OpenText: Enterprising content management – Simon Harrison

For over 20 years, OpenText's enterprise content management solutions have helped banks manage data and optimise their business processes. Simon Harrison, vice-president, northern Europe, outlines the corporation'sinnovative approach to tackling the most prevalent data issues of the day.

Future Banking: How long has OpenText been trading? What is your core business and how long have you been present in Europe?

Simon Harrison: Since we arrived in 1991, OpenText has been at the forefront of content management, helping major organisations worldwide derive value from one of their most valuable assets - the huge volumes of information they create, use and store.

Over the past 20 years, we have continued to evolve, develop and innovate to become the world's leading provider of enterprise content management (ECM) software. Through organic growth and strategic acquisitions, the company's technology touches every kind of business, compliance and industry requirement currently affecting the world's most important businesses.

Europe has always been a critical market for OpenText, and many of our developments and acquisitions have been made to support and develop our customers on the continent.

How can financial institutions best enhance their identification, management and storage of corporate data?

With all the problems facing financial services firms today, it's easy to forget the ticking time bomb of big data. It has become so easy and cheap to create data that many organisations now hold enormous volumes. As these volumes grow at an exponential rate, the challenge for organisations is how to make sense of this content - and avoid drowning in the data they're producing.

This also pertains to regulatory compliance, which requires financial services firms to be able to produce documentation and other content at a moment's notice; it also encompasses the need to retain customers, provide great customer service - including effective complaint resolution - and maximise revenues through cross-selling and up-selling of products.

All these demands require organisations to have full control over their information.

How is OpenText's ECM technology integrated into a bank's existing IT infrastructure?

Financial services organisations tend to have hugely complex IT infrastructure. Often, this technological estate comprises legacy systems from acquired companies or separate departments, many of which have remained unchanged through past integration projects because they work and it's so expensive to integrate them. We understand this problem, but also perceive a sea change in what is required of the data contained within these systems.

OpenText software is designed to seamlessly integrate within a complex IT environment, enabling end users to integrate their content into day-to-day processes and deliver it through multiple channels.

What underpins your approach to dealing with customers?

Customers approach and stay with OpenText because they realise that we understand their business and provide solutions that are designed to tackle the key issues affecting their industry today, which require minimal adaptation to work effectively.

When it comes to customer engagement, process efficiency and regulatory compliance, our banking customers regard OpenText as a key strategic vendor. By leveraging the OpenText repository, banks are able to integrate all core processes while managing one single view of customer content. This provides a faster, more efficient customer experience while ensuring complete control of content and full compliance to regulatory controls.

What do you believe to be the key strengths that keep OpenText ahead of its competitors?

OpenText has gained significant expertise deploying its technology to major financial institutions such as the European Central Bank, National Australia Group, Legal & General, CSFB and the European Investment Bank. We build up long-lasting relationships with clients through deep engagement and assistance throughout the entire project lifecycle, and ongoing support for the implemented solution thereafter.

Our financial customers can count on our professional OpenText global services team of content experts, which has delivered thousands of ECM/EDRM/DM projects to a variety of organisations.

We work to ensure that we fully understand the unique requirements of the financial services sector and that our services and solutions exceed these demands.