At a glance

Coventry Building Society and Atos have completed a major upgrade of digital infrastructure that will help strengthen the Society’s position as a top-10 UK savings and mortgage provider.

Outcomes

Seamless migration to strengthen market-leading position.
Maintained product and customer experience differentiation.
Accelerated key aspects of the program to facilitate homeworking for 1,200 workers.

“Having a new hybrid data centre platform in the United Kingdom not only allows us to continue to provide superior products and services to our members, it reduces risk and accelerates agile digital developments to our colleagues and members to meet changing needs.”

James Fellows, Chief Information Officer, Coventry Building Society

Coventry Building Society is the UK’s second largest building society and a top-10 UK savings and mortgage provider with almost 2 million members. The Society employs around 2,700 people and has a network of branches across the country from Sheffield to Somerset.

Seeking a like-minded partner

The systems running Coventry Building Society’s back office, products and eventual user interfaces have evolved brilliantly over 135 years. They’ve enabled the Society’s continual growth and market-leadership. However, it became apparent that the difficulty and risk of modifying them to offer new products and services demanded action.

To prevent the problem from growing, the financial institution looked into its options for digital transformation. It conducted a rigorous, competitive supplier selection process. The winner was Atos, with its rich history and rapid plan to spark transformation through a wholesale upgrade of the Society’s digital estate.

Almost immediately, Atos and the Society’s engineers jumped in side-by-side.

Embedding positive cultural change

The new cloud-based operating model was designed to accelerate digital initiatives, a big change for the whole organization. Based on a hybrid cloud infrastructure, on-premises data centers would be blended with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Coventry’s business-critical savings and mortgage systems would be separated from its online presence, its core banking engine and payment services.

But Coventry’s first priority was to help its people prepare for the change by establishing an inclusive culture of innovation to build confidence and readiness for the transformation.

The cultural change permeated the organization. It was noticeable in operations through the creation of a full knowledgebase for future development initiatives. And, it inspired systematic innovation, for example, of built-in service and CX functionality.

The digital difference

Coventry’s seamless migration to and deployment of best-of-breed technologies was deep and far-reaching. All of the company’s business processes were redesigned and improved — with zero service disruption.

This meant workers could continue to focus on their roles. Key aspects of the program were accelerated seamlessly to allow 1,200 of them to work safely and securely from home at minimal notice.

In addition to streamlining and reducing the risks of digital development, Coventry now has the flexibility to get ahead of regulatory, business or societal changes and respond all the faster.

Now this financial services leader can continue on its trajectory of excellence, with market-leading digital initiatives long into the future.

“This is a tremendous example of a highly collaborative partnership from inception to completion leading to wholesale renewal of Coventry Building Society’s digital infrastructure. This milestone will act as a catalyst for accelerated digital transformational activity which is a hugely exciting prospect.”

Clay Van Doren, CEO Northern Europe, Atos

Why Atos for digital evolution in financial services

Atos has deep domain expertise in the financial services sector and offers differentiated business aligned solutions. Our continuous modernization approach ensures seamless and risk-free modernization irrespective of the scale and complexity involved. It is based on a Modernize-while-Manage (M&M) theme, wherein continuous modernization is achieved while managing the application portfolios to create the required momentum that ensures success.