DTCC's Customer Portal Opens New Doors
Customer Portal, the new Internet browser “common entry point” into DTCC’s family of Web-based products and services, will be piloted to a select group of customers for six weeks this summer, beginning in late June.
With single sign-on access into the Customer Portal, a customer’s entire set of DTCC permissions and credentials can now all be securely managed with a single ID, password and/or digital certificate, instead of juggling between multiple IDs for different subsidiaries’ products.
DTCC expects pilot users to rigorously put the Customer Portal through its paces, accessing products such as Restricted Securities System, Corporate Action Liability Notices, DTax, LENS and various DTC.org and SMART services. Pilot users will also test features like setting and managing their own passwords, and they will be able to log in to online training modules and automatically link to various DTCC forms, file formats and technical documentation.
Pilot users will also have access to the “messaging platform” on the portal, which will carry broadcast information on items such as any processing problems or changes upcoming for a customer’s products. DTCC is enhancing this facility next year so that customers will can subscribe to various events and get notification right on the DTCC home page.
Feedback from the pilot group, and from the 4,000+ Customer Desktop users who will next be given access to Customer Portal in late August, will be used to guide the progressive rollout of a fully integrated portal for all DTCC browser-based products later in the year.
“Customer Portal raises the bar for customer service across DTCC,” said Fran Lapinski, senior product manager, DTCC Network & Internet Services. “In one place, customers will be able to ‘self-service’ and manage their access with us, jump into various applications, enter problem tickets and access support, research product information, and even enroll in training – and this information is all completely tailored and targeted to a firm’s unique profile and relationship with DTCC.”
Evolution of a Portal
The sophisticated features of Customer Portal - recognizing user registrations across multiple legacy systems and products, managing a robust security architecture, and reengineering a Web framework to support the integration of DTCC’s different products and services - evolved over several years, as the “next generation” of technology finally caught up with the strategic vision of what DTCC wanted this kind of customer-focused environment to be, said Andrew Reres, director, DTCC Internet Product Management.
“At the formation of DTCC, we recognized there was a common customer base shared among the subsidiaries. However, the challenge was that the Web-based products and services of DTC, NSCC and FICC were all driven from different mechanisms, different networks, and different system frameworks,” said Reres. “Our strategy was to follow what other industry leaders were doing as they underwent their own transformation and consolidation – namely, to reengineer our system architecture so that it could provide a common entry point into DTCC, recognize a customer’s credentials, and serve up a range of applications, products and relevant bits of information with an industrial-strength search capability that a customer would need to do his or her job.” @
[Editor’s note: For more information about Customer Portal, please contact Fran Lapinski (flapinski@dtcc.com) or Andrew Reres (areres@dtcc.com). Customers interested in joining the Customer Portal pilot group should contact their Relationship Managers.]