How can one know that a new core banking system is stable or ready for production or ready for go live?

Question

I'm asking how can one know that a new core banking system is stable or ready for production or ready for go live?

My bank bought an overseas core banking system for its muli-functional capabilites. My company has worked extgensively with the vendor to ensure it works. But we keep finding minor showstopper defects, such as in overdrafts not working in all cases.

My question is how will my company know when we're ready to go live on the new system? We're doing SIT, UAT, etc... but not testing in parallel. And not obtaining sign-off by a third party.

Has anyone gone thru a core conversion before? Where you've custom-built the core & many of the 3rd-party systems? If so, how do u know when you're ready to go live?

Answer 1

You are ready to go live when you can successfully balance the GL, loan and deposit portfolios consistently, and have decided you can live with whatever other defects exist.

Frankly, I don't know why you'd go through the pain and cost of conversion to accept any defects.

Answer 2

I'd recommend you stay away from Cube/Encore...lots and lots of problems.

To answer your question though, I'd say that it's a risk analysis...you never know completely, but you reach a point where you're aware of most of the issues, then you have to make a decision if you can deal with those issues (and deal with your customers who have problems with those issues).

My suggestion would be to only go with a core system that is currently in-use at other verifiable locations and talk to the IT staff at those banks on what they think of it and what their problems are...and decide if you can handle the same problems. I'm pretty sure that each system will have its quirks, even though I'm not experienced on using each one.

You can't entirely trust the vendor to disclose everything, IMHO.

Answer 3

Have you performed a risk analysis? The closer you simulate the production environment, the more confidence you will have. Runnng the system in parallel and ensuring the output is what is expected is the way to go.