EoX (End of X - Day, month...) processes are the processes that run daily within a bank with the objective to produce a certain result based on business objectives. The difference between an EoX and tasks/reports that run during the day- one to n times- is, that at the end the tasks/reports during the day are in most cases a preparation for the EoX e.g. in terms of optimization of performance related topics.
Many decisions made in banking industries impact the EoX-processes from an organizational, technical and/or business point of view. One example for each:
Organizational: The strategy of a bank is to reduce IT overhead. Therefore parts of IT-Services are going to be outsourced. Within this process Service Levels need to be agreed on. In case these are not sufficient- e.g. service times differ that way that all the tasks that so have been made internally, cannot longer be granted- timelines may no longer be held since nobody is available to fix a problem.
Technical: Databases due to a need of more data space are moving. Ports are changing. If e.g. authorization of technical users related to EoX processes are not thought of, the EoX can no longer be processed.
Business: Due to business requirements a new application to process payments is implemented. The introduction of a new system impacts technical adjustments. But it also needs to be designed how e.g. the data needs to look like, to ensure that delivering and receiving systems are still able to process the data.
Experience however shows that whenever IT related changes are decided within a bank, the EoX processes- and integrated testing scenarios- are often underestimated. There are a lot of examples that made it to the newspaper- e.g. Hamburger Sparkasse- in 2011, after a major IT implementation project, payment transactions did no longer sufficiently work with an immense customer impact (Knödler, 2011) that at the end costs banking industries a fortune not only monetary but also in terms of reputation.
The above mentioned example and other recent examples, e.g. Deutsche Bank where 13 million transactions went wrong with the impact, that they were not only shown wrong to the customer at statements but also lead to the fact that some customers were not able to withdraw money or make payment transactions (n-tv.de, 2016)- again- show the importance of stable EoX processes.
Not keeping extra focus on how changes effect the EoX processes leads to major impacts in terms of reputation and trust (internally and externally) as well as reduced earnings. It is therefore worth to invest a certain amount of the budget to ensure the stability of EoX processes in a productive system before a package of changes (Release) "goes live".
References
Knödler, G. (11. July 2011). taz.de. Von http://www.taz.de/!5116595/ abgerufen
n-tv.de. (7. June 2016). Von http://www.n-tv.de/ratgeber/13-Millionen-Buchungen-falsch-angezeigt-article17877836.html abgerufen
