Electronic board of the bank and EDS: integration experience

Take a typical corporate customer, say, a bank. Each bank has governing bodies - the board of directors and the board, whose needs in working with documents can hardly be met with the help of an ordinary SED. Moreover, one should not confuse the task of ensuring the activities of collegial bodies with the so-called “ARM of the Supervisor”, which exists in some SEDs. The head, even if of the highest rank, is in principle the same participant in the business process as any other employee, he also agrees and approves the documents. Only because of their employment and high status, managers are more demanding on the convenience of working with the system and, as a rule, are very mobile. In short, managers need a limited subset of the SED functions packed in a beautiful and user-friendly interface on the tablet, but this is still an EDS, and not some other system.
And when we talk about the automation of collegial bodies, such as the board of directors and the board, collective work and support for corporate governance processes come to the fore, for which specialized systems are used. The SED, even with the “ARM Manager”, does not cover this set of tasks.

Background: it all started with EDS

Let's move a little bit into the past. In 2013, Almazergienbank made a decision on the modernization of the SED, and a year later the TEZIS system was introduced, instead of the previous SED “BUSINESS”, which was used only by the office. The customer, comparing the cost of developing the system for the entire bank, and the cost of introducing a new system, and realizing that the amounts are about the same, concluded that you can look at something more modern. Chose between WSS Docs and CES TEZIS (as the most modern and implemented on the web client). As a result, we chose the THESIS due to low demand for communication channels and client machines, good references from banks and a user-friendly interface.
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The introduction of the THESIS in the standard configuration took place in 2014, plus the migration of 20 thousand documents from the CED “BUSINESS” was completed. By the way, now the flow of information has grown significantly - only in a month 15 thousand new documents are started up in TEZIS. A year later, the customer wanted to expand the functionality of the solution - then the topic arose with the automation of the work of the board. In principle, the move is logical: if typical processes are automated, it is worthwhile to take care of other things that are important for business - and ensuring the activities of the bank’s top management in this series has a very high priority.

The transition from quantity to quality: when there are many managers

As philosophy teaches us, quantity transforms into quality. If you simply collect many managers in one room, for example, all the members of the bank's board, even if everyone with their tablet connected to the SED, they will not be able to work together.
In order to conduct an electronic meeting of a collegial body, the system needs to add some new quality - other functions are needed: planning meetings, managing the agenda, preparing questions and materials (documents) to them, voting and processing the minutes. And do not forget about performance control, which is also implemented here in a different way.

This is exactly what our customer asked - to make sure that the governing bodies of the bank could work on mobile devices, make decisions at meetings and monitor their implementation. Moreover, the customer insisted that it was a native application, and not just a web-based EDS client running on the tablet. At first, we proposed a revision option for our mobile version of the THESIS system, but the price of such revision turned out to be too high. (Which is logical - a custom system is always more expensive than a lottery one.)

The customer looked at several specialized systems for collegial bodies, then we showed him BoardMaps, and eventually decided to integrate with this product — so that the chairman and board members of the bank could work on their iPads in the BoardMaps application and make decisions on agenda items. .

Yakutsk - Samara - Moscow

The geography of the project turned out to be distributed: the customer in Yakutsk, our company Holmont in Samara, and the partner - the company Deshbord Systems in Moscow. We first contacted BoardMaps and suggested integrating our products. Then we went to Yakutsk together, showed the customer how the system for collegial bodies would work in conjunction with TEZIS and agreed that BoardMaps will be used only by board members and secretaries, and all other bank employees will remain in TEZIS - this separation is based on the functional properties of both products, ordinary employees do not need BoardMaps, and board members do not need to go to the TEZIS.

Looking ahead, we can say that the development was actually conducted remotely, only colleagues from Moscow had to go to Yakutsk to install and configure their server and conduct training. And we rolled out changes in the EDS remotely, first to the test server, then to the production server. This practice has been well established, since the system has been in operation for a year.
In our company, all development goes remotely. The specialist leaves only for pre-project inspection, writes the specification, and in extreme cases, leaves to specify the specification. Next is already leaving specialist for implementation. In this project we didn’t need much introduction and implementation - the TEASIS in Yakutsk was already known to both ordinary users and managers.

The organization of interaction between the two teams did not cause any difficulties - it was rather easy to work with the guys from BoardMaps because they, too, were interested in implementing their system with our customer. We communicated directly with programmers, and together PM-or, came up with solutions for how information will flow.

Integration: what, why and how

From a business point of view, the process is as follows: initially meetings are planned in BoardMaps, they are prepared by the secretaries. That is, they collect questions, form an agenda, notify participants about the upcoming meeting, etc. Directly during the meeting, organize reports on issues according to the agenda, put draft decisions to the vote, and record the results of the vote. After the meeting ends, the secretary draws up a protocol and creates in the system instructions that were given on the issues considered.

