IT Development
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13. IT Development
In 2014, the Bank began to implement its new Technological Development Strategy until 2018. The main focus of transformations was on:
Simplifying the IT landscape of the Bank.
Reducing the terms of launching banking products at the market, finishing work on the implementation of centralized systems in 16 regional banks.
Developing remote banking services.
Ensuring reliability of automated systems and their performance reserve required for the business growth.
Optimizing designed activity, enhancing performance of projects with an IT component, drastic improvement of project management quality.
The Bank has a number of key achievements it may be proud of.
As part of the strategic program Establishment of Unified Centralized IT Platform of the Bank in Moscow, Tsentralno-Chernozemny, and Severny Banks, Sberbank put an automated system into commercial operation for services to legal entities. This is an important milestone towards the formation of an effective centralized banking platform, which will allow the Bank to optimize the cost of ownership of its IT landscape and increase the implementation rate of new products and services.
Moscow, Srednerussky, Severo-Kavkazsky, and Tsentralno-Chernozemny Banks have been transferred to the automated system of retail lending.
Seven regional banks were transferred to the Unified Center of Deposit Processing. As part of the Green Street service, customers can perform operations with their deposits, regardless of the outlet used for opening the deposit within any regional bank, as well as within combined territories of Moscow and Srednerussky Banks.
92,000 service providers were connected to receive billing payments in the Unified Payment Service. Payments to all service providers became available through an online bank in 16 banks, BU network in 9 banks, and self-service terminals in 1 bank.
As part of the centralization program, the Bank reduced its IT costs through savings on equipment (servers and storage systems) and on data center premises in the regional banks, economy benefits from the implementation of automated systems and system-wide application software, development of systems by employees of Sberbank Technology CJSC, development and support for target systems, with total savings in an amount of more than RUB 2.5 billion.
Sberbank launched a new strategic program called Creating Support Platform for Business Development (18+), where the innovative technologies will improve productivity, reduce the total cost of ownership for IT infrastructure of the Group, and reduce the time frame for new product launches.
In 2014, both Sberbank and the Group were actively working in these areas, despite the impact of changing external environment and a number of other challenges.
In 2014, Sberbank completed a significant volume of work to improve the reliability of automated systems. Compared to 2013, the downtime of critical systems following incidents was reduced by 20%, interruptions of critical systems resulting from
IT Development
80 technological maintenance works were reduced by 2 times, and system capacity reached the level necessary for ensuring business growth.
The key systems were operating under a constantly increasing workload. Thus, in 2014 the amount of transactions via Sberbank Online increased in 2.5 times, which is connected both with the development of system functionality, and with the growing customer database. Faced with increased workload, the Bank managed to meet its goal of improving system reliability with its Reliability 99.99 program, by implementing special backup and optimization technology and focusing on proactive IT services and operational risks.
In mid-December, there was a sharp increase in workload on all the systems of the Bank as a result of the unstable financial situation and an information attack launched against Sberbank. In this situation, all systems have been working steadily.
Frequency and power of DDoS attacks28 on web services of the Bank have increased considerably, in 2014 Sberbank registered 42 attacks of that kind. As a result of measures implemented as part of the Reliability 99.99 program these attacks had no significant impact on customer services. The margin of safety in the systems of Sberbank exceeds the current intensity of DDoS attacks seen in the Russian Internet by many times.
In the reporting year the Bank postponed the date for centralizing the automated systems of restructured branch offices in the North-Eastern Bank following the delayed commissioning of a communications satellite.
In 2014, a huge step was made in improving the services of Sberbank Online and Mobile Bank for various platforms while expanding the capabilities of self-service terminals.
The Bank released an app for the social networks Odnoklassniki and VKontakte, in which customers are able to transfer money from their card to another Sberbank card using a phone number, and pay for mobile communication services without leaving their personal account in the network.
In the reporting year, the Bank has successfully organized and supported the payment infrastructure for the Olympic Games in Sochi.
The Bank created the largest CRM29 platform in Europe in terms of the number of products (900 million) and users (80,000).
An automated personnel management system in 11 regional banks has been successfully launched for industrial operation. It has finished the most extended implementation of a SAP-based centralized system in Russia.
These and other achievements allowed Sberbank to gain international recognition:
Sberbank Online was recognized the best retail online bank both in Russia and Central and Eastern Europe in 2014 according to Global Finance magazine.
Sberbank received an award of Special Achievement in GIS for the geoinformation technologies used.
The career portal of Sberbank was ranked among the best sites of the world's largest corporations compiled by Bowen Craggs & Co together with the Financial Times, ahead of such companies as Citigroup, Toyota, Apple, Samsung Electronics, Bank of America, AT&T, ExxonMobil, and many others.
28 A hacker attack against the computer system, launched simultaneously from a large number of computers.
29 Customer Relations Management.
IT Development
81 The plans for the next year include the active work in many areas:
Ensuring a mode of operation for critical systems of the Bank, which in case of failure can maintain a limited functionality of client services; transferring the most critical systems to 24/7 operation.
Implementing technology that can increase system performance without the need to review solution architecture.
Continuing the centralization and unification of systems in the regional banks.
Further transfer of corporate customer lending systems to the automated Unified Corporate System;
Centralizing billing systems based on the Unified Payment Service to allow receipt of payments in the regional bank network.
Centralizing cash service systems in the regions within the Cash Center.
Reducing the number of complaints related to payments.
Developing an intelligent system for client flow management, a system for evaluating the performance of BU operations, and reducing the number of front-end systems.
Implementing Cyber Security 2018, a program for ensuring the sustainable development of business and IT of the Group amid the constant increase in cyber threats and global challenges, as well as providing secure services to customers.
Implementing new technologies in parallel processing, distributed hardware and software systems, self-taught algorithms, intelligent administration of IT systems, use of open-source code, mobile security and mobile devices configured to meet the needs of specific customer segments.
Continuing implementation of the Transformation of IT Organization program aimed at improving the effectiveness of the IT Unit, quality of implementing the projects in terms of their time frames, budget, and timely completion of the projects.
Operation Functions
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