One of the issues facing the workforce in financial services is the multitude of ways their customers demand to be kept in the loop. For instance, banking customers are no longer content with paper statements or bills. Many require faxes (particularly customers in countries where email hasn't taken hold), many want emails, and some are happy with and want to keep the hard copy.
Trying to keep up with the competition, Deutsche Bank staff in Nashville did all that. However, it was very trying: the process involved pulling data into a specifically designed Microsoft Access file, then based on that file manually generating a letter, then trying to figure out whether the customer wanted it faxed, mailed or emailed.
An idea was born that someone would create a bunch of templates on which letters would be based. And because the bank sends out about 10 different types of letters - 10 different templates would be needed. Then at the billing time, the process would grab the data from the database, match up the templates with the accounts and generate a letter. The letter would then be sent out based on the mailing preference stored in the account profile.
Deutsche Bank now easily generates snapshots of its data is all kinds of formats for all kinds of partners and customers. Using the existing email and fax infrastructures within the bank, the letters are sent out almost in an instant.
- Language: Visual Basic 6
- Features: Remote Automation
- Features: Addition of IF..END IF, FOR..NEXT logic to HTML format to facilitate letter generation
- Data Access: ADO 2.5 for applicaions written in VB 6
- RDBMS: Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise 12.0
- RDBMS: Microsoft SQL Server 2000
