The History Of The External Measurement Management

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Introduction

Information Technology had evolved rapidly to satisfy different kind of needs in the market. In business world, Information Technology can become one’s competitive advantage only when it was used and managed in the correct manner. So therefore, without using and managing the Information Technology in the correct way it will be merely a waste of resources that will become a burden to the business.

This report will look into Citibank’s information system (IS) resources. Four main area (Managing Strategic Use of IT, Managing IT Operation, Managing Issues in System Development and Managing Telecommunication and Networking) was discussed with respective articles as supportive evidence.

Company Background

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Citibank is a leading global bank with approximately 200 million customer accounts and does business in more than 160 countries and jurisdictions. Citibank provide different kind of financial services and products to satisfy different market needs such as consumers, corporations, governments and institutions. These financial services and products including consumer banking and credit, corporate and investment banking, securities brokerage, transaction services and wealth management.

Mission

Citi Works tirelessly to serve individuals, communities, institutions and nations. With 200 years of experience meeting the world’s toughest challenges and seizing its greatest opportunities, Citi strive to create the best outcomes for their clients and customers with financial solutions that are simple, creative and responsible. An institution connecting over 1,000 cities. 160 countries and millions of people.

(Accessed on 5/3/2013 from= www.citigroup.com)

Citibank Current Status

Citibank is having many regional offices located all around the world. North America, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Latin America and Asia. The current Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Citibank was Michael L.Corbat and chairman is Michael E.O’Neill.

Managing IT Operation

"Operation management is crucial to each type of organization because only through successful management of people, capital, information, and materials can an organization meet its goals." (Krajewski & Ritzman, 1999)

The statement above shown the definition of a operation management, but when combining IT with Operations it became IT Operation. Managing IT Operation simply means managing the IT supports that currently provided to business operations. Based from above, operation management can be broke down into four sections: people, capital, information, and materials. Therefore, so does the same as IT Operation. For Citibank there was no IT Operation about materials, so it was basically exempted.

People

Recruitment Management

"Citibank hasn’t had to run recruitment advertisements since 1998 because Citibank’s Human Resource (HR) function was so strongly branded, Citibank only outsource their CVs management to CPL, a Human Resource management outsourcing provider via micro-website of Citibank." (Thomas Crosbie Holdings Limited, 2001)

Based on the statement above, we can make an assumption that the Citibank was outsourcing his HR management to CPL by setting up a website to collect candidates CVs.

As said, by enable the recruiting of HR via websites, the Citibank had successfully saved costs to run recruitment advertisements due to the support of their well-known branding. People that are interested to enter Citibank able to obtain the latest recruitment information by consistently update themselves via Citibank’s micro website. These CVs was sent to CPL first to conduct filtering.

What Citibank did was only receive the CVs from CPL and pick the one they had interested in for further process such as interview.

Employee Training

"Citibank has invested US$6 million regionally in developing new processes, technologies and training for Citiservice, a dedicated customer inquiry line operating on a Windows-based platform by utilizing a single, direct point of contact through a centralized service team." (Sunil, 1997)

Citibank has provided technology training to his customer service team to operate the Citiservice application. Citibank has realized that training their staff was equally important as the technology that support operation because it was people who will be controlling over those technology but not the opposite.

Capital

Hardware Management

"Citibank had awarded as many as five 3-year outsourcing contracts to standardize the hardware software and LANs for the 50,000 PCs used in its operations in 90 countries. Each contract will include the implementation of Citibank’s desktop standard, which specifies Intel-based PCs running Microsoft software." (Bruce, 1995)

As reported by Bruce, Citibank always update their equipments (hardware, software and telecommunication) occasionally (every 3 year), so that they can have the suitable technology equipments that will be able to help them to work out in the maximum efficiency and maximum effectiveness in all his regional brunches.

Citibank had chosen outsourcing instead of doing themselves because by outsourcing, Citibank able to achieve a fast and quality results. Other than that, another reason was because Citibank is having many brunches all over the world, it was difficult to manage and control.

"Citibank had given authority to MTS-MER Telemanagement Solutions Ltd to install TABS Call Management Solution at Citibank branches in Warsaw and Poland to provide the bank’s headquarters with a comprehensive set of reports and graphs for evaluating telephone expenses and usage." (PR Newsire, 2000)

Citibank had alliance with MTS-MER Telemanagement Solutions Ltd to manage their phone system using the TABS Call Management Solution. By using the TABS Call Management Solution, Citibank able to conduct business analysis for purpose such as forcasting.

Software Management

"Citibank Global Finance North America (GFNA) is upgrading its existing mainframe applications using computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tools to design and manage software and boost productivity." (Sheldon, 1992)

Citibank used CASE as a system development software to develop and manage their software in their daily IT operation. The upgraded CASE tools is a powerful software engineering tools compared to the older version due to the extra features that added such as a better debugger that able to speed up the process of development of software. By decreasing the software development duration, that simply means cutting down the cost.

"Citibank had scaled down its contract with Hexware Technologies (HTL), an IT and process outsourcing service provider in global space to manage their software as a result of former’s consolidation strategy."

Citibank had outsourced to HTL to manage their software in their daily operation. HTL acting as a third-party, will be assisting Citibank by ensuring the availability of all operation software of Citibank.

