Fidlis Bank Essay

Problem

To close the digital divide and retains its competitive advantage among other banks, Fidelis bank had appointed Ralph to find an email integrations that can improve the collaboration work between the two divisions. These two divisions are Operations and Wealth Management Canada. To Ralph, the director of E-Messaging were having problems choosing which email systems to use. Each division had been choose to run autonomously and was given freedom to choose the technology that worked best for them to promote independence. Email had been existed in Fidelis for more than 15 years and because the basic email migration cost of new hardware and software and training had been estimated at more than $18Million, moving to a single email system had not been approved.

Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange are two major email systems being used by Fidelis Bank in different divisions. Both has its advantages, but had posed several issues when collaborating work and its compatibility is at stake. Microsoft Exchange had been heavily used by Wealth Management Canada due to its compatibility with PDAs and Personal Home computers, and when developed system integrated with email, independent software vendors would deliver products for MSFT first and others will create layers of complexity. Where as Lotus notes are being used by the Operations Division which had been used by 500 applications and 80,000 employees already been trained to use that e-mail system.

The problem occurs when Wealth Management Canada faced with new technology or architecture choice, they would choose the opposite of what the operations division had chosen to demonstrate their independence, but these practices posed several problems. Including the collaboration of work with other divisions and its sustainability on the software they used with other division which had resulted from different requirement imposed upon their environment. Wealth Management Canada uses Microsoft Exchange as their email core system, and also uses Q-brain to improve customer communication which had widely used in the wealth management industry and that system are only compatible with Microsoft Exchange. While Operations Division uses Lotus Notes from IBM. Although both can communicate, but it creates conflicts on compatibility. It would be difficult for both divisions