Howbankswork.com: Services

Survey Service

This part of the site provides a vehicle for banks to share industry information in a safe and controlled way.  The idea is that banks register their interest in a survey theme.  If enough banks want to participate then the site editors will organise a survey.  Clearly, the banks involved will want to protect their commercially sensitive information so we have outlined some clear “Rules of the Game”.   

Our outline below of the “Survey Process” describes how a survey would be undertaken and what would be required from a participating company. 

The “Survey Themes” section describes some aspects of Banking Operations and IT that some banks have expressed interest in and so could form the basis of a survey.  If you want your bank to take part in a survey on one of the themes below or if you have an area of interest that is not on the list and which you believe many banks would want industry wide information about please contact us to register your interest.

This part of the web site is run as a not-for-profit service to the Banking industry. However, the survey process involves cost on the part of the site editors so participation in a survey is chargeable.  The charge depends on the size and complexity of the survey form but a reasonable expectation is £200 per participant per survey.

Rules of the Game

• Data will be collected by RT IT Consulting according to an electronic form that has been previously agreed with the survey participants. 
• The results will be analysed and consolidated by RT IT Consulting in such a way that no data can be attributed to a source. 
• RT IT Consulting will distribute the detailed consolidated data to the survey participants.
• RT IT Consulting will not distribute or share the consolidated data with anyone other than the participants.
• RT IT Consulting will not distribute or share the individual company returns with anyone other than the company making that return.
• A high level summary of the survey findings will be made available to the industry on the web site.
• RT IT Consulting will perform a validity check to make sure an individual participant is an authorised representative of the bank for the survey content. However RT IT Consulting does not warrant the content of the data supplied by the individual participants.
• Banks wishing to receive the detailed results of a survey after it has been run can do so provided they fully participate in completing the form, etc.  Updated results will be circulated to other participating banks.

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Survey Process

We anticipate a 4 stage process as follows

1. When a critical mass of survey participants has been reached (probably a minimum of 3 banks) RT IT Consulting will draft a terms of reference for the survey and circulate to participants via e-mail.
2. Once the terms of reference are agreed, participants will pay half the costs to RT IT Consulting who will then draft a questionnaire and circulate this to the participant banks along with a draft of the proposed output of the survey.  RT IT Consulting will call its own contacts within the banks to check the individuals participating in the survey are qualified and authorised to participate.
3. Once the questionnaire and output are agreed the participating banks complete the forms and return them to RT IT Consulting.  It is quite likely that RT IT Consulting will contact the participants in order to clarify a few of the answers.
4. RT IT Consulting will analyse the information and summarise it according to the pre-agreed format.  Once RT IT Consulting have received the remaining payments it will distribute the results and analysis to the participants.

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Survey Themes

Here are some of the survey themes that have been suggested to us by various banks to date.

• Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) – What factors have led to success so far?  What to failure?  What outsourcing partners have been good to work with and why?  Were cost savings achieved?  Were service levels impacted?
• Image Processing – Is image capability something that is like email or the phone that should be on every desk or should it be implemented process by process?  What image projects went well and why?  Which did not and why?  Which technology suppliers really brought value and which brought vapourware?
• Web Services – Has anyone actually implemented anything meaningful yet?  What aspects have been successful (e.g. XML, identities)?  Were any suppliers particularly useful or skilled?
• Offshore – Have the offshore outsourcing deals to date met expectations?  Is telecoms latency an issue?  Is the language a problem? Has it been hard or easy to change in the light of new regulations and products?
• IT Operations Outsourcing – Much is being made of “On demand” hardware resources, is it real yet?  Does outsourcing IT operations help or hinder BPO?  Were service levels impacted by the outsourcing arrangement?  Were the cost savings achieved?

Future Services

Analysis of the latest trends? An advice surgery? Case studies? Tell us what services you would like to see on Howbankswork.com in the future.

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