Published: June 24, 2009
Banks seeking to improve the end user online cash management (CM) experience for corporate clients will spearhead 7.1% growth in IT spending on CM solutions in 2009-10, with total IT spending reaching US$904mn in December this year, according to the consultant Celent.
“Cash management is taking centre stage this year in the wholesale banking space. It is receiving increased attention as banks look to upgrade or augment their ageing platforms to woo additional business,” says Celent’s Jacob Jegher. “Growing corporate relationships is a major theme as banks aim to offset the lacklustre growth on the retail side of their business and focus on higher margin businesses that contribute to non-interest income.”
He adds that Celent expects banks’ spending on CM solutions to grow significantly over the next three years: “Many of them are starting to recognise that their corporate and small business online banking platforms are at a crossroads. The web-based applications that they launched a few years back simply aren’t cutting it, and they need to decide what direction to take them in.”
However, no one single CM solutions vendor can yet sweep the board in terms of the depth of services offered to financial institutions when the implementing, launching and managing the ongoing operation of a CM solution. Nor does any one vendor emerge as a leader in terms of its use of advanced technologies, and the breadth of features and usability offered by its CM solution.
In its recent analysis of nine CM vendors’ offerings, Celent measured the depth of services offered to financial institutions by scoring responsiveness to customers, customer training and support, their products’ general user interface (GUI) and product customisation, roadmap input, and general implementation skills.
Although, FiServ Banklink and ACI were revealed to have the most financial institution clients with more than 100 each, followed by Fundtech with 69, Metavante and Enterprise S1 achieved the highest overall scores here.
ACI was brought down by a poor showing in roadmap input and below average scores in responsiveness to customers, and support/training services, while Fiserv (Banklink) received the lowest overall average score of all nine vendors.
“While FiServ scored well in support and training, and general implementation skills, it lags significantly behind the pack with regard to roadmap input and responsiveness to customers,” says Jegher.
Fundtech, nevertheless, fared better, outperforming both Metavante and S1 in certain CM product features, such as roadmap input: “Fundtech excels in the roadmap input category and scored well in GUI/product customisation but received a slightly below average score in support/training services and general implementation skills. Its weakest link in this dimension is responsiveness to its customers," says Jegher.
“There were no true leaders in the performance/reliability section. Vendors that work with larger banks tend to have better scores here — Bottomline Technologies, Metavante, and S1. Digital Insight joined this group with a good performance score,” continues Jegher.
Celent also scored different vendors’ CM offerings on their product features, such as reporting capabilities, payments-related functionality, complementary modules, alerts, mobile banking features and administrative functionality, as well as their products’ usability (including consistency of navigation, provision of customer support tools, end user personalisation capabilities, and web 2.0 elements).
When examining features alone, the market leader was ACI, followed closely by S1. The latter topped the usability charts with strong scores in web 2.0 elements and administration ease of use, followed by ACI and Fundtech. Scores for the remaining vendors were much lower.
“A great opportunity exists for one or more vendors to stand out from the pack by demonstrating a differentiated web 2.0 user experience,” says Jegher. “S1 has made the most inroads here, followed by ACI and Fundtech. None of them, however, have yet to reach the point of delivering a true next-generation ‘web 2.0esque’ rich internet application. Although these early movers are starting to show signs of next-generation offerings, it will take a good twelve to eighteen months before we begin to see cutting-edge corporate banking sites complete with web 2.0 elements.”
The nine CM solution vendors assessed in Celent’s survey were ACI Worldwide, Bottomline Technologies, Digital Insight, Fiserv (Banklink), Fiserv (CheckFree), Fundtech, Metavante, S1 Enterprise and Sybase Financial Fusion.