Press detail

Collecchio (Parma) / Münster, 06. May 2010 – Cedacri, a leading IT service provider for banks and financial service enterprises in Italy, and zeb/, a leading consultancy for bank-wide management and related professional software solutions in Germany, offer the new "Value Manager powered by Cedacri and zeb/” — an innovative software solution for financial controlling and planning specifically designed for the Italian banking market.

The Value Manager is a software system tailored to the control needs of medium-sized to large banks wishing to meet successfully the demands of today's market for innovative and qualified customer services at competitive prices. This solution that is based on components of the zeb//control product family, which has successfully operated in the market for several years, adds a professional operational control and planning solution to Cedacri's portfolio. It can be integrated into the existing information systems and processes of banks.

"In the past 30 years, Cedacri has presented new innovative software solutions again and again and thereby continuously strengthened its position as a reliable partner of banks and financial institutions," explains Fabio De Ferrari, CEO of Cedacri. "Our bank-wide management software, developed together with zeb/ for the Italian market, is designed, in particular, to meet the needs of medium-sized to large institutions. Thus, we are the first and only service provider in our market segment which is able to provide banks with a highly professional software solution for controlling all strategic and operative parameters."

In an international selection process, Cedacri opted for zeb/ because this company has long-standing banking and IT-specific expertise in control issues relevant for the international financial services sector. Moreover, zeb/ is the only market actor offering an IT system solution whose computation routines can be adapted in such a versatile way that the calculation and presentation of key performance indicators is suitable both for the top management — and hence for strategic control — and for operative control in the functional divisions of a bank.

The Value Manager offers diverse advantages: It is an integrated financial controlling platform for managing and planning bank groups and individual financial institutions. In a special module for cost analysis and allocation, it adequately represents various contribution margin levels. Furthermore, its drill-down functionality permits the investigation of causes down to individual accounts or products. The web frontend constitutes a flexible, graphical tool for the customised presentation of information at any workstation so that everybody — from administrative assistants to the top managers of a bank — get a personalised view of relevant information in a "cockpit". The information displayed takes account of the bank structures configured in the system. Integrated data quality checks ensure the completeness, plausibility and, as a result, the comprehensive quality of the data basis.

Through appropriate parameter definition, the system provides a sound, scalable basis for daily bank controlling resulting in low operative costs. The powerful calculation kernel permits the flexible representation of diverse functionalities, such as aggregated reporting for the top management, detailed reporting for front offices and controlling units, cost allocation as well as strategic and operative planning. Additionally, the Value Manager has a modular structure so that further functionalities or thematic areas, e.g. for credit risk management, can be added anytime.

"The partnership with Cedacri gives us the opportunity to offer zeb/'s innovative bank controlling system in another European market," says Martin Danne, Managing Partner of zeb/. "By means of special enhancements and adaptations, the solution covers all the special features of the Italian banking market and thereby creates an immense added value for the controlling of Italian banks. Owing to the experiences and the market position of Cedacri, it was possible to implement a functionally comprehensive and technically superior solution for bank controlling tailored to Italian financial institutions of diverse sizes."

The Value Manager is going to be fully integrated into the existing systems of Cedacri and will soon be available to banks for controlling their customer business.

About zeb/
zeb/rolfes.schierenbeck.associates currently has more than 630 employees at twelve offices in Germany (Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich, Münster, Ulm), Austria (Vienna), Switzerland (Zurich), Poland (Warsaw), Czech Republic (Prague), Ukraine (Kiev) and Hungary (Budapest). The zeb/group is among the leading consulting firms for the financial services industry in the German-speaking region. Its customers are national and international banks, savings banks, institutions of the Volksbank and Raiffeisen sector as well as insurance companies. Its fully owned subsidiary zeb/information.technology GmbH & Co KG develops, markets and implements zeb//control, the state-of-the-art solution for integrated controlling and risk management in banks.

About Cedacri
For more than thirty years, Cedacri S.p.A. has operated as an important service provider to the Italian financial industry. With more than 1,000 employees, the company offers its customers IT outsourcing services, IT applications, facility management, business process outsourcing, payment cards, print management and business information services. Cedacri supports more than 150 customers, including more then 70 banks with 2,700 ATMs. The group's top-modern IT centre processes around 31.5 million transactions daily. With its comprehensive service portfolio, Cedacri is the leading supplier of outsourcing solutions to the financial industry in Italy. This business segment alone accounted for EUR 256 million of overall earnings in 2008. The enterprise is certified in accordance with ISO 9001:2008, ISO/IEC 27001:2005 and SAS 70 Type Two.

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