Whenever people access bank statements or mortgage documents online – and whenever banks store or share internal and compliance reporting content as part of their back office operations – there’s an 80 percent chance that Viewpointe’s content management system is involved. Viewpointe launched in the early 2000’s after post-9/11 flight restrictions made the physical transport of paper checks unworkable. Today, Viewpointe manages and archives more than 110 billion digitized documents – each available in less than one second upon user request.
What’s next for Viewpointe, and why is it partnering with Kyndryl? We asked Viewpointe’s CEO Tim Coff and Kyndryl’s U.S. President Matt Milton to explain.
Q: What’s Viewpointe’s overall plan for digital transformation?
Tim Coff: In broad strokes, we’re undertaking a “full-stack modernization” of our IT infrastructure and operations. That means we’re updating our hardware, middleware and applications to become cloud-native on the Microsoft Azure platform. There are tons of reasons to do this now, and to do it with Kyndryl.
To begin, we need to be much more agile to execute our growth strategy. That means being able to scale up and scale out to meet heavy demands while avoiding paying for computing capacity we don’t use. Being cloud-native gives us that power.
Next, we need to stay on the cutting edge – and push that edge – when it comes to applications development. The Azure platform will give our developers a consistent, creative experience as we bring new capabilities to market. The Azure environment also is where the next generation of developer talent is used to operating, so we want our infrastructure to meet them where they live so they can focus on innovation instead of process.
Q: Why is it important to undertake IT modernization now?
Matt Milton: Technology is at the core of enabling agility and growth in the financial services industry. In addition to enabling this growth, all enterprises have to be cyber-resilient – meaning they have to protect their customers’ data against security threats, and be able to continue operations without interruption in the event of natural and human-made disasters. In no industry is this more important, from both the customer service and regulatory perspectives, than in financial services.
Legacy infrastructures lack the agility needed to meet the ever-changing demands in the market and the simultaneous explosion of content and data. In addition, they are at risk of security attacks. IT Modernization is necessary to support Viewpointe’s plans to expand its offerings in the financial services content services space. Viewpointe aspires to be the go-to content management offering for U.S. banks, and the platform that Kyndryl is building with them will give Viewpointe a seat at the table with institutions that also are undergoing digital transformations.
Q: How will the partnership work?
Tim Coff: Kyndryl has the talent that perfectly complements our in-house expertise, so we’ll be forming integrated infrastructure management teams where everybody is focused on the project instead of on reporting structures. We’ve had a rewarding relationship with Kyndryl over the years, and Kyndryl’s new freedom of action to deliver best-in-class solutions will enable both of us to do our best work. We expect the project to take three years, and to yield a cost-savings benefit of 20 to 30 percent, in addition to supercharging our capabilities.
There’s also the “culture” issue. Kyndryl understands what we’re about because we both function as the “heart and lungs” of our customers. This transformation – with both teams working as one – will enable us to create a new industry standard for managing content. That’s the kind of creativity and innovation that makes our business, and this partnership, so exciting.
