Exclusive: Natwest to keep more work in-house after Y2K lessons

High street bank Natwest will do more software development in house after lessons learned through its millennium compliancy work, its head of Y2K projects said this week.

The bank discovered that a DIY approach to software development gives users invaluable control over their systems when things need doing fast.

Crucial to Natwest's millennium programme for its retail division was the bank's core accounting system, Branch Online Processing (Bolp), a customer database built in-house. Jerry Whitmarsh, group millennium director for Natwest, described it is a, "large and complex programme - the largest commercial programme in use."

Bolp, which has about 180 interfaces to other systems, "took a lot of effort because it was so big and important with a lot of dates," said Whitmarsh. "It took roughly two years to sort out."

Despite the amount of effort involved, Bolp was made millennium compliant towards the end of 1998 - before its target date according to Whitmarsh - partly because, "it was built in-house so gave us a lot of control over what needed to be done."

Whitmarsh said the positive experience with Bolp will be a "factor to bear in mind" when deciding between in-house work and relying on suppliers in the future.

"The most difficult systems to get ready were those dependent on outside suppliers," he said. "It has been difficult to get some resources in place to do the work."

Whitmarsh said the bank started with more than 10,000 products and systems to get compliant.

"By the end of last year there were 50 to 60 left and the ones that took longer than expected were was because of some form of outside dependency," said Whitmarsh.

Whitmarsh said that people often believe that it is, "cheaper to go outside and buy a package as if can be cost effective because of regular upgrades."

But the reality is "if you want something done in a hurry and need a little bit of independence and control, in-house development can mean tighter control over your resources and doing things in your own timescale."

The argument that in-house software development can mean developers leaving with the knowledge locked inside their heads is not a reason to rely on vendors, according to Whitmarsh.

"Over 100 people are involved with Bolp at any one time. There is continuity there, so someone will always be able to understand it," explained Whitmarsh.