An evening to celebrate: GFT and Deutsche Bank awarded at Financial Innovation Awards
It was a pleasure to be at the Financial Innovation Awards earlier this month and of course to be part of the winning team for a prestigious award! In partnership with Deutsche Bank, we were recognised as overall winners in the ‘Best Fintech Partnership’ category, resulting in a well-deserved celebration at one of London’s most high-profile Fintech events.
On Thursday 7th December the ceremony for the 20th Financial Innovation Awards from The London Institute of Banking & Finance got underway at the Hilton Bankside. The event brought together leading experts to create a globally recognised awards platform, showcasing the best innovation from right across the financial services industry.
I and other GFT senior leaders enjoyed an evening of great food, wine, entertainment, and of course having the honour of receiving the award on behalf of GFT. I should say that the award was completely unexpected, but knowing the hard work, diligence and close co-operation across the joint GFT and Deutsche Bank project team, it was a well-deserved win for a very strong partnership.
The strong relationship between GFT and Deutsche Bank saw the implementation of an innovative and ambitious project (dbPalace) with high levels of collaboration between GFT and the bank in order to build and roll-out a strategic Risk and P&L production platform. The dbPalace team set out to create a dynamic and agile IT function in order to speed up release times, reduce IT costs and enable the bank to react quickly to customer and market demands.
Operational efficiency and competitive advantage
Harnessing new ways of working, the combined GFT and Deutsche Bank team was able to accelerate development and decommission over 2,000 end-user applications, replacing them with a single standardised strategic platform, providing managers with a single view of performance across the business. The collaboration has delivered substantial business benefits, including reduced risk, cost, man-hours and errors, along with improved operational decision-making, controls and compliance.
This success of the programme not only resulted in significant operational efficiency (with output increased by 35% and development costs reduced by 50%), but has also enabled the bank to create a much-needed competitive advantage, by unlocking innovation, empowering its people and ensuring that the company can adapt quickly to ever-changing market trends and challenges.
The project delivers a single strategic global platform, capable of handling the day-to-day tasks of 1,000+ users. Headed up by a 200-strong dbPalace team comprising both GFT and Deutsche Bank specialists, spread across eight locations worldwide, the innovative project sought to improve both the experience and performance of Product Controllers and Finance Directors by way of; reduced errors, reduced duplication of effort and reduced task completion times.
Rather than view dbPalace as a single project with an end date, the team instead manage it as a ‘branded product’. As such, the team continues to enhance and improve dbPalace’s features and functionality over time, based on user feedback, emerging technology and changing end customer and business demands.
The collaboration amongst the whole dbPalace team has made the project a truly effective partnership. There is no distinction or walls between locations, or internal versus external members; exactly how a team should work collaboratively and deliver a common goal.
Congratulations to everyone involved in what continues to be a highly collaborative and exciting project. This was a fantastic achievement for both GFT and Deutsche Bank that has really defined the ‘gold standard’ for other strategic IT programmes within the bank, reinforcing the strong ongoing relationship between both organisations.
This was a superb way to finish 2017, and I look forward to further successes and in working together in the New Year!
For more details, view the full press release on the GFT website by clicking here
