Multi-national financial services firm improves business intelligence and efficiency

Business challenges WM&BB relies on management reporting to drive profitability while supporting service and compliance. To be successful, management must know exactly which product and service packages are profitable and which business centers and market segments can support sustained growth. UBS employed a number of highly specialized financial and managerial accounting systems to deliver this […]

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Business challenges

WM&BB relies on management reporting to drive profitability while supporting service and compliance. To be successful, management must know exactly which product and service packages are profitable and which business centers and market segments can support sustained growth. UBS employed a number of highly specialized financial and managerial accounting systems to deliver this information. But these systems required significant manual effort to get results. The business and IT processes behind the data were unconnected, complicated and highly time-consuming. The firm relied on nearly 100 employees who engaged in manual work to tie disparate activities together.

At the same time, internal audit, information management and regulatory requirements — as required by US GAAP, IAS, etc. — continued to increase demands on the reporting system. The number of IT systems involved caused the total cost of ownership (TCO) to spiral upwards. The situation was full of challenges, especially considering the volume of data involved: 10 million postings per hour to manage and the need to report on 500 million account balances. At the time, the firm had been unable to find a single system on the market that was capable of handling the load — until they found Redwood.

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Solution

To bring its processes together, UBS developed a completely new accounting and reporting system that would meet current and future requirements and facilitate flexibility and efficiency. The project was part of a wider program to upgrade the UBS IT infrastructure. UBS partnered with Redwood, accenture, Oracle and BusinessObjects to architect a solution.

Redwood’s cloud-based automation platform enabled UBS to control and connect many complex processes. It also increases the efficiency of the whole system. Today, more than 170 applications deliver data to UBS daily at 6 PM. Redwood automatically picks up this data and processes it overnight, so it is available the following morning in the form of complete, up-to-date reports. The new system implemented by UBS processed more than 15 billion transactions in its first three quarters of operations. Redwood provides the engine and the coordination behind all this activity.

Results

UBS leaders believe the Redwood solution has given it a five-year head start over the competition. UBS used Redwood to replace 16 applications, providing a single, comprehensive view of the business. Its highly optimized process chain saves time and cost for its accounting and reporting processes.

The TCO of UBS’ IT process solutions improved by 30%. External reporting time has also improved from nine days to five days after period close. With automation, financial information is controlled and made quickly available from one source. The firm can extract all management reports from a central database in a business-friendly format allowing for early identification and analysis of trends. UBS uses this business intelligence to react faster, reduce risks and exploit opportunities.