Nationwide Building Society Delivery Partner Helps Nationwide Deploy High-Performing Faster Payments Service

Nationwide Building Society in the United Kingdom (U.K.) is a major force in retail financial services, and maintains its competitive edge by continually seeking ways of improving customer services. As a founding member of the U.K.’s Faster Payments Service, Nationwide needed a solution to reduce the time taken for settlement of payments between customers’ accounts from three days to near real time. Microsoft Services mitigated the building society’s risk by taking on responsibility for the end-to-end delivery of the entire project. Not only were the requirements extensive and complex, but it also had to be delivered within a short timeframe. Microsoft Services took just 14 weeks to design and deliver the improved business-critical solution. Nationwide now has a secure, high-performing, and easily maintainable Faster Payments Service.

Nationwide Building Society is the world’s largest building society, with 15 million members, 1.2 million mortgage borrowers, and total assets of approximately £200 billion (U.S.$277 billion). With around 700 branches and 3.2 million Internet banking users, the building society has built a strong reputation by sticking to a mutual model of ownership in which no dividend is paid to shareholders. So when a directive from the United Kingdom (U.K.) Office of Fair Trading (OFT) was made, it was a good fit for Nationwide to be one of the 13 founding organisations implementing the U.K.’s Faster Payments Services initiative. The objective of this initiative was to reduce payment times between different banks’ customer accounts from three working days to near real time.

Microsoft Services provided solid project management skills and development methodologies, and the ability to deliver within the spirit and not just the letter of the contract. Peter Stafford Director of IT Nationwide Building Society

The new Faster Payments Service was launched in May 2008, and, with it, Nationwide hoped that it had developed a potential solution to meet its obligation to the U.K.’s regulatory authorities. But attempts to scale what had been built were faltering and so the building society was faced with a decision.

Peter Stafford, Director of IT, Nationwide Building Society, says: “This was a big challenge for us—we were faced with two choices, one of which was to rip and replace and the other to modify the work done so far on our existing systems. The timescales were extremely tight. We decided to work with a partner to redevelop the existing services fast.”

Nationwide had the advantage of a long-term relationship with Microsoft, having chosen Microsoft technology for some of its core banking systems, as well as its messaging environment. However, Nationwide was looking for a much greater commitment than just a delivery partner deploying its own products. Stafford says: “We were looking for a partner to take control of overall delivery of a complete solution.”

Nationwide chose Microsoft Services to put the Faster Payments Service back on track because of its existing relationship and the promise of a “One Microsoft” approach, where different teams from Microsoft unite to provide the best customer solution. Nationwide was confident that success would be achieved by having Microsoft take responsibility for delivering the solution and the ability of Microsoft Services to mobilise quickly by employing a highly skilled team.

Aaron Tunesi, Programme Manager for Microsoft Services, says: “This was a business-critical solution for Nationwide that required a coordinated customer–supplier relationship to deliver the project. We had 14 weeks to complete all of the design, development, test, and deployment activities. We had to deploy a team of 40 people very quickly and bring the cultures of our two organisations together by breaking down the traditional barriers between customer and vendor.”

This was a business-critical solution for Nationwide that required a coordinated customer–supplier relationship to deliver the overall project. Aaron Tunesi Programme Manager Microsoft Services

Microsoft Services showed a real commitment to delivering the right solution for Nationwide, including automated build and testing to provide a rapid deployment of a high-performing scalable solution, going far beyond its contractual mandate. Jeremy Wood, Divisional Director, Customer Operations at Nationwide Building Society, says: “I’m glad we made the decision to work with Microsoft Services at such a critical juncture in the project’s development. Microsoft Services got us to a place that we could have reached ourselves, but it would have been a slower process. Nationwide had worked with Microsoft Services before but not previously in constructing a critical business system. Microsoft Services built the infrastructure that took payments from customers’ accounts and delivered them to the Faster Payments Service Gateway.”

The development was done at Microsoft facilities, with software being delivered to Nationwide at different stages to achieve various milestones in the project. Microsoft provided an infrastructure engineer and a test lead to support the deployment of the builds and involved Microsoft Premier Support at the design stage to optimise on-going backup for the solution.

The orchestration layer was built using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2, which connects to the Nationwide Faster Payments Service Gateway. The solution also includes Microsoft SQL Server 2005 data management software and the Microsoft .NET Framework development environment. Wood says: “Microsoft Services brought a new dimension to this development, with its ability to deliver an agile and scalable business solution. Our teams worked closely together to help ensure that the application fitted with our other core systems—of which there were many.”

