Experian is transforming the way it works with its customers. The credit-checking giant has switched to web services, drastically cutting the complexity of taking new financial products such as credit cards to market, and has significantly speeded up the process.

By breaking down different services such as references, authentication, fraud and insurance into their component parts, Experian is giving banks the power to specify and design their own processes using a drag-and-drop tool on the desktop.

‘We have genuinely moved these decisions from the IT department,’ says John Finch, head of the development and delivery of information solutions at Experian.

‘We can make system changes and developments in a matter of minutes. Before, it would literally have taken weeks or months.

‘It is a radical turnaround designed to allow our customers to operate at the speed and flexibility that they would like. Rather than writing a traditional functional specification, they can now specify capability interactively in a workshop environment without having to rely on designers or developers.’

Finch’s role was to act as the project’s champion at an executive level. ‘In genuine innovations, you always hit brand new technical problems that have never been solved before. It is going to be trial and error. Sometimes it goes well, sometimes it goes badly,’ he says.

‘You have to assemble the right team who can thrive on the change, then try not to interfere. They are specialists and need to interact with each other. You must have faith that they will meet the deadlines.

‘We use short 20-day build periods that we call sprints. You decide what you are going to do and then have a deliverable, so you only have a short period when you are not accepting any change. You then review it. It is a highly iterative way of building the product.’

Experian uses a set of collaboration tools, with shared development environments and an information portal to track progress and share ideas. All the development tools are available for everyone to see.

As few as five, or as many as 50 people would be involved at different times in the development of the project, known as Customer Event Management Systems (CEMS). There would be a meeting each morning, pulling in external specialists and customers as necessary.

And what has Finch himself learned about running radical innovation projects? ‘It is never easy. Every day is a learning experience,’ he says. ‘You have to remain flexible and open to change. It is a voyage of discovery, because you will start a piece of work, then uncover something else.

‘You have to stay focused and hold your nerve. Because it is brand new, it is difficult to plan, but you have to stick to targets and budgets.’

So far his approach is paying off. One client is already rolling out the system across its 8,000 branches and Experian is in discussion with some 25 other financial institutions.

Finch is also looking at a completely new channel to market that has opened up. A number of systems integrators want to use

CEMS as a tool in their own work for banks, although Finch is still debating whether this makes commercial sense or not.