Large global bank generates business insights rapidly and cost effectively with a data analytics platform

A large global investment bank's business analysts required rapid data processing capabilities for experimental business analysis, prompting the bank to build an enterprise data hub with a cross analytics function to deliver insights rapidly and in a cost effective manner. Initially engaged to deliver technology support, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is currently helping the bank transition to a 'request and consume data lab as a service' model. Through this model, business' can rapidly process incoming data needed for analysis from the data hub to generate insights, without the corresponding infrastructure overheads, thus driving cost efficiencies and not spend time on data acquisition and integration.

Client

A large global investment bank

Industry

Capital Markets andInvestment Banking

Offering

Big Data

Business Challenge

In 2013, the bank undertook a number of pilot projects to determine the value of adopting a data-centric approach to business process optimization and gain business insights from its large volumes of structured and unstructured data. The projects applied data analytics technologies on disparate production data sets that lacked a unifying schema or 'map', to identify patterns and actionable insights. However, these projects differed from traditional data mining and Business Intelligence (BI) projects in that time-to-market expectations were higher, statistical and advanced analytical techniques were adopted and data sets were large, varied and often spanned several years.

Based on the success of these pilot projects, the bank decided to leverage TCS' expertise to establish a Business Process Optimization and Data Analytics platform within the company to provide full-project lifecycle support to internal clients wishing to use data analytics in their domains. The bank chose to partner with TCS, given our knowledge of the financial domain and our capability to scale to address its growing requirements.

About the Client TCS' client is a large global bank and one of the world's leading financial services companies with a presence in over 70 countries across five continents. Its businesses include investment, corporate and retail banking as well as asset and wealth management.

TCS’ Solution

TCS is engaged in helping the bank design, develop, test and deploy a technology platform that will run up to 12 projects concurrently in 2014. In its current form, typical use cases will have the following key characteristics:

n Data Feeds – extraction and ingestion

l File pickups are periodically orchestrated through Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) and ingested into Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) files

n Dimension Feed processing

l Ingested dimensions files are processed to generate common data and lookup data

n Fact Feed processing

l Ingested fact files are processed to validate, enrich and generate fact data

n Process views

l Data is consolidated and report views are generated

Our solution uses Big Data technologies such as Hadoop, Hive, Sqoop and HDFS on an eight node cluster, with two master and six slave HP commodity blades to implement the solution. We have leveraged Agile delivery capabilities to remain flexible to addressing downstream changes, while enabling the bank to experiment and adapt quickly.

Experience certainty

True certainty of success comes from working with a partner you trust to provide the insight, support and expertise that will propel your business forward. Experiencing certainty with TCS means you can count on results, partnership and leadership.

Results

The bank has established itself as a pioneer of a new and evolving concept with this solution. The bank's reconciliation team was the first to use the platform to reconcile trades from multiple trading applications. Typically, files from two systems are matched and reconciled, either at record or file level, with a failure in matching leading to 'breaks'. Until now, users had been copying data on 'breaks' in reconciliation to their desktops, pasting and formatting it in a spreadsheet, enriching and transforming it manually, before determining the cause for the breaks. Since the deployment of the lab platform, break data is ingested in an amenable format into the platform and analyzed for potential data quality problems using standard tools like Qlickview or Lavastorm.

Given the success of this initiative, the bank's IT organization is keen to develop a model offering the data lab as a service. TCS is leading the model conceptualization effort by identifying and defining service requirements. The process includes exploring future use cases, their impact on the business, emerging usage patterns and possible service boundaries. Our design team is collaborating with different internal groups to create a service model that is acceptable but also flexible and sustainable. Through this engagement, the bank aims to devise a low cost option for business units to experiment with their data to gain business insights quickly for superior decision making.

About TCS' Banking and Financial Services Business Unit

With over four decades of experience working with the world's leading banks and financial institutions, TCS offers a comprehensive portfolio of domain-focused processes, frameworks, and solutions that empower organizations to respond to market changes quickly, manage customer relationships profitably, and stay ahead of competition.

Our offerings combine customizable solution accelerators with expertise gained from engaging with global banks, regulatory and development institutions, and diversified and specialty financial institutions.

TCS ranked #2 in the 2013 FinTech 100 rankings of top global technology providers to the financial services industry and counts 12 of the top 20 global financial institutions among its clientele. From retail and corporate banking, capital markets, market infrastructure, and cards, to risk management and treasury, TCS helps organizations achieve key operational and strategic objectives.

Contact

For more information about TCS’ Banking and Financial Services, email us at

bfs.marketing@tcs.com

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About Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)

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Tata Consultancy Services is an IT services, consulting and business solutions organization that delivers real results to global business, ensuring a level of certainty no other firm can match.TCS offers a consulting-led, integrated portfolio of IT and IT-enabled infrastructure, engineering

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