Business Objectives

To successfully manage the entire credit cards

portfolio migration from existing BPC

SmartVista platform to TSYS PRIME4 Platform.

Functional Testing of existing functions that

includes base and customization features.

MasterCard authorization simulator was shared for

multiple projects, resulting in limited availability of

MasterCard simulator impacting the certification and

testing activities.

Defect fix turnaround time from the 3rd party vendor

was higher than expected. So, our testing activities

related to MasterCard certification had to be re-

planned to accommodate it.

Delay in getting the conversion data files for

reconciliation between SmartVista data and migrated

PRIME data. This impacted the conversion mock

schedule that was part of critical path.

Interface readiness was a major challenge during

the UAT, as most of the interfaces were not

ready at the start of UAT resulting into change in

planned activities.

Shared resource allocation – Bank resources were working on both – migration project as well as production support. Since production was always a priority, projects tasks kept getting delayed.

Last minute changes to the HSM installation

and configuration due to dependencies and

complications.

Test integration of PRIME system with existing

satellite systems.

Certification for Network (MasterCard) in new

PRIME system for Credit cards.

The Challenges

Success Story

SBC CREDIT SWITCH MIGRATION

The end result was a successful migration, where all the credit card products of SBC

(Mastercard Classic, Gold, Platinum, Corporate, World, Cashback, E-Secure) were

successfully migrated to the new system with minimum errors.

Merchants & POS data was also successfully migrated as planned, thus resulting in

smooth and successful migration.

Out of the multiple parallel enterprise wide projects at bank, Credit cards migration

was the first one to migrate in planned timelines despite facing multiple challenges

& dependencies.

ABOUT THE CLIENT

Established on June 18, 1951, Security Bank, known then as the Security Bank and Trust Company, was the first private and Filipino-controlled Bank of the post-World War II period. The Bank stands firm as one of the Philippines’ top ten private domestic universal banks in terms of assets, deposits, capital and return on equity.

The bank realized that it needed to scale up the business fast and hence made the decision that its software would need to act as a change agent to promote international best practice within the bank. Thus getting on to the cards transformation program.

OUR ENGAGEMENT

ABOUT THE PROJECT

To fast track the growth of their credit card penetration into the market, bank after several internal and external discussion, selected TSYS PRIME4 as the credit card processing platform to deliver on their expectations.

To achieve the smooth and successful transition from BPC SmartVista to TSYS PRIME4, bank zeroed on to select Verinite as their partner for managing the entire Migration Program, User Acceptance Testing, Data Conversion & Reconciliation, MC Certification.

Results

JOURNEY THROUGH THE PROJECT

DISCOVERY SESSION

Verinite Program manager kick-started the entire program with discovery sessions with product vendor TSYS, Bank and all involved parties. The discovery sessions proved to be extremely focused and useful from bank business, IT perspective as that provided precise clarity on the in-house scope and expertise that was needed to deliver this migration project. The workshops were planned for 3 weeks and we achieved the objectives of detailing the high level scope for the migration program. The emphasis was on capturing the requirements properly that resulted in fewer scope changes or additional requirements cropping up at a later stage of the project. With reviews and sign-offs the entire phase was completed under 2 months’ timeframe.

DEEP DIVE SESSIONS

Once the high level scope from business was formalized, the next steps was to get in to deep dive sessions to elaborate the requirements & ensure product vendor understands the scalability and future expansion ideas. Get the mapping of the existing system data to new target system right. Get all entities, parameters and specialized cases addressed properly.This phase lasted about 3 months. It covered all the requirements i.e. Statement of Needs (SoNs) exchanged, reviewed and signed-off. The configurations and parameters were captured, reviewed and frozen too.

BUILD & DESIGN PHASE:

Internal and external parties were brought together to meet the overall timelines of integrated project plan for Go-Live. Bank internal teams were working on in-house system integrations and custom programs for reporting, that they had built over a period of time. The entire activity was driven with keen focus on timelines and actively checking interface integrations at every point in time. During first installphase there were few challenges that were due to external factors like hardwaregetting delayed due to custom formalities since it was shipped from overseas. Team showed flexibility by working weekends and extra hours to cover up for unplanned time delay due to such external factor. Client teams also appreciated and reciprocated their commitment equally. It was the One Team approach, clearly resulting in efficiencies. Some other challenges that were thrown our way by means of parallel dependent projects like internet banking integration project and data warehouse integrations. DWH challenge was a unique one.

