Data-driven decision making at Wachovia

Published on 21 September 2006

Watch Traffic Analyser helps make — or break — business cases

Knowledge is power, and Wachovia uses Watch Traffic Analyser to extract information critical to managing its business.

Traffic Analyser, one of the Watch business intelligence tools, gives monthly updates about a financial institution’s traffic sent and received over SWIFT, plus market share data for benchmarking.

“Our original motivation to use Watch was to be able to benchmark our market share in payments against the SWIFT calculations, thereby validating our analyses against a respected neutral third party,” explains Christine Jenkins, Director and Market Consultant for Wachovia’s global payments business. “We could use our own systems to know what we are doing, but we need Watch to tell us what the SWIFT community is doing.”

“Because of the richness of data in Traffic Analyser, as well as the increased transparency on our global traffic that it gives us, we are now doing much more than market share analyses with this tool, across the company.”

For example, Jenkins´ team also uses Traffic Analyser to check reciprocity with correspondents. “It’s really useful for us to use it to prepare for customer meetings by doing an analysis of the kinds of messages we have sent with that customer – and the kinds of business that we are getting back from them. We increasingly find that these customers have also done the same queries on Traffic Analyser, too, so we are working off the same, trusted numbers.”

On the product management side, she uses the tool “to decide if it makes sense for us to automate certain services. For example, if volumes of a particular message coming into the US are significant enough, that helps build the case for investing in further automation of that process.”

John McFadden, Managing Director, Manager Trade Product Management & Development, Global Trade Services, relies on Traffic Analyser to monitor the evolution of this key trade business. “It’s certainly important that we can see the latest market share figures across countries, regions and globally, even down to the level of MTs and relative to specific branches.”

“Traffic Analyser is certainly important for our strategic development,” adds McFadden. “Before Wachovia opened a new office in Shanghai in July 2005, we relied on the tool to give us market insights for the Hong Kong – Taiwan – China trade finance business that helped us launch successfully.”

“Facts and figures – they’re the cornerstone of any successful business,” comments Jane Karasik, Global Account Manager for Wachovia at SWIFT. “Watch gives our customers a way to use SWIFT data to make good decisions.”