Norwegian Wealth Manager Crafts its Own SOA-Based Security and CRM

By Sherree DeCovny

Founded in 2000, Formuesforvaltning is the largest, privately owned independent wealth management firm in Norway. Its clients include 4,500 private and institutional investors, and it has more than $3.6 billion in assets under management. Always striving for innovation and the best quality, the firm pushed IT to its boundaries to establish a truly unique services-oriented architecture.

Formuesforvaltning’s philosophy is to implement cutting edge technology in order to provide customers with excellent service and performance. In Scandinavia, excellent customer service means being able to accommodate a certain lifestyle. People enjoy spending time on their boats, at their cabins and traveling. To this end, the technology must be capable of delivering service any time, anywhere. The same philosophy applies to employees, who often cycle, jog or even ski to work.

At the end of 2005, Stephen Karl Ranson, IT director at Formuesforvaltning, decided to shift the IT architecture to a highly secure service-oriented architecture. Microsoft technology was selected as the security component because Ranson wanted security embedded in the whole environment. With the Active Directory employees and customers could share the same security environment including the permissions and log on control.

The mixture of technologies used in the architecture posed a challenge. “We have a lot of .NET applications, and we predominantly use Microsoft for all our servers, but we do have Java in the mix as well, and Java isn’t always compatible with the Microsoft world,” Ranson points out.

In 2008 Formuesforvaltning partnered with DataDirect Technologies in Denmark to pioneer some security concepts with Java. The vendor rebuilt its database driver to Formuesforvaltning’s specifications, implementing full single sign on, Kerberos and identity delegation in Java so that it works seamlessly with .NET. Now users can log in to the environment in Java or .NET and keep their identity regardless of which system they access.

Once a service-oriented solution and a common security foundation were in place, the firm turned its attention toward CRM. The IT team found that out-of-the-box systems did not suit the organization’s requirements. “We decided after much discussion if we want to have the best technology, that we should actually build our own CRM solution,” says Ranson. “We decided we wouldn’t build an in-house package that was tailored. We would build it using industry standard technology.”

A development project commenced in 2008, and within 10 months a complete CRM solution was built. During the process, the team identified the need for task, meeting and email communication functionality. Formuesforvaltning purchased calendar sharing and address book components from Messageware and decided to use Microsoft Exchange and Open Web Access (OWA).

“Everybody using CRM today has Outlook and CRM, and they have to do some very exotic technique to get the two to synchronize together,” says Ranson. “I have yet to find another CRM system that uses Exchange seamlessly.”

Then Formuesforvaltning wanted to extend integration so users could set up tasks, meetings or emails in Exchange and have the results be visible within the CRM solution. Messageware was asked to do some custom development to allow the CRM system to work with OWA. The solution was built on top of Active Directory, Exchange and Sequel Server.

Formuesforvaltning is currently in Phase 2 of the project, which focuses on business process management. When the prospecting cycle is started with a client, the tasks, meetings and emails will be generated just at the right time.

In addition, a Web-based wealth portal was launched in September 2009. Clients can log in to access all their documents, reports and information about investments they have made with Formuesforvaltning. They can also receive SMS messages, emails and invitations. The site features a TV channel where clients can interact with wealth managers in the organization and third-party providers such as Bloomberg and Reuters. “It’s a very powerful medium and it’s been a huge success with our clients,” says Ranson.

In 2010 Formuesforvaltning plans to have the clients start using Messageware’s calendar, mailbox and task management components. That will make it easier for them to approve a payment or investment strategy. Formuesforvaltning achieved a number of “firsts” in IT, showing that some creativity goes a long way.