Collaboration solution helps Citigroup global meet local needs
From New York to New Delhi, customers want top service tailored to their individual needs. The challenge for global giants such as Citigroup is how to run a business with global reach while meeting customers’ local needs. With 280,000 employees serving 120 million customers in 103 countries, Citigroup found that collaboration is key.
Collaboration connects local problems to global solutions
Collaboration gives employees access to more knowledge and better information than when working alone. “We needed a mechanism whereby our investment bankers around the world could interact with each other, share a common set of information but personalize how they did business day-to-day," says Gary Greenwald, head of Citigroup Global Corporate and Investment Bank (CIB) client analytics.
CIB wanted to give its global investment bankers faster, customizable access to vital information from 270 internal and third-party sources. This information was critical to meet customer needs at the local level.
Citigroup seeks solution to integrate global systems
Providing access to information from a range of existing systems is often a nightmare for IT developers. Citigroup approached Microsoft in November 2001 with this challenge.
"Help me build a highly scalable, secure, and fully personalized distribution platform for proprietary and third-party content," says Paul Galant, managing director and global head of E-commerce and market data strategy at CIB. "The content we need to get at exists in every flavor of technology ever sold on the globe. We have the information, but need a master key to unlock it," Galant explains. After weighing the options, Citigroup decided Microsoft .NET software had the vigor and flexibility required for integrating multiple systems.
Citigroup identified several markers for success:
| • | Let employees customize portals with little or no IT help |
| • | Integrate existing, diverse systems, both inside Citigroup and from third-parties |
| • | Develop quickly while emphasizing system reliability |
For more information about Citigroup’s vision and development process, see the Citigroup CitiVision video link below.
Microsoft .NET Framework maximizes integration
The new solution, dubbed Citigroup CitiVision, is built on Microsoft .NET technology that helps connect people, information, systems, and devices.
Rich Zaloom, managing director of Investment Banking Technology Services at Citigroup, says, "Picking the .NET Framework and all the .NET technologies was a key strategic moment for us to be able to accelerate our application delivery and maximize the integration with what we have already invested in."
The development team, made up of both Citigroup and Microsoft developers, focused on a Microsoft ASP.NET Web application hosted on Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS)—the Web server built into the Microsoft Windows 2000 Server operating system.
ASP.NET enables CIB investment bankers to access CitiVision through Microsoft Internet Explorer with a single password. Web services created the dynamic and customizable system Citigroup wanted. Microsoft .NET Framework also offered another compelling benefit: speed—the entire project took just six months.
CitiVision customizable solution saves time
For the 12,000 employees at Citigroup Global Corporate and Investment Bank (CIB), CitiVision integrates information from a wide spectrum of sources, including data from providers such as Reuters and Thomson.
Investment bankers can customize their portals on their own. They can add market data, company profiles, and even live streaming video to their portals just by dragging custom Web parts where they want them.
With a collaboration solution in place, Citigroup can focus on its core business and, more importantly, its customers. "Now that we have CitiVision in place, we can leverage it. We can concentrate on developing new content for our users,” says Greenwald. “We're in the business of banking. We let Microsoft build the highways."
