Typically, the IT department is the main protagonist driving the take-up of technology within an organization. Not so with MAAKL MUTUAL Berhad, winner of this year’s Windows in Financial Services Developer Award – given to innovative solutions developed on the Microsoft platform – for its Home Office application. Rather, the Home Office project has been championed from the start by chief executive Boon Choy Wong.

By Paul Allen

When developers achieve the distinction of excellence, it is because they have been able to make the intangible tangible to the business. They have been able to illumine just that right bit of technology’s cutting edge so that it makes perfect sense to the organization’s core. Then they have made it happen. Every year there are a few that stand out in this regard: adopting and deploying the best of the new technology, and integrating, extending it, and tailoring it to support the enterprise.

For these impressive achievements, the following five projects have been selected as the winners of this year’s Windows in Financial Services Developer Awards. The awards were handed out at Microsoft’s Sixth Annual Financial Services Developer Conference in New York on March 13.

Although most financial services institutions have made inroads into Business Intelligence (BI), there still is some way to go before the full promise of BI is fulfilled and it is embedded in the enterprise, used by all relevant employees. Microsoft for its part is doing everything it can to speed this process up. Its fast track: Excel.

Excel, used by a large portion of what Microsoft estimates are 500 million company users who have Office licenses, enables Microsoft to deliver pervasive BI and Performance Management to everyone at a fraction of the cost of other BI tools.
Full Introduction...

• Microsoft: One Step Closer to Making Business Intelligence Ubiquitous
• SoftArtisans OfficeWriter: Bridging the Gap between Microsoft Office and SQL Server
• Corporate Modeling: Adding Analytics to BI