Nordic-Baltic banking powerhouse invests in network printing

The last several years have marked a number of great movements in the European financial world. The most important and significant is undoubtedly the shift to the single unified European currency, the Euro.

Others include a corporate consolidation and emergence of the Internet as a new way of banking. All are the case with Nordbanken AB, which merged with Merita Plc. to become one of the largest financial forces in the Nordic and Baltic regions. Under the new name MeritaNordbanken, the bank has seen tremendous growth in the last two years and expects to lead the Internet charge as well as excel in its five key areas of business operations: Retail, Corporate, Markets, Asset Management and Real Estate.

Combined, these five areas generated FIM 4.2 billion in after-tax operating profit. The combined banks have offices and branches all over the world, from New York to London to many points on the continent. By merging with Merita, Nordbanken has become a major part of one of the most important Euro financial institutions with a dynamic view toward the Net. It is currently the world largest Internet bank with more than 1,450,000 customers online.

Although the last two years have been focused on merging data systems, addressing potential Y2K issues and driving customers to the Net, Nordbanken AB has recognised to maintain leadership in technology banking, it needs to focus not only on Internet systems but on upgrading the whole of its internal infrastructure. This, of course, begins with documentation and the need to share information among its 7,000+ employees.

Continuing with the consolidation trend in their industry, the development department at Nordbanken was looking to further capitalise on its existing printing structure and focus away from personal printing and more toward network printing. After looking at several competitors, it was decided that Lexmark would be the printing vendor of choice, since Nordbanken weren`t prepared to overhaul their entire printing structure that was based on PPDS. However, an upgrade in quality and functionality was needed, and Lexmark`s Optra series fitted right in with what Nordbanken already had and gave a quality boost for a great price.

When Nordbanken first moved from microcomputers to implement a local area platform, the company built its printing infrastructure upon personal computers and local area networks between 1991 and 1992. At this time IBM was chosen as the printer supplier. In fact, this existing IBM structure was one of the initial reasons Nordbanken chose Lexmark. The vendor`s IBM roots ensured Nordbanken`s printers would be fully compatible with the legacy IBM PPDS printing.

Lexmark was also an obvious choice because the original platform was designed to use LEXLINK for printing. Efforts have since been made to standardise management of as many products as possible to order to maximise the benefits of Lexmark`s MarkVision system management software. The fact that Lexmark supported other printers that had previously been brought onto the IBM PPDS platform was a major reason for choosing the vendor.

At first the choice was easy for Nordbanken because of the compatibility then Nordbanken kept using Lexmark because the quality, performance and management were acceptable.

Nordbanken, in its push to become a premier Internet bank and for management reasons, is reorienting its printing strategy toward the network. The LANs today are based on OS/2 Warp 3.0 on the server side while on the client side they are based on OS/2 for the branch offices and other environments. The number of NT clients is also rapidly growing.

Most administrators and users implement 3270-emulation and use basic office suites, browsers, some proprietary software calculators and other typical banking applications. Thus, there is a tremendous amount of printing at Nordbanken. Users need all kinds of hard copy documentation from client record databases, transaction files, reports and many other basic functions one would expect from a major financial institution. Combined with Merita, the company now generates about 170 million printed pages per year.

This kind of demand is handled on a variety of levels with a number of different products. Among the printers utilised at Nordbanken are the Optra S 1655, Optra S 1855, Optra LX, Optra 4039, Optra SC1275, Optra Color 45, Optra E, Optra E310. From large departmental printers to colour printers to smaller quick space savers, Nordbanken has managed to place the right hardware in the right places and make it all manageable. NB also comments that there was slight learning curve for the new hardware because of legacy and the new Lexmark printers with old 4019-PPDS-drivers.

As MeritaNordbanken settles from the merger and continues its push into the world of Internet banking, the expectation is that the printed document will continue to play a major part in the company`s business.

With over 1.6 million direct customer links, Nordbanken don`t expect to be printing any less within 3-5 years. They know they have made a good investment that will grow as MeritaNordbanken expands to become one of the premiere financial forces in Europe and beyond."

For further information, please contact Richard Fearon at tel. (011) 329 0999; fax (011) 792 7449; e-mail rfearon@venture.co.za