Westpac New Zealand(MIS100 2009)

By CIO staff | Friday, July 24 2009

2008 ranking: 19

Senior IS executive: David Boyes, general manager, technology, sourcing and operations New Zealand
Reports to: George Frazis, CEO, Westpac New Zealand
Size of IS shop: 260

PCs: 5600
Mobile PCs: 1020
Terminals: 500
Hand-held devices: 1750
Total screens: 8870

Industry: Finance and insurance
PC environment: Compaq; IBM; Toshiba; HP; Windows 2000, XP
Server environment: IBM, Sun, Tandem, AIX, OS400, Windows XP
DBMS: DB2, Oracle, SQL
Address: 188 Quay Street, Auckland
Website: www.westpac.co.nz
Key IS projects this year: Corporate hardware refresh; fraud and risk-reduction initiatives.

Westpac New Zealand believes it is important to maintain consistency in its business strategy and is continuing the banks focus on stakeholders, simplifying processes, managing risk and growing the business.

CIO David Boyes says IT is a key enabler of Westpac’s strategy. “While our technology strategy remains consistent, the economic climate is challenging how we deliver it. We will support the bank’s success by delivering solutions that are simple and innovative in the current environment,” says Boyes.

This includes spending time with frontline employees — a strategy that gives the IT team a better feel for what is happening on the ground and helps guide operational and strategic focus.

“Our measurement of success has matured with stronger focus on key applications impacting our staff and customer experience. This has led to better fact-based conversations within IT — based on what our people are telling us — and promoted greater advocacy for our services by the business.”

Key ICT projects for 2009 will take place in the areas of e-business and business continuity and disaster recovery, among others. Boyes says Westpac continues to drive the performance of its broader IT team (internal and external) in the delivery of processes, with a key focus on systems stability.

Westpac Bank outsources its datacentre and host and PC maintenance to IBM, applications development to HCL, Unisys and EDS, and systems and network management to Gen-i. As well, Gen-i also looks after the Westpac call centres and part of the help desk.