Geographic Diversification

One of the main hallmarks of the Group is its international character, as reflected by the geographic diversification of itsbusiness.

The Bank also has several divisions that operate globally and developing business: Wholesale Banking (Santander Global Banking & Markets), Asset Management (Santander AssetManagement), Insurance (Santander Insurance), Global Private Banking, and Media Payment (Santander Cards).

Business Model

Santander has built a business model itself, which relies on the following pillars: concentration of activity in retail banking, through the largest branch network among international banks (more than 14,000, including Sovereign), geographic diversification, prudent risk management, cutting edge technology at the service of business efficiency, capital discipline and better management team.

The Bank is thus to provide the greatest added value to its 90 million customers, 3 million shareholders and 170,961 employees.

Santander is committed to society in all countries where it operates. Its main focus within the corporate social responsibility is Santander Universities, which some have more than 700 cooperation agreements with universities around the world.

Problem:

SANTANDER already used many applications, some not developed by the Informatics team, based on extraction of relevant documents over the network of bank branches, processes for external promoters and Bookmarks Operation Factoring. This information was not centralized, so it was difficult to refer it to the organization, often existed only on paper (material processes) or sent by email or processes into EXCEL files, the databases used were ACCESS. Then there arose a need to take advantage of a platform with workflow functionalities, mainly in order to support the process of receiving and sending letters and the life cycle of purchase invoices (for Business Cards, Stamps and stamp, Orders) from the reception until its accounting and payment. Among the main problems faced with the question Santander include:

• The distribution of documents was conducted using e-mail, in person delivery of physical paper, with the responsibility of several departments, and thus subject to human error;
• It is difficult to be able to have efficient mechanisms for searching and aggregation processes, orders, data, dates of entry and state statistics;
• It was not possible to know where the physical documents ware without question all stakeholders of a particular Flow;
• There was a non-negligible cost of passage of documents between the various directorates and departments.

Solution

Infosistema proposed to Santander a solution based on an application developed – iFlow. The iFlow is a workflow solution, on which can be mapped and executed business processes. The system performs automated routing of information between the various actors in a given process, promoting the early implementation of tasks relating to each of them.

It is a powerful tool for business process management, which uses the latest standards of BPM technology to provide a simple and intuitive full dematerialization of your business processes. It supports a wide range of tasks such as generating forms, fork processes, referral, delegation, validation, integration with enterprise systems, web services and many others.

The iFlow is a workflow system that coordinates the execution of business processes, making the automatic sending of tasks and information relevant to your recipients. The configuration of a flow is performed using an intuitive graphical tool. Stake-holders in each process can complete their tasks through a friendly web interface provided by the system.

The application development is done in an editor that flows similar to what happens with Bank sphere, these objects are already available pre-designed to be programmed or configured as needed.

The technology used in this type of tool is Java, the great advantage of this development is that, no need to write much code, the objects available already meet the diverse needs.

Key Features:

• BPM workflow engine;
• Design of integrated forms;
• Extensive bibliotheca of processing blocks;
• Database Integration with external systems;
• Integration with LDAP (authentication of users on the server);
• Integration with Transaction Provider System (CENTRAL bank);
• Multiple user directories;
• Web interface dynamics;
• Editor of independent processes;
• Compliance with J2EE;
• Independent of Operating System;
• Ease of use;
• Generate PDF document (fully customizable) – Templates of PDF documents, the templates for PDF documents are held in RTF for using such a word processor that lets you save documents in RTF (e.g.Microsoft Word).

In addition to functions spelled out, there are other features in the Core, such as:

• Sending e-mails through the SMTP server of the Group;
• Sending SMS via the SMS gateway.

From the standpoint of iFlow, aflow is the mapping of a particular business process and the sequence of computational operations. Each of those operations is modeled in iFlow by a function block. Thus, the definition of a flow is no more than a set of functional blocks connected properly in order to shape certain logic, which can be arbitrarily complex. In turn, a function block is a module (simple and reusable) responsible for performing a specific task (such as validating the value of a variable, run a public database, show a form of user interface, etc.).

Each block has a set of input ports and a set of output ports. It is through these ports that make the connections between the various blocks to form a flow. The Workflow Editor allows, through an intuitive graphical user interface, design the definition of a particular flow, instantiating illustrations of various block and making your call.

The blocks are organized into libraries (toolboxes), according to its functionality.

In SANTANDER have been developed / implemented the following applications available on the Intranet:

• Business Cards – Business Cards Request by employees of Santander Totta Group. The solution should allow the electronic circulation of information between all stakeholders, as well as automatic generation of labels for shipping orders from the warehouse.
  The proposed solution implements a process for internal request of business cards on the workflow tool iFlow. To implement the present case, it was necessary to add a module for printing labels,to enable the automatic generation of labels in the warehouse.
• Stamps and Stamp – Request for Stamps and Stamps by employees -similar to Business Cards;
• Order Management – Bank Agencies make order request. Can choose one of the available campaigns and choose one or more products available for the campaign of choice;
• Call Center Contacts – allows to create the contact through Telephone agents or Call Center Campaign, allowing the shipment to the Bank Agencies of the processes of contact with customers who cannot be treated in the Call Center, with subsequent monitoring and reporting on them;
• Foreign Promoters – Promoter Registration Procedure – allows the recording of data of the external promoters. The data is recorded on a local database so that future use is allowed with an administration tool (for DCPMI).
  After the data recording the process is forwarded by the various players before the approval. Being approved, it will proceed by Bank Agencies and printing of documents associated with the completed registration process. The registration of the foreign promoter is made by Bank Agencies.
• Commercial Management Plan:
  • PVT (Visits Quarterly Plan)- Bank Agencies Directors, have the opportunity to view and print the data of visits to branches;
  • PGT (Quarterly Management Plan) – a tool to facilitate the Branch Customer planning and tracking of targets proposed by DCCDR – Directorate for Coordination and Stimulation Control Network. The way to do it is to computerize the process of Quarterly Goal Setting and Branch Plan of Action. Process of goal setting by the DCCDR, procurement or acquisition of data for each of the branches and filling part of its plan of action;
  • PGS (Weekly Management Plan)- tool to track weekly commitments made in Bank Agencies meetings (OTC Meeting Minutes);
  • MOF Model (Functional Optimization)- Completion of the Functional Optimization Model can only be done by the directors / sub-directors of Bank Agencies. The planning should be performed weekly.
• IFIC-FOF – Factoring Sheets – The process of opening and approving FOF (Chip Operation Factoring) throughout itslife cycle between the creation of the proposed financial terminal and its completion. The flow of FOF is started on a Business Centre desk (EDC) for a Commercial Manager (Manager) after creation of the Central System via Terminal Financial is sent to the IFIC (Financial Institution Credit) for approval, then it may or not return to the Bank Agencies or originate DCE for changes, ending in the risks area, with possible referral to the Manager, IFIC or EDC for reconsideration.
• Particular Conditions -Prices

Benefits

• The Intranet Portal and Document Management developed by Infosistema allowed SANTANDER:
• The rapid and simplified access for all staff to a wide range of operational and institutional information;
• Speeding the flow of correspondence and mainly in the approval cards stream request, stamps and date stamps, parcels and its subsequent buying process, storage and printing;
• Eliminate the possibility of loss of paper documents by scanning them and also by alerting and control mechanisms;
• Improving the organization of all correspondence with efficient and effective search on opened or completed processes;
• Monitor the current status of all the requests on the various existing applications;
• Reduce operational costs involved in mail processing, via a high level of automation.