Open plan

Citation

(2001), "Open plan", Work Study, Vol. 50 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ws.2001.07950dab.004

Open plan

Open plan

Unisys has won a best management practice award from the Management Consultancies Association (MCA) for its work with leading UK retail bank, The Woolwich. The award for the IT/outsourcing category was presented in recognition of the consultancy provided by Unisys in the development of The Woolwich's "Open Plan" 24/7 multi-channel banking service. Open Plan allows customers to manage their accounts seamlessly with The Woolwich via branches, telephone, WAP, Internet and interactive digital TV. To achieve this, The Woolwich needed to bring together a number of diverse technologies in a way that had not been attempted before. Unisys provided consultancy throughout the project lifecycle, making all the different technologies work together as part of one cohesive solution. With Open Plan, The Woolwich became the first UK financial institution to provide interactive mobile banking services via WAP technology, and the only bank with true channel integration. The bank has achieved a product penetration of three to four products per customer when the UK average is just 1.5, and The Woolwich is now widely regarded as an industry leader in the areas of IT and e-strategy. Open Plan has already attracted in excess of 500,000 customers, with plans to raise this figure to over two million by 2002.

Open Plan comprises a mainframe and a highly resilient and scalable Windows NT infrastructure, running advanced middle-ware objects to provide multiple channel delivery of a whole range of products and services seamlessly – from current accounts to ISAs and mortgages.