Fortis

About the Customer

Fortis is an international provider of banking and insurance services to private, business and institutional customers, delivering a full package of financial products and services through its own high-performance channels, and also via intermediaries and other partners. Fortis ranks among Europe’s top 20 financial institutions, with a market capitalization of EUR 43 billion. With excellent solvency, a presence in over 50 countries and a dedicated, professional workforce of 60,000, the company combines global strength with local flexibility.

www.fortis.com

The Customer’s Needs

Fortis IS GMK is looking for a testing service provider, to perform testing services for the J/Rates software application.  J/Rates will be used by Fortis’ dealing room and is an application that enables pricing, deal entry, position-keeping and risk analysis.  J/Rates groups many financial product functionalities and has more than 400,000 deals in stock.  J/Rates is implemented worldwide.  It is adapted to the expectations and characteristics of 9 different countries. There are more than 1,000 users of J/Rates.

The Solution

• A parallel-phased and core-team-controlled approach, based on the IBM Test Process Model, is used to develop the solution.
• Rational testing tools have been proposed for the project.
• Structure the test practice, improve efficiency and effectiveness, start quickly, govern strongly, both in the technical solution and in project management.
• Jump-start, focus on delivery as well as on process improvement.
• Use the existing structure to continue process improvement.
• Fortis requested local delivery (i.e. testing teams located on Fortis’ premises). The testing team will be provided by SkillTeam, and the project management team by IBM. Both will be the object of a signed contract between SkillTeam and Fortis.

What made us special?

Several elements contributed to the combined success of IBM and SkillTeam:

• IBM solution approach: pragmatic, flexible, creative
• IBM commitments demonstrated in our presentation, interviews and contract negotiation
• IBM testing experiences, e.g. CLS
• Strong presence around this project (IBM already involved in consultancy for the development, architecture, user acceptance test and global testing processes)
• IBM services satisfactory in the development phase of J/rates.

In the future, IBM will have the opportunity to position itself for the test outsourcing RFP (to be issued early 2008) i.e. the creation of a testing Factory that will deliver services to all Fortis agencies.