Dutch banking customers now have free access to powerful personal financial planning tools online, thanks to a fertile partnership between Cape Town-based Jam Warehouse and Dutch company Yellowtail.
Jam Warehouse has just completed an innovative Web-based savings calculator for Rabobank, one of the largest banks in The Netherlands. The tool helps the bank`s customers decide how much to save and over what period, depending on their personal profile and goals.
"It`s quite common in The Netherlands for people to take sabbaticals from work, for anything from a few weeks to a few months," explains Jam Warehouse MD John Thorne. "Financial planning for those breaks, and for retirement, is subject to many regulations. Some recent changes to the regulations meant banks had to offer more information and more flexible products. Rabobank`s new calculator is a response to those changes."
Richard Dorman, the Jam Warehouse developer responsible for the tool, notes that it provides a deceptively simple user experience. "It will suggest quite different options depending on your income, age, appetite for risk, how much time you want to take off, and so on, so there are some quite complex rules behind it. It`s very calculation-intensive."
Rabobank also needed the savings calculator to be fast, and to cope with expected high usage. "It was an interesting design challenge," says Dorman. "Rabobank have a reputation for very good electronic solutions, so they wanted a tool that was small, effective and fast. The technical requirements were quite exacting, so we opted for very flexible technology that enabled us to meet all their goals."
The tool was delivered on time with no errors, enabling Rabobank to meet its goal of being first to market with products based on the new regulations.
"There were some challenges working in the Dutch language," says Thorne, "and our partners at Yellowtail were very important in helping us to meet those. They are Dutch but lived and worked in Cape Town for several years, so they`re ideally placed to act as intermediaries." Yellowtail and Jam Warehouse are working together on several projects for the Dutch market.
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Jam Warehouse (www.jamwarehouse.com) is a Cape Town-based software development company that delivers business process management and Web-based document management solutions. Its clients include international retailers and consumer goods companies. A Microsoft Certified Partner, Jam Warehouse also has strong open source development expertise.
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