We do not forget that all this is happening in a closed system for access by all employees, designed exclusively for board members. How do performers find out that they have been assigned an assignment? How can they report on its implementation if they do not work with this system? That is, BoardMaps becomes the initiator of the whole integration: the instructions created there at the end of the meeting should go to us in the TEASIS (together with the meeting protocol) in order to transfer them to the performers.

Next, the standard process of processing tasks in the THESIS is started, the executors perform their tasks, and the result of this execution — that is, when an employee clicks the “Completed” button, applying some document as an attachment — this result goes back to BoardMaps. Familiarization with the minutes of the meeting can also be launched as a process in the THESIS. It turns out that the order in BoardMaps is mapped with the TEASIS task. As soon as the task is fulfilled in the SED, the order becomes executed in the automation system of the board.

True to life: both APIs had to be finished

In the ideal world view, both products have a complete and perfect API, so their integration is easy and fast. But we live where spherical horses do not live. Each of the products was sharpened on its own subject area and therefore, with all their external similarities - it seems like there, and there is some work with documents and tasks - all the same, the API had to be refined.

On the TEZIS side, two things had to be done. First, add the ability to take data from BoardMaps orders — that is, fill in the task fields for a specific algorithm. Secondly, when working with the meeting protocol, to block all processes except acquaintance - because the protocol is agreed and approved in BoardMaps.

Colleagues from Dashboard Systems also had to work hard - they had to block the orders themselves while they were on the execution in the THESIS, so that the BoardMaps could not be accidentally put a mark on the execution of the order until the executor reported to the EDS.
As a result, we were able to organize a cross-cutting process, when decisions made at the very top, at a meeting of the bank’s management board, descend into subdivisions and are communicated to specific executors using the familiar SED mechanism. Moreover, these tasks can be decomposed, reassigned, delegated - that is, to use all the wealth of business process management capabilities in the TEASIS. And back: the chairman and members of the board can see the result of the execution of their instructions directly in the automation system of the work of the collegial bodies, without going to the SED.

What to do when requirements float

It is good when the customer knows exactly what he wants, knows how to formulate it, and during the project all requirements are reflected in the detailed specification. In fact, the requirement was one: we want the bank's board to work through its mobile devices and everything is comfortable and beautiful. And so that the main staff of BoardMaps does not work, but only board members and secretaries of meetings. Not too clear, huh?
Kaby shemku al drawing,
We would start a vertezh
Well, so - look how you want,
You will find the damn bald! ...
- even two of the casket, Tit Kuzmich and Frol Fomich, refused to work with such uncertain input. And we had to! In fact, we, together with the customer, invented, the solution, as it should be done, was immediately discussed and implemented. That is, it turned out this absolutely agile.

Looking back, it can be said that this is not good. We made one assessment on terms and cost and there was a great chance to go beyond this, because something is always invented something new, something wants to be improved and so it is possible to program endlessly. Therefore, it is always better to work on a clear TZ, even with minor deviations. However, we managed - thanks to the precise project management, we were able to put the system on time, despite the fact that the requirements were changing on the go.

If you look more widely ...

On the one hand, this project looks like a custom development for a specific customer - if you want integration with some kind of system - here you are. Usually, such developments remain unique and do little for the development of the main product branch.
But here it was interesting that integration with the system was done, which itself is actively moving in the market and has quite a clear focus. The target audience of BoardMaps is the collegial bodies of corporate governance, including boards of directors, committees, boards, etc. So, if you look more broadly, it was not a custom development for the customer, but integration with a specific product.

Despite the fact that TEZIS now ( in version 4.1 ) has its own module for managing meetings and monitoring the execution of protocol points, we see great potential in partnership with Dashboard Systems. Big leaders want everything on their tablet, comfortable and beautiful, with a minimum of functions - only the most necessary. However, there are usually only a few such managers in a company - 10–20 people, and the number of EDS users can amount to hundreds or thousands of employees. Therefore, it may be economically unprofitable for a supplier of mass EDS to develop a special application for such a narrow group of users, whereas for a specialized company it is the main business.

For reference: JSCB ALMAZERGIENBANK was established in 1993. The territorial network of the bank today includes 13 additional offices in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), 5 operating offices in Yakutsk, two representative offices in federal cities - Moscow and St. Petersburg, an operating office in Khabarovsk. Almazergienbank serves over 15 thousand corporate and 350 thousand private clients and occupies the position of one of the largest universal banks in the banking market of Yakutia.