How MOQdigital steered QBANK’s Ultradata upgrade

Banking platform migrations are immense undertakings that consume time and money, so organisations don’t take the decision to shift their core providers lightly.

The expectations that businesses embrace digital transformation to better serve customers remain high however, so enterprise solutions that don’t align with an increasingly digital strategy can prove costly in the long run.

This was the dilemma specialist community Queensland bank QBANK faced during a review of its core banking system.

The organisation, which is dedicated to serving police, emergency and health workers across Queensland, wanted to increase its digital delivery of services to members and meet open banking compliance without diverting too much funding away from member services.

The bank engaged MOQdigital to undertake a value assessment of the incumbent platform, Ultradata. The MSP ran workshops across the business to understand what the emerging needs of the organisations were to prioritise how they would deliver a viable solution.

MOQ also assessed the broader banking platform market, including Ultradata, before providing QBANK with several options and potential cost models over seven years.

The route the partners took was actually to renew the Ultradata contract and perform an upgrade to the existing system. QBANK said with the level of insights MOQ had gained from its consultative review, the company could communicate upgrade requirements to the incumbent provider clearly.

“Ultimately the options were to either migrate to another system or rescope our existing contract to ensure fit for purpose and exemplary performance,” QBANK head of technology and transformation Trevor McNamara said.

“Rather than opt for a shiny new system and undertaking a costly migration exercise, we were guided to instead work with our current platform vendor to achieve the outcomes we need, saving us significant technology investment outlays, and time.

“With MOQdigital taking up the role of talking in-depth to the people that use it, our staff and customer-facing teams, it helped us to gain invaluable insights that informed our decisions.”

MOQdigital principal consultant Bruce Irwin said QBANK was right to question its systems and processes.

“We helped them get the insights they needed, offering a fresh pair of eyes and ears combined with the strength of 25-plus years in the mutual banking industry,” he said.

“Our job on behalf of QBANK was to scan the latest offerings in the market, including re-evaluating the existing platform’s functionality through the lens of the staff who use it and help guide QBANK to select the best platform for member experience and operational efficiency.”

QBANK reported its engagement was able to help it decrease time and money spent on expensive migrations while ensuring it had a future-proofed banking platform.