Investing into the future
Perpetual is one of Australia’s most experienced investment services
groups. Founded in Sydney in 1886 as Perpetual Trustees, Perpetual has
helped generations of Australians invest and manage their wealth
through all market conditions.
Today, Perpetual is one of the Top 100 companies listed on the
Australian Securities Exchange. The company manages investment funds
exceeding US $20 billion, administers over US$206 billion of client
funds, and advises clients on over US$5 billion of investments.
Perpetual has about 1,000 staff, and offices in most Australian states.
When the Sydney-based financial services company, responsible
for the savings of more than 200,000 active investors, embarked on an
upgrade of its entire wealth management software platform as well as
its IT hardware platform, it needed a high-performance data management
solution to tame the fast-growing volume of data and support the
time-sensitive introduction of new investment products.
Perpetual sought a new solution to replace a number of
disparate legacy platforms, each of them with their own core back-end
systems, and their own training requirements.
One of them was a mature Bravura Solutions application.
Perpetual also had a platform for its other investments products
installed, which increased in database size by 40 per cent within 12
months of installation, resulting in increasingly time-consuming
maintenance and batch jobs.
Brad Aurisch, general manager of technology at Perpetual,
remembers, “Working with a number of legacy systems, we found the
duplication of IT infrastructure and administration processes in our
customer service systems was unacceptable.”
“We were looking for a single platform that would consolidate
our disparate unit registry technology applications, coupled with a
high-performance database that would power the new wealth management
platform on the back-end.”
Sybase ASE: The
Perfect Database System Architecture
To meet their needs, Perpetual selected Bravura Solutions' wealth
management platform, TalisTrust and TalisPension, for their new
solution. Bravura Solutions is a leading global supplier of financial
management applications and services, and a Sybase partner. TalisTrust
and TalisPension is a consolidated SOA administration platform that
integrates with Perpetual’s internally built workflow system (based on
Savvion) and also interfaces to internal and external stakeholders,
online systems and MIS systems.
To provide the level of availability and performance required
to support the demands Perpetual would be placing on TalisTrust and
TalisPension, Perpetual selected Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise
(ASE) as the database management technology of choice. In addition,
Perpetual added further functionality with ASE Security and Directory
Option, ASE XML Management Package, and Sybase ETL.
ASE, Sybase’s mission-critical data management system, has
long been noted for its reliability, low total cost of ownership and
superior performance. It lays the long-term foundation for strategic
agility and continuing innovation in mission-critical
environments.
According to Aurisch, Bravura Solutions' support for ASE was a
key selling point. “We had growing Sybase expertise in our organization
at that point of time. As Bravura Solutions’ platform integrated so
effectively with ASE, and could be supported by their engineers, we saw
the potential synergies.”
“With hindsight, we’ve made the right decision. Bravura
Solutions and Sybase have been working extremely well together. We have
also continued to build up a strong direct relationship with Sybase’s
local team in Sydney, and significantly enhanced our in-house skills
that help us manage ASE more effectively.”
Sybase
Professional Services a Bring Wealth of Knowledge
Optimizing ASE performance on Bravura Solutions’ wealth management
platform to reduce go-to-market time for new investment products was a
key driver for getting Sybase Professional Services on board.
Professional Services’ in-depth analysis of the system led to the
identification of a number of possible improvements, and provided a
view into the system’s vulnerabilities. The Sybase team’s suggestions,
based on mapping performance goals for ASE against current performance,
coupled with an exhaustive knowledge of the system, led to a whole new
world of possibilities.
Aurisch says, “The Sybase Professional Services team has been
invaluable in the whole process. They helped us further fine-tune ASE’s
capabilities and optimise its integration with TalisTrust and
TalisPension. Demand-driven queries can now be delivered faster, and
new products introduced more easily.”
He adds that Sybase Professional Services still periodically
visit Perpetual onsite to streamline ASE’s performance in line with
their business needs.
Better Business
Agility and Customer Service Delivery
Today, Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise consolidates and manages a
large influx of data that was previously hosted in numerous separate
databases and feeds it into the wealth management platform when and
where needed. As most of the synchronisation work is done overnight
between Bravura’s solution and ASE, the platform is quicker and more
agile at daytime when Perpetual’s 200 wealth management consultants use
it.
“The system has been re-engineered to run processes in
parallel and synchronize over night. This means daytime performance has
improved, resulting in better business agility for us,” Aurisch says.
ASE’s high performance and reliability guarantees Bravura
Solutions’ Sonata suite of products, including TalisTrust and
TalisPension, is working at its absolute best. Both products in tandem
have enabled Perpetual to introduce new investment products more easily
and quickly. This in turn enabled the leading financial services
provider to further enhance customer service and better cross- and
up-sell new wealth management products.
“We’re now able to introduce a new fund product in just one
week. Previously, with our old systems, that took us about three
months. The value for our business has been tremendous,” Aurisch
says.
Aurisch says the collaboration with Sybase has also resulted
in better efficiencies in workflow management and human processes in
their wealth management division.
Remarkably, faster access to critical data from Sonata suite’s
unified call centre screen has enabled Perpetual’s wealth management
consultants to answer 70 per cent of phone inquiries from one screen.
The most noteworthy results obtained from the combined Sybase
/ Bravura Solutions’ offering, were improved processing speed, reduced
risk and lower technology costs. Low administrative overhead, and
reduced licensing costs generated immediate improvements to Perpetual’s
bottom line.
“ASE gives us full local support, at low cost of ownership and maximum
business agility and uptime. Sybase is a key foundation technology of
our wealth management business.”
