration. Working with IBM and Getronics, BMoF outlined a detailed step-by-step process, looking at how to remove bottlenecks, improve business processes and the underlying activities by integrating content with other applications. BMoF’s strategy was to pilot the solution in two regions and then roll it out across the country. With the IBM solution, BMoF is now better able to manage the complete information lifecycle, eliminating double coding, while collecting new statistics that allows BMoF to manage claims as a group. This new approach presents BMoF with opportunities to learn from claim filings, creating better alignment between legislation and compliance and meeting the needs of the citizens.

Thoughtware Worldwide’s study findings showed an impressive 173% Return-on-Investment for BMoF after implementing the IBM  solution, The study found that the improved claims processing, lower operational  costs and increased its visibility to better align the interests law and compliance.

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Hewlett Packard and the University of Utah Health Sciences Center  (UUHSC)
 

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UUHSC handles more than 900,000 outpatient visits and 23,000 inpatient admissions each year.  While its programs are considered leading-edge, like most of its counterparts in the healthcare industry, IT has been struggling to keep up with demand.  As UUHSC brought in more systems to support patient care, they were rapidly running out of data center space, power, and cooling capacity.  Faced with a possible $7 million data center expansion, UUHSC began an investigation to shift its investments from more servers and their accompanying environmental costs to a consolidated environment that would reduce costs and allow UUHSC to focus on enhancing patient care. 

 In outlining their goals, containing rising data center and server costs was at the top of UUHSC’s list.  UUHSC sought to gain insight into their network, add capabilities without adding servers to accommodate growth needs, and provide 99.999% uptime for mission-critical applications, on a 24x7 basis.  UUHSC conducted a thorough analysis which considered the leading IT vendors as consolidation partners.  HP was selected for its ability to provide: technology that reduces risk, remote management capabilities, reliability with a proven track record; and its BladeSystem servers for their more efficient power and cooling consumption.

Partnering with HP, UUHSC virtualized to achieve a 15:1 server consolidation—50% higher than originally expected.  The organization has achieved significant cost savings by increasing efficiency and utilization of resources and controlling data center growth.  Power and cooling consumption has been reduced with 25% fewer physical servers, and remote management capability is enabling UUHSC to quickly identify and manage server issues as they arise.  With a clearly defined procedure for virtualization, UUHSC can now continue to add the capacity they need to support patient care and growth.  

As a result of the HP consolidation solution, UUHSC is realizing its patient care goals with a lower cost, virtualized server environment that increases efficiency, controls data center costs and allows room for growth and investments in innovation.  The results show a 346% ROI in three years.

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IdenTrust and the Intesa Sanpaolo 

Banca Intesa and Sanpaolo IMI officially merged on January 1, 2007 to become one banking group, Intesa Sanpaolo. This combined entity is now the undisputed leader among banks in Italy and ranks among the top banking groups in all of Europe. With a network of more than 6,100 branches and 1200 abroad, Intesa Sanpaolo has a market capitalization of approximately € 68 billion and an average market share of more than 20% in all business sectors, including retail, corporate and wealth management. The Intesa Sanpaolo group offers its services to about 10.7 million customers in Italy and 7.2 million abroad.

Intesa Sanpaolo aims to be a leader in corporate banking for both Large and Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) clients and to be a proactive player in the evolution of Italian Banking and Italian society. The group invests in innovation to deliver benefits for all its customers by providing secure, streamlined, high-value services.

An Innovator and Early Adopter of Digital Signatures
Intesa Sanpaolo was one of the pioneering banks in Italy to adhere to the IdenTrust platform back in 2001, inspired by the promise of added value and efficiency using Digital Signatures as an enabler to the bank’s applications for online banking. Intesa Sanpaolo aims to facilitate strong security and authentication in a simple streamlined fashion for its corporate customers, thereby earning a reputation as an innovator offering all the latest functionality to its customers—both in-country and cross-border. Intesa Sanpaolo aims to be a recognized leader in efficiency and high value-add solutions, promoting widespread use of digital credentials as a means to ensure trusted commerce in a highly efficient fashion with strong authentication and audit trails.

With the IdenTrust Digital Signature solution, Intesa Sanpaolo is positioned to deliver a range of high-value benefits to its Corporate and SME clients.

Intesa Sanpaolo, by using IdenTrust services with its consolidated infrastructure, will achieve a more flexible, cost-effective identity authentication capability that will enhance its growth and profitability opportunities translating into an impressive financial Return On Investment (ROI) of 223% in five years.

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Founded in 1727, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is one of the world’s leading financial services groups. RBS is the fifth largest bank in the world, and by market capitalisation is the second largest bank in the UK and Europe, and the seventh largest bank in the United States. In March 2000, The Royal Bank of Scotland Group completed the acquisition of NatWest in a £21 billion deal that was the largest take-over in British banking history. In 2005 RBS reported net income of £25.6 billion and an operating profit of £8.3 billion. The company employs a workforce of 137,000 people worldwide.

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Fortis is an international provider of banking and insurance services to personal, business and institutional customers. The company delivers a total package of financial products and services through its own high-performance channels, and via intermediaries and other partners.  Combining excellent solvency and a presence in over 50 countries with a dedicated, professional workforce of above 60,000, Fortis combines global strength with local flexibility.

Growing Business Challenges—In search of a single process
When Fortis customers, like Ethias—the second largest insurer in Belgium, are multi-banked or their business moves beyond domestic borders, frequently they require a new approach that is standards-based to improve interactions and data exchange between customers and their banking partners. While Fortis strives to meet the needs of its customers, its proprietary systems could only address Fortis’ piece of the equation, leaving customers like Ethias to address the various formats, IT systems and processes for each financial institution. This lack of standards, connectivity and dynamic information exchange oftentimes constrains a customer’s ability to obtain timely information and visibility into their business operations—not to mention the ability to optimise their business performance. The problem was not Fortis’ solutions, but the fact that they were only part of the overall equation—no matter how good Fortis’ solution was, it did not provide a complete solution, with a single process, channel and standard that could enable its customers’ goals of Straight Through Processing (STP).

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