CLOSE BROTHERS PREMIUM FINANCE

is not sustainable but technology can make it happen .”

It ’ s fortunate that Loake ( a keen cyclist who was once a member of the UK National Rowing Team ) has plenty of energy because his 2016 workload would tax anyone . The contact centre will be fully deployed around October , he says , and at the same time the enhanced customer gateway will be substantially ready , with an early release in the summer . But his big thing , as the foundation to his Digital Transformation strategy is the current deployment of an IBM Integration Suite , to explain which he resorts an analogy . “ We have a rather inflexible architecture at the moment with multiple point to point connections between individual software components . Unravelling that , peeling back the layers of the onion to get to the heart of it , is a challenge ! The Integration Suite delivered by Prolifics who are an IBM

Premier Partner and specialists in IBM software implementations , will allow us to integrate the new contact centre without attaching it directly to the old system . The same with the new customer gateway . Instead of talking to one another direct they will communicate through the Integration Suite . It makes the components work like Velcro – when attached they are tightly integrated but when you want to remove one it comes off cleanly and you can stick a new one on !”

The digital transformation is a huge project for a company the size of Close Brothers Premium Finance , and represents a major investment by

56 June 2016