Microsoft Services rapidly became a trusted advisor to Nationwide. In building the solution, Microsoft was prepared to work with other vendor products, drawing on the expertise of its product groups and the wider Microsoft support organisation. Stafford says: “Microsoft Services took responsibility for managing other suppliers and bringing the project together. The relationship has got to a point now where there is a lot of trust—we’re developing solutions that are to our mutual benefit.”

Microsoft Services accelerated delivery of the Faster Payments Service to Nationwide without compromising quality, and exceeded its contractual obligations to ensure the best possible outcome. On going live, the solution was quickly scaled up to process more than 1 million transactions in a way that surpassed the building society’s expectations. The key to success was the ability of Microsoft Services to support the deployment of Microsoft products using highly skilled people and tried and tested procedures. Stafford says: “Microsoft Services provided solid project management skills and development methodologies, and the ability to deliver within the spirit and not just the letter of the contract.”

The relationship has got to a point now where there is a lot of trust—we’re developing solutions that are to our mutual benefit. Peter Stafford Director of IT Nationwide Building Society

Faster Payments Service Keeps Nationwide Competitive

Nationwide is one of the biggest players in the U.K. personal financial services market and is proud of its record of excellent customer service. Introducing the Faster Payments Service was a business-critical initiative. It shows that Microsoft technology is capable of meeting core banking requirements, and the solution also integrates easily with the Nationwide SAP core banking technology.

As a result of the joint project, Nationwide is now processing around 600,000 payments every day.

Wood says: “The Faster Payments Service offers customers a new way of banking—they can transfer money almost immediately. The customer experience has been enhanced by the solution and feedback has been highly complimentary, with demand likely to grow over time. In the future, we’re going to see the Faster Payments Service become much more of a feature of the banking arrangements customers make.”

Microsoft Services Mitigates Risk with Rapid Delivery Schedule

Using an agile delivery approach, Microsoft Services completed the analysis, design, development, and stabilisation in just 14 weeks. Microsoft Services focused on early time to value to get the solution implemented as soon as possible to the right quality. Stafford says: “Microsoft Services had a good understanding of our underlying technologies and that helped in finding a solution to fit into a complex IT infrastructure.”

One Microsoft Approach Offers Comprehensive Support to Nationwide

Microsoft Services brings to any delivery its unique development capacity, but also draws on much wider technical support using a One Microsoft approach. Tunesi says: “By working closely with our Microsoft Services Premier Support Technical Account Manager within Nationwide, we were able to build the operational requirements into the solution effectively. We could also call on other areas of the Microsoft product support groups at the head office in Redmond to ensure we had a clear channel of expertise into the Nationwide Live Operations Group.”

With Microsoft Services taking over responsibility for the architecture, the amount of code was reduced from 1.5 million lines to around 700,000. Performance targets were also exceeded. Peter Stafford Director of IT Nationwide Building Society

Stafford adds: “The Nationwide Faster Payments Service is an excellent example of the One Microsoft approach, where different components of Microsoft work together on solving a particular challenge.”

Microsoft Expertise Simplifies Solution with 800,000 Fewer Lines of Code

The focus Microsoft Services brought to the delivery of the solution simplified the design and created a more robust infrastructure, which, in turn, has improved maintenance and operational controls. Stafford says: “With Microsoft Services taking over responsibility for the architecture, the amount of code was reduced from 1.5 million lines to around 700,000. Performance targets were also exceeded, with Microsoft processing transactions in less than a second instead of the three seconds initially required by Nationwide.”

Knowledge Transfer Helps Improve IT Maturity for Customer

Nationwide values Microsoft Services for the added value, breadth of specialism, and knowledge its engineers and consultants have brought to the building society. Microsoft is committed to a long-term relationship with Nationwide and is responsive to its current and future needs. Stafford says: “There has been a lot of work around documentation and skills transfer, even to the extent of Microsoft passing across some of the tooling that we have developed so it can be reused in future. I very much like the values Microsoft Services brought to the project.”

Microsoft Services helps customers and partners discover and implement high-value Microsoft solutions that generate rapid, meaningful, and measurable results. As the consulting, technical support, and customer service arm of the world’s leading software company, Microsoft Services enables the successful adoption, deployment, and use of Microsoft solutions and technologies for all customers, from the individual to the enterprise.

For more information about Microsoft Services, go to:

www.microsoft.com/microsoftservices

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:

www.microsoft.com

For more information about Nationwide Building Society products and services, visit the Web site at: www.nationwide.co.uk