Kapow gives Morgan Stanley a competitive edge by automatically harvesting investment data from thousands of sites and protecting intellectual property embedded in web intelligence robots.
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Challenge
- The company was looking for a competitive edge to improve investor advisory services.
- They wanted to leverage web-based product inventory information at key retail outlets to predict sales performance of a leading technology company.
Solution
- Kapow enables them to harvest investment web intelligence from thousands of public websites.
- Kapow's approach protects intellectual property embedded in robots.
Results
- Massive data harvesting has improved investment analysis.
- Easy-to-use tools for building web intelligence robots has reduced reliance on consultant developers.
Barclays migrates content to new SharePoint CMS in 4 weeks. No coding required.
Challenge
- Barclays needed to consolidate intranet platforms to reduce costs and improve efficiency.
- They were replacing Vignette and Lotus Notes with Microsoft SharePoint. The SharePoint interface contained JavaScript commands that were required to create new documents in document libraries and to perform complex manipulation of SharePoint form fields.
- Manual migration of content was too costly and time consuming to consider.
Solution
- Kapow automated the migration of 8,000 pages of content from Lotus Notes/Domino databases into SharePoint.
- The storage mechanism within SharePoint was a series of web part pages stored in document libraries, with each library representing a department in the source system. These web part pages would hold content editor web parts, which contained the migrated HTML content. Migrated content was easily editable through the front-end SharePoint GUI.
Results
- 100% clean migration of content.
- Migration was completed in just 4 weeks.
Kapow developed a mobile version of the Commerzbank site in 35 days, with almost no change to underlying systems.
Challenge
- Commerzbank was under pressure from competing banks – and their Chairman – to provide mobile banking access for their customers.
- The bank's existing web platform took several years to develop using multiple system integrators.
- Having developers rewrite their existing web platform to transition to a mobile platform would take years and involve significant costs.
Solution
- Kapow provided an innovative alternative – instant web services.
- They wrapped legacy banking applications as a Java/REST API to be consumed by a mobile front-end.
- Using this approach, it was easy to create a new and highly optimized mobile front-end, with standards-compliant markup for iPhone and other handsets.
- Decoupling old and new HTML via a web service layer allowed for innovative new workflows and functions that didn't exist in the original banking application and are more suitable for small devices with potentially weak data connections.
Results
- Kapow developed a full functioning mobile website. The site is optimized for all modern handsets, including iPhone and Android, and is designed to serve XML/JSON-based web services for native apps.
- The mobile site was developed in just 35 days, without significantly changing underlying systems.
With Kapow, Fiserv automated their compliance dashboard without building APIs for 300 banking partner applications.
Challenge
- Fiserv was struggling with regulatory compliance on high volume transactions across 300 global banking partners and went without the automated compliance dashboard they needed for 3 years.
- As processing load grew to 10,000 transactions totaling $1 billion each day, manual processes became unsustainable. Many errors were occurring due to manual web intelligence and reconciliation.
- Real-time cash balance account data access and integration was essential, but developing APIs for 300 highly secure banking applications was out of the question. They had tried and failed.
Solution
- Today, Fiserv uses Kapow to automate data gathering and aggregation from banking partners' internal web-based applications.
- Kapow robots gather and transform information from these external systems and bring it together with data from Fiserv internal systems and data repositories to create meaningful BI.
- With Kapow, a management dashboard is available that enables treasury associates to