External Measurement Management

"IT to improve competitiveness through faster response times is Citi’s new automatic deposit notification system that permits Citi to automatically reduce paycheck inquiry calls compared to the traditional "call & response approach". (Sloan Foundation, 2010)

Citi used the new automatic deposit notification system to reduce the response time to serve their customer. By reducing response time, Citi able to increase customer satisfaction and employee’s efficiency and this can be turn into a competitive advantage.

"Citibank had signed an agreement of purchasing $30million of ATM hardware and software from NCR Corporation to reduce their service delivery costs, offer new products and services." (PR Newswire, 2000)

NCR Corporation is a global organization that provide self-service hardware and software. Citibank had found opportunities in NCR in managing their IT operations. By having their customer to perform self-service in all Citibank’s service and products, Citibank able to reach their customer faster and having a stronger relationship between their customers. NCR Corporation not only responsible in providing self-service hardware and software to Citibank but also responsible in managing those Information System in Citibank.

Cash / Transaction Management

"Citibank had selected Applied Communication, Inc (ACI)’s BASE24 that able to combine scalability and flexibility to provide Citibank with a robust platform that can handle ever-increasing transaction volumes and transactions from new sources." (PR Newswire, 1998)

ACI’s BASE24 is a type of software that had been chosen by Citibank to manage his transaction. By using BASE24, Citibank able to handle more transaction at the same time with less errors occurs. Besides, this software is fault-tolerance, Citibank can save themselves from hair wired transaction because it will solved automatically by the BASE24 software, the controlling and operating of BASE24 will be assisted by ACI to Citibank.

By implementing BASE24 software, Citibank had cut down the cost of managing and processing transactions because compared before using the BASE24 software, Citibank was much more slower in handling their transaction. By boosting the processing speed using BASE24 software, it simply means save more cost for Citibank.

"Citibank believes Trema, a software provider that has brought to market an end-toend solution that enables companies to use integrated treasury management applications to reduce costs while simultaneously increasing levels of control, reporting and information." (Foote Angus, 2002)

Citibank had signed contract with Trema to let Trema handle their treasury management using an integrated treasury management designed by Trema. This will ensure Citibank’s effective and efficiency due to the increasing levels of control, reporting and information.

Information

Data Storage Management

"Citibank decided to turn Microfilm into computer memory due to better on-line data storage in many computer system applications because computer memory is more efficient by enabling Citibank to instantly retrieve customer information that stored on the microfilm." (Business Week, 1978)

Citibank had managed their data storage by turning Microfilm into computer memory, Citibank had ease the transfer of data through online. Amount of manual paper works can also be reduce in the same way that means cutting down the operation cost such as labor cost and able to increase Citibank profit in the same time increasing the efficiency, speed of information distributing.

Security Management

"Citibank has hired Acxiom Corp. a security firm to review their software program in Citibank to prevent sensitive information from reaching the wrong person." (Yochi J. Dreazen, 2002)

Acxiom Corp. was hired by Citibank to manage, monitor and analyze the security of their application system. Citibank was very concerned about the cyber security issues because they were having cash transaction through the internet which is very likely vulnerable to cyber attackers.

" Citibank has signed an agreement with Computershare Ltd. , the world largest and only global transfer agent, and leading service and technology provider for global securities industry, to provide securities processing which related with global mergers and acquisitions, debt exchanges and other types of reorganizations." (PR Newswire, 2001)

Computershare Ltd. , the security provider of Citibank only required to provide securities processing that under the agreement with Citibank. Citibank has outsourcing their security management to different agencies based on different area of securities it may because the ability of those agencies that having different strong securities management in different respective areas. Example some may good in database securities and the other on application analyzing.

Data Network Management

"Citibank chooses AT&T Solutions to Manage Data Networks, transforming Citibank’s multiple data networks to a single new, state-of the-art networking platform to gain operating efficiencies, gains access to world-class information technology, and frees internal resources to better serve its own customers." (Business Wire, 1998)

Managing the network is important because networks were linked together to share information and improve working performance. Citibank had outsourced its data network management to AT&T Solutions, because AT&T had proven themselves with expertise and vast resources in providing global telecommunication service to Citibank.

Overview of the author (Managing IT Operation)

The author commented that Citi had managed their IT operation well enough in each and every segment of IT Operation from Hardware to Software and from planning to implementation. Citi had done a very good job by breaking the big general management IT Operation into smaller operations so that it could be easier to manage and control. These smaller operations were further been taken care by outsourcing them to those firm that professional in their respective field.

By analyzing Citibank’s business size, it was a disaster if Citibank had managed its IT operation all by itself. Imagine the workload that going to be handled by Citibank, all the staff trainings that related to the new technology, recruitments processes, network monitoring and other IT operations not only in the HQ office and also other regional offices around the world that eventually will cost lots and lots of money and time to deal with all regional offices. Citibank had reduced the impact of this disaster by outsourcing their IT operations to third-party. In this way, in short-term Citibank may required to pay a large amount of money to the third-party but in long-term, Citibank able to focus on those tasks that are more important and the profit that gained may far exceed the amount that had paid to the third-party.

It is essential for a leading organization like Citibank to invest in IS that able to support operations more efficiently and effectively such as managing operations, supporting trading or strengthening customer relations. IT operations are thus coupled with an approach to marketing, product design, customer service, innovations and constant cost reduction that reflects Citibanks’s excellent understanding of its financial services, tis market and its competitive strengths the evolving industry. Despite on the huge cost of investing in the IS, the author still believes that the return and the reward of using the IS in supporting daily operations in the same time with a great management of IT operations will far overcome the money spent.

(1876 words)