KNIGHTSBRIDGE LAUNCHES FINANCIAL SERVICES PRACTICE

Knightsbridge Solutions LLC announced the formation of a Financial Services practice area to deliver high-performance data solutions to global financial services firms. The practice area will implement highly scalable data warehousing, Web data infrastructures, and householding solutions, as well as specific data strategies for organizations in the midst of mergers and acquisitions. These solutions address the terabyte-class data problems that large financial services firms typically face.

"Clearly, financial services firms led all industries in their early use of technology to understand and retain their existing customers and attract new customers," said Rod Walker, president and COO. "Now, they lead again in the migration to a next generation that merges the e-business channel with their complete view of the customer. We're seeing an aggressive focus on strengthening their marketing and customer care initiatives." Consolidation and new competitors, globalization, product convergence, channel proliferation, new approaches to customer relationship management--these sweeping changes are generating significant big-data problems in the sector.

Leveraging customer data is the top priority as financial services firms rapidly shift their attention to differentiation based on customer service rather than product offerings. Integrating a robust e-business channel supporting customer self-service options, electronic bill presentment, and other value-added services into existing operations has emerged as a second industry priority.

Practice area foundations in scalable and parallel technologies

The Knightsbridge Financial Services practice will leverage the company's deep skills in high-performance solutions for terabyte-class data warehouses and e-business infrastructures, which typically utilize parallel and scalable technologies to implement durable, robust data infrastructures with low cost of ownership.

"Marketing initiatives and customer care applications are largely dependent on the availability of timely and accurate cross-referenced data, given the multiple relationships an individual or family will have with a retail or commercial bank, a consumer credit company, mortgage firm, or securities and investment firm," said A.C. Stebel, senior principal and practice area leader for Financial Services. "Householding, for example, where multiple relationships within a household are linked to facilitate cross-selling and customer service, is one proving ground where a high-performance data solution can deliver results 10, 20, or 30 times faster and more accurately than traditional methods." This expertise is extremely relevant to global financial services firms that need to manage massive throughput requirements, largescale storage, and high performance to establish competitive edge.

Four core competencies headline Financial Services practice offering.

• The Financial Services suite of offering includes four services that address the needs of financial services firms for high-performance data solutions.
• High-performance data warehousing--Data warehouse implementation and reengineering of terabyte-class data warehouses, marts, operational data stores, and data hubs is a core offering of the new practice area. This includes data acquisition processes, data modeling, database design, information delivery applications, and technology architecture and design.
• The practice area will implement scalable architectures using advanced tools and techniques for all three layers: applications (e.g., decision support systems, online analytical processing, and campaign management), hardware (e.g., Teradata, IBM SP, Sun, HP), and database management (e.g., Oracle, DB2, UDB, EEE, Teradata).
• Web data infrastructures -- The integration of Web and operational data sources is key to realizing a 360-degree view of the customer and the customer's relationships with other customers within the institution. It also enables sophisticated marketing initiatives, such as closed loop marketing, churn analysis applications, and cross-selling. Knightsbridge has pioneered solutions for continuous clickstream processes, with techniques to extract and analyze volumes as high as 2 billion clicks a day, and has implemented data backbones supporting multiple applications across disparate channels and business units. The Financial Services practice will leverage these core capabilities in its delivery model.
• Householding solutions -- Linking the customer across product lines and with related customers is the critical path for enabling customer care and marketing strategies. Today this important function is frequently outsourced, with long cycle times and often inaccurate results. The Financial Services practice has proven expertise in optimizing householding applications that can then be deployed on parallel computing platforms to reduce cycle times dramatically.
• Strategies for organizations undergoing mergers and acquisitions -- The practice area has developed specific strategies to help organizations in the midst of a merger or acquisition, including consolidation approaches and alternatives, ROI determination, and interim householding strategies prior to system conversion.

Senior executives in leadership roles

Knightsbridge has recruited senior executives from within the financial services industry to lead the new practice area and retained a team of financial services consultants with experience in high-performance data solutions, householding, marketing, and customer care. Senior executives include:

A.C. Stebel, senior principal and practice area leader -- With 20+ years experience in the management and delivery of operational and decision support systems enabling business solutions in the financial industry, A.C. Stebel has managed multiple facets of branch, credit, accounting, and servicing operations within the banking community, as well as the information technology projects necessary to enable them. Her data warehousing expertise has helped a number of clients successfully implement innovative decision support solutions for marketing and financial business units.

Prior to joining Knightsbridge in early 2000, Ms. Stebel was an Engagement Manager and Consultant for NCR Corporation's Customer Management Solutions. Prior to NCR, Ms. Stebel was a vice president for First Union National Bank of North Carolina. From 1985-1994, she was a Senior Systems Engineer in Financial Services at Computer Task Group.

Glenn E. Bryans, senior principal, joined Knightsbridge in January 2000 as a world-class specialist in MPP database design and implementation. Mr. Bryans enjoys a reputation within the industry for his deep technical knowledge and superior project management skills in the design and implementation of highly scalable, high-performance solutions that rely on parallel technologies.

Prior to joining Knightsbridge, Mr. Bryans was president of Parallel Systems Associates Inc, a consulting firm specializing in large-scale SMP and MPP implementations of data warehouse, data mart, and data mining solutions. From 1995 through 1998, he was a Senior Consultant under contract to Stephen Brobst of Strategic Technologies & Systems, specializing in large-scale SMP and MPP data solutions. His experience also includes seven years at IBM's AIX National Technical Support Center in Roanoke, Texas, as a leader in the Porting Center, Benchmark Center, and Database Support Center, and ten years in technical management in the finance, retail, and energy sectors.

"Financial services firms have long enjoyed prominence on our client list," said Walker. "With two such talented industry leaders at the helm, we expect to become a major source of high-performance data solutions for the financial services industry and anticipate the practice will be a strong complement to our existing practice areas." The company announced practice areas in telecommunications and e-business in early 2000 and also serves insurance, health care manufacturing, retail, and consumer products markets.

Knightsbridge Solutions is a systems integration firm delivering high-performance data solutions that solve "big-data" problems. Knightsbridge implements scalable data warehousing and e-business infrastructures that solve terabyte-class data problems and enable high-value business processes. The firm participates in marketing partnerships with IBM Corporation, NCR Corporation, Ab Initio Software Corporation, MicroStrategy Inc, and other leading providers of high-performance data solutions.

Contact Porter Novelli Convergence Group, Kathy Green, 312-938-3693, Kathy.green@pnicg.com.