One wherein the system was not ready to produce FINCON reports that were mandatory for project sign-off for going live. Moreover their timelines were not matching with cards project migration date. This would have eventually led to a deadlock and potential delay to overall go-live plans. Thanks to the nimble project core team and project sponsorswho made some quick decision in order to avoid getting dragged down by dependent project. We de-coupled our project risks as a part of mitigation strategy. It meant some additional in-house reports had to be developed at last minute. These were delivered by Verinite team at a very short notice along with some data mapping support for the DWH work stream.

Integrations with external 3rd parties like MasterCard, 3D secure Vendor, POS provider for shared terminals etc. were dealt swiftly.

Our Client’s cards portfolio was hosted on BPC SmartVista. The portfolio was divided into two segments Retail and Corporate cards. Client had 10 different card products across their portfolio, designed to provide a host of rewards and benefits like discount vouchers on dining, entertainment, travel etc.

The UAT was initiated and the Verinite team was engaged to perform the functional and migration testing of the TSYS PRIME4 system. Verinite Team identified the testing scope as per requirement documents shared by client and prepared detailed Test Plans, UAT Test Strategy and Migration Test Strategy. While testing across multiple clients, Verinite has built a comprehensive repository of test scripts which could be readily used for such a large sized project. The team updated the repository with the changes related to current scope of the migration project plus new enhancement. Verinite Test lead was responsible to manage testing and was point of contact for Bank and TSYS both. A daily defect call was scheduled and defect SLAs were agreed for defect resolution. A weekly meeting with bank was arranged to monitor the progress on the execution and identify the risks if any.

Verinite was also engaged to manage the migration testing. As a part of this work stream, Verinite team assisted the Bank teams to plan the migration activities and help them with the reconciliation of the portfolio during the mock runs and DRs.

TESTINGPHASE:

Verinite migration test team was responsible for preparing conversion data mapping, parameter mapping and reports reconciliation from source and destination system. This helped bank to predict any potential migration issues well in advance &take corrective actions on such accounts.

Testing was completed and a Green signal was provided by testing team. But then another hurdle hit us, the acquirer POS terminal provider was not able to meet the timelines as the terminals needed to bere-programmed. Core Project team again gathered together for brainstorming and came up with a direct & logical solution. It was to migrate entire POS, merchant setup as-is (with same numbers) on to PRIME system and maintaining the routing connectivity same thus by avoiding the need to re-program. This suggestion was carefully considered for pros and cons, risks identified, mitigation plan worked out and then with permission from bank management, it was executed to perfection! Bravo – kudos to the entire Verinite and bank combined core team who diligently worked on this approach and made it happen.

The project was successfully completed in May 2019 and the entire cards portfolio was migrated to TSYS PRIME4 seamlessly.

THE SOLUTION AND APPROACH

Verinite’s contribution proved to be a critical factor in finding solutions and implementing it to resolve the challenges. Thus, at the end, cards portfolio was successfully migrated from BPC SmartVista platform to TSYS PRIME4 platform. Verinite was responsible for delivering following work streams.

UAT

Verinite Prepared detailed test cases to validate the migration process.There were 2 mock runs and 1 dress rehearsal run scheduled throughout the project. During Mock runs, team validated end to end migration process, reported exception and recorded migration timings. Team also performed reconciliation of data from source and destination system around various parameters to confirm the correct data movement.

During the dress rehearsal, team performed the same activity as mock run process in the production like environment.

MIGRATION

Verinite adopted a waterfall methodology for UAT of SBC Credit Card Switch migration project. This ensured that every sub phase of the testing and deliverable has been signed off within the stipulated time before moving ahead to the following phases.Verinite took the accountability and ownership in ensuring every deliverable produced is of utmost quality with minimal reviews and quick sign off to complete every phase of testing as planned.

During planning, all the requirements for user acceptance testing for SBC’s credit card migration was understood for its functions. The understanding was used for coming up with the detailed Test Strategy, Test Plans and test cases across base functionality and specific enhancements related to client installation. The run plan was crafted to suit the needs of UAT. Test execution was done from both onsite and offsite to have a better control on the test cases execution completion. The issues and defects identified were reported to SBC and TSYS on a daily basis. A regular defect tracker call was set up to discuss the pending issues and their resolution. A detailed report was prepared and submitted to SBC with recommendation for Go-Live.

MasterCard authorization simulator was shared for multiple projects, due to this availability of MasterCard simulator was limited. Verinite aligned its testing effort to conduct MasterCard offline& online Certification testing to match the simulator availability and achieve it within the schedule decided. Our Team tested authorizations, reversals and advice messages for credit card product. Testing covered First presentment, second presentment, retrieval request and chargeback for credit card switch host.

Verinite provided additional support to the client’s vendor for helping understand and fix the 3D-secure AAV validation issue during offline certification. Verinite also provided support to the bank’s network team for network connectivity from MasterCard MIP to credit switch host during online certification.

Verinite’s experienced project manager was deployed to handle this large and complex cards migration program. With techno functional expertise and hands on knowledge of the PRIME system, was able to pull back strings in time to get project live as planned.

Understanding and identifying the problems quickly was utmost important in order to solve it. Pro-activeness was quintessential to make it happen. There were challenges, frequent travel between various client office locations as well as regular offshore visits where offshore team was working. Project stakeholders, decision makers and sponsors were kept up to date for every major project activity, progress and achievements.

MC CERTIFICATION & SIMULATOR OPTIMIZATION

OVERALL PROGRAM MANAGEMENT

DRESS REHEARSALA week before the actual planned go-live team was performing the dress rehearsal activities when the unthinkable happened! An earthquake of 6.1 magnitude hit the location and everyone was asked to vacate the building immediately as a precautionary measure. This costed us our precious time of preparation and validation that could have potentially resulted in entire migration getting delayed. Reason being – the entire migration cut-over was based on month end date cut-over approach; anything in-between was not possible. Thanks to the good camaraderie between the team members and the supporting management, we ensured that the core team is able to work immediately from next day toavoid any potential delays.

After spending multiple sleepless nights to get testing done & all necessary approvals from CAB, regulatory tick marks from Banknet and MasterCard on issuer certification, the team started performing data cut-over activities. The authorization downtime was planned to be kept to minimum as possible with approval only for maximum of 2 hours in STIP. The project manager from Verinite, Bank SMEs and TSYS product experts worked really closely. Once the files and data was moved over from legacy to PRIME4 system, the time came to switch the host and move all authorization transaction traffic to new PRIME online system. It was early hours of 2nd May when the team was wide awake for monitoring successful auth processing as the first check point.

MIGRATION CUT-OVER & GO-LIVE

After signing OFF from earlier credit host and before signing ON to new credit host, MasterCard was supposed to be approving transactions during STIP, but were not receiving any transactions. Post troubleshooting, the issue was resolved and transactions started getting authorized from MasterCard.

During migration, it was found there was some discrepancy in rewards related data. It wasquickly reviewed & decided that these records will be moved post analysis in production. This was fixed in due course of time.

The overall migration program was completed within a span of 18 months from first Discovery meeting till system was made live. Deep domain expertise, past project experience pedigree, functional knowledge backed with technical know-how and most importantly being pragmatic and flexible in approach made this migration a huge success!

GLITCHES FACED

KEY BENEFITS

Verinite was able to showcase the following benefits to the client in this project:

1. Verinite team’s understanding of PRIME4 system, migration process and ready availabilityof test repositories helped in reducing the planning effort by almost 40%

2. Verinite Program Managers’ pro-activeness helped save over 100,000 USD in Change requests and enhancements.

3. Swiftly migrating the merchant acquiring data on a very short notice, ensuring no impact on merchant and POS operations.

1

2

It was point of no return in case something had gone wrong. The legacy system was shut down for credit cards. Some breathless moments and after monitoring the expected behavior of the system for 30 minutes, our project manager declared the news that cut-over was successful and monitoring continued for next 4-6 hours with planned downstream activities.

Migration was completed successfully except couple of small glitches that were faced during migration.

Total Test Cases

Team Size

5500+

1200

# Cases

72

Defects Identified during Migration

94%

Test Case Effectiveness

2

6

279

Defect Identified in UAT

8

97%

Test Case Effectiveness

Team Size

Months Duration

CERTIFICATION

# Cases Team Size

275 7

Defects Identified during Migration

99%

Test Case Effectiveness

1

IMPORTANT STATISTICS

UAT

91.20.6629.7000info@verinite.com www.verinite.com

95%

UAT Completion Percentage

(remaining % were because of failed defects whichwere low priority for go live)

MIGRATION