Client Need

A global financial institution that heavily uses Connect:Direct to transfer files between systems both internally and externally had a need where they wanted to gain greater operational visibility of the transfers.  They were using IBM Control Center to monitor their C:D network.  However, the reports were only providing visibility at the individual file transfer level.  Many of their transfers were part of multi-step transfers and they were not getting visibility of status of the overall file transfer.  For example:  A business flow might involve the transfer of a file from their core mainframe system to a business system.  After that, another file would be transferred from that business system to another business system followed by a third transfer to an external partner's system.  While they had visibility of the individual details of the three transfers; they did not know if the overall business transaction (A --> B --> C) worked or not.

Our Solution

The customer already had IBM Control Center which was receiving all the Connect Direct information from the various nodes within their organisation.  Taking that as a base; Archisage extended the data model within ICC and created customised reports and dashboards that provided an overlayed view across the transactions at the business process level.

Through a configuration based approach; new business processes could be defined by business users that represented the nodes involved in the transactions as well as file identifiers for that node.

To ensure that the list did not become to cumbersome; the view could be restricted to Country and Timeframe.  Each business flow can be further drilled down into to see the steps of each transaction and quickly identify which step failed causing the complete process to fail.

Tabs enabled access to the raw information for each step of the process to enable operational staff to see the transfer details without having to go to a separate dashboard or system.

The Benefits

Visibility

The provided solution gave the business better visibility into their critical transfers that take place without the bank both locally as well as across national boundaries as well as with external partners.  This dashboard provided significant business confidence that their Connect:Direct infrastructure was working as expected.

Time Saving

The solution also provided significant time savings to the operational teams as they are spending less time responding to business queries and logging into multiple systems to track down where a transaction may have failed.  The end to end visibility enables them to quickly identify the location of any issue and helps them focus on the root cause quickly.

Cost Saving

By utilizing their existing software licenses and infrastructure; the bank did not require the procurement of any additional tools or infrastructure in order to provide this solution.  This enabled them to get greater value of their existing investment in IBM Sterling toolset.