Within only 15 months, RACQ bank transformed its core-banking software that was rapidly approaching a mission-critical limitation by 17 years’ worth of upgrade with assistance from technology services provider, Experteq. Amid challenges of tight timelines, multiple locations and remote teams, the partnership resulted in business as usual loan processes with increased operational efficiencies, and offering open banking services. Despite launching only in 2017, RACQ bank is poised for future growth with a digitally enhanced customer experience, on par with today’s economy.
The University of Sydney’s ADAPT 2019 Workplace Productivity Study show that Australia is significantly behind global competitors in digital transformation and digitalisation. Australian businesses are required to transform digitally to drive productivity, income growth and create jobs, especially in the wake of a global crisis-hit economy and the government’s new $800M Digital Business Plan reflects that. The upgraded system helps RACQ cope with the evolving world of banking and finance, with a cutting-edge platform that is well-equipped for scalability. Experteq provided RACQ bank with the infrastructure and expertise to manage the banking sector’s high security requirements, high availability, costs, compliance and convenience while avoiding outages and vulnerabilities.
The main upgrading challenge was the significant architectural differences between the software versions in the early 2000s and now. Distributed teams across multiple locations within RACQ bank had to come together to understand each other’s needs and collaborate, test, adapt, identify and resolve issues. RACQ and Experteq collaborated on-site in rolling workshops over multiple days to understand and solve pain points, identify opportunities to maximise value and manage change proactively with active communication.
The collaboration resulted in benefits such as bringing people from across the state to work together and learn from each other about how to best break down siloes and engage all stakeholders in an ICT project with a successful end result. RACQ bank also operated business as usual with no disruptions throughout the banking software upgrade progress, minimising impact on employees and members alike. While working on this mission-critical catalyst for change, RACQ became better equipped with the right foundations for the future of banking, with readiness to scale, and an ability to adopt new technology seamlessly.
Steven Purdy, General Manager, Bank Technology, commended Experteq saying, “It’s not every day you hear of a core banking upgrade being delivered ahead of schedule and within budget. RACQ’s partnership with Experteq was a big part of making this happen.”
Experteq CEO, Shane Baker, added “At Experteq, we deeply value the technology partnerships we have developed with FSIs, like RACQ bank, over the last 30 years. By providing an end-to-end managed services approach, combined with in-depth industry know-how and experience, we help fast track the implementation of crucial ICT infrastructure projects quickly, securely and to budget.”
