By Cliff Saran
Virtualisation and business process optimisation are key to the strategy of The Cooperative Financial Services following its merger with Britannia in 2009. Cliff. Saran and Jenny Williams report.
When Britannia Building Society and The Cooperative Financial Services (CFS) merged in August 2009, Neville Richardson, chief executive of The Co-operative Financial Services, stressed the need to integrate the two banks.
Initially, the plan was for CFS and Britannia to retain their independent products. At the time of the merger announcement, the company said integration would take up to three years - during which time customers would increasingly see more products and services available to them. Such a vision requires more than simply connecting IT systems - and there are plenty of challenges in just getting the two systems to talk to each other. For the Britannia/CFS merger to work, the bank needed to optimise its business operations.
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