ABN AMRO Bank

Headquartered in Amsterdam, ABN AMRO is the third-largest bank in the Netherlands and offers in-depth financial expertise and extensive knowledge of numerous industry sectors. Realizing its fragmented legacy ECM deployments were resulting in the proliferation of information silos, ABN AMRO modernized its information management ecosystem with help from Hyland's Nuxeo Platform.

ABN AMRO serves retail, private and corporate banking clients with a focus on the Netherlands and selective operations internationally. Clients are offered a comprehensive and full range of products and services through omnichannel distribution, with a focus on advanced mobile applications and internet banking

Creating long-term stakeholder value begins with information management

A key focus for ABN AMRO is to be recognized as building sustainable client relationships by offering transparent and simple products, and to create long-term value for all its stakeholders (clients, shareholders, employees and society as a whole). In order for the financial institution to do so, it must be capable of managing and processing information in the most expeditious manner possible.

The legacy information management systems ABN AMRO had in place led to various departments storing information differently. In order to deliver the high level of service to its various stakeholders, it required a more effective, integrated and intelligent approach to managing vital information assets residing within its various systems and repositories.

Inadequacies of legacy systems drive need for a better approach

ABN AMRO had multiple instances of the same legacy enterprise content management solution implemented in various departments throughout the firm, but these deployments were not connected. Furthermore, these deployments each had their own interfaces, metadata structures and repositories.

“We had many challenges with our legacy information management solution. For one, the system’s architecture was unfriendly and difficult to integrate within our existing IT landscape," said Saswat Padhi, ABM AMRO's program manager of document and records management. "In addition, we didn’t see any real innovation in the vendor’s product roadmap. They were still talking about ‘content must reside within our solution in order to get value from our solution,’ and ‘documents serve as the only source of record.’ We’re moving away from these outdated approaches, and so is the market.”

Flexible + connected + modern architecture = Nuxeo

“There were several important criteria we looked at," Padhi said. "First, we wanted an adaptable platform with a flexible content services architecture that would enable us to easily build our own front end. It was also important to us that the vendor was on the leading edge when it came to leveraging modern and innovative technologies. The ideal solution would also enable us to ‘reuse and repurpose’ content as well as provide internal indexing to ensure a single source of truth. In addition, we very much wanted to move away from the ‘per-user’ license model.”

With the help from Infosys, ABN AMRO’s strategic technology partner for nearly a decade, the bank selected and deployed Nuxeo to modernize its approach to document management and records management.

“Infosys played a key role in identifying the future landscape, helping us deploy the solution and in taking care of ABN AMRO’s very specific needs," Padhi said.

Infosys is a global leader in consulting, technology, outsourcing and next-generation services that helps enterprises around the globe stay a step ahead of emerging business trends and outperform the competition.

Optimizing and improving records management and client onboarding

ABN AMRO utilizes a “hot and cold records” archival paradigm for managing millions of emails, faxes and other files within its information management ecosystem. The bank uses Nuxeo for storing and managing the most actively used and accessed “hot records,” which include client onboarding files like agreements, contracts, customer interactions and other important documentation

Nuxeo is part of a strategic architecture that also includes Elasticsearch for federated search over “hot,” “cold” and legacy systems, which consists of an NoSQL repository for managing “hot” or frequently accessed information, and Hortonworks for archiving “cold” or infrequently accessed information. There are approximately 10,000 internal ABN AMRO employees using this system, and the company expects upward of 24,000 total internal users to eventually be served by the complete solution.

ABN AMRO looks to expand use of Nuxeo Platform

“We’re still working to connect some of our other information silos, which is common for even the most modernized banks," Padhi said. "With Nuxeo, we’ve made very good progress on this front. We’re in discussions with many of our business units about connectors for linking together many of our other existing core business applications. We also want to utilize Nuxeo for managing voice, chat, audio and other rich media content, which we know is something they’re very good at.”

ABN AMRO intends to move completely off of its legacy ECM deployments within its various departments, but with Nuxeo, the bank can do so at a pace that best suits its needs and requirements. 

With the ability to connect and integrate Nuxeo with its existing solutions — including the legacy systems the bank will eventually transition away from — ABN AMRO can manage content “in place” (where information assets already reside within existing systems and repositories) via a centralized hub. The company expects to manage around one billion assets with the Nuxeo Platform within the next one to three years.

To remember:

• Transitioned from legacy information management systems
• Connected and integrated the Nuxeo Platform with existing solutions
• Will manage around 1 billion assets within the next 1-3 years

Explore Hyland for financial institutions