Introduction

Banks generally migrate to the Core Banking solutions, in order to serve their customers in an effective way and also provide additional services to them.  When banks migrate, only important live data are captured into the new environment, while the transaction history details do not get transferred.   However, because of the legal and statutory guidelines, these banks will have to maintain these data for a longer period.  By this the bank incurs a huge revenue loss.

Also, in some cases, banks may have a huge volume of data which are to be preserved for a longer period.  At the same time, having these data in the Production data base will affect the performance of the software.  Hence, each bank will have a backup and purging plan based on their requirement and the Central Bank/Legal guidelines.  BBSSL provides the archival solution, bARCH, their flagship product for this purpose.  This product was designed and development by BBSSL, with a view to cater to the needs of these large banks.   This acts as a repository for the legacy data from each of these branches at a centralized Server.  By this the maintenance of the data base will be easy.  Also, the retrieval of the data by the branches is made easy by GUI-driven interfaces to the data base through the browser.

Implementation Methodology:

The processes to be carried out during an archival are as under:

System Study

Bank will provide the legacy data to be uploaded into the centralized server. This data is to be converted to a format which can be uploaded into the bARCH.  A detailed study will be conducted to map the fields, analyze the gap areas, and other customization requirements in the initial phase. This interaction with the bank will make sure that the system comply with the data collection and bank up methodology as envisaged by the bank. 

Extraction

For each branch, the data that needs to be archived would be uploaded. In addition, tools will be modified to capture the details of closed accounts and all transaction history details, to make the archival database complete. This unloadable achieve data can be maintained as backup in any medium for future reference

Upload into the bARCH database.

The extracted data will then be uploaded into the Centralized database. The extracted data should be consistent.  For this purpose, the system generates two reports namely the Scheme-wise Balances report and the account-wise balances reports.  These reports would ensure that the archival data is consistent and in synchronization with the migrated data. In order to prevent the modification of the archived data, consistency check is being done so that any modification to the archived data will be deducted and the error messages are generated.

Retrieval from the bARCH database:

The system provides interface to retrieve data from the Centralized database.  These interfaces can be invoked through a browser and are menu driven.  These features ensure the user-friendliness of the software.

The interface software can be accessed only by a specified user.  This is done with a view to restrict the unauthorized users. Users are created by the Administrator and the access is password protected. An audit trial is also being maintained for each of the reports generated by the user.

The software comes with a specified list of reports.  Any additional reports as required by the customer can be customized.  In addition, these reports can also be converted into MS-word, MS-excel and ASCII format. 

Training for end-users:

Training will be conducted on all activities such as extraction, upload and retrieval of data through reports to the end-users. The Schedule and the venue will be decided in consultation with the bank after archival of the first 15 pilot branches.

We propose to have two training sessions of 20 members each.  Duration of each of these training sessions will be 3 days.  Bank will provide the logistic support like, venue and machines for these training.

Maintenance and backup

Uploaded data is maintained at a centralized location.  This will enable the bank to initiate a backup plan for the archived data and also to purge the data beyond a certain period based on the Policy and procedures of the bank.

In addition, system has a provision to retain the backup of individual branches data in any medium like Hard disk drive (HDD), Cloud Storage, DVD etc.