Independent Trustee Company (ITC) is one of Ireland’s leading providers of self-administered pensions with over €1.2 billion of client funds in 4,000 pension structures. Established in 1992 and employing almost sixty staff, ITC also acts as a trustee of self-administered schemes, private trusts and larger occupational schemes. Moreover, ITC is among one of the founding members of the Association of Pensioneer Trustees in Ireland.
THE CHALLENGE
ITC realized that its existing legacy system was incompatible with new business needs. A huge number of spread sheet macros had grown up across the organisation, making the work look chaotic, untidy and all over the place. Many of organization’s processes were still quite manual and crying out to be automated. A new platform was needed to make business processes more efficient and effective, without increasing headcount.
A thorough analysis and mapping of business processes, which needed transformation, was done, resulting in a list of more than forty processes, ranging from complex scenarios like adding new customers, which required digital signatures and AML compliance, through to simpler processes like ‘transfer of funds’, where customers wished to allocate money between investments, which needed to be revamped.
THE SOLUTION
ITC turned to us (TEKenable), its long-time technology services provider, with years of experience in providing companies with innovative, modern IT systems to integrate with their existing legacy systems. Having worked with ITC for more than a decade, we were intimately aware of the company’s existing IT infrastructure.
We earlier worked with ITC to eliminate paper-based processes and built iTrust – a platform holding details of all client investment information. This project was a huge success, reducing costs significantly, making business more efficient and positioning ITC to thrive despite the severe recession that hit in 2008.
“ITC is a very successful company and has built a very strong position in the market for self-administered pensions. The challenge now is to grow revenues by winning new business and to do this without a big increase in headcount. Deploying Phase 1 of our new platform will allow us to manage new customers acquisition more efficiently and to better serve our customers, once we on-board them.
Eamonn King – Head of IT dept. at ITC
We’re happy we selected Dynamics and we look forward to working closely with TEKenable to deliver Phase 2.”
After long discussions within the client ITC, it was decided that the solution will be implemented in an array of phases, with Phase 1 of ‘quick wins’ and high impact improvements and a Phase 2 to further extended automation across the business.
Phase 1 is complete and operational where TEKenable provided ITC with a platform – Microsoft Dynamics 365 – which best met their vision for proficient business operations. Dynamics 365 was successfully implemented and integrated well into the existing Office 365 environment. ITC already had access to SharePoint under its E3 license, so it made sense to integrate Dynamics with SharePoint for document storage and management.
THE OUTCOME
The solution has enabled ITC to manage all the activities involved in onboarding a new client – entirely through Dynamics 365. It is also integrated with iTrust, the bespoke ITC system holding customer account and investment information.
Moreover, the solution eliminated a wide range of manual processes and enable ITC to use one centralized system for clientele management. It also enabled ITC to save human capital costs, enhanced their business activity, and lowered the cost of maintaining exhausted and weary old systems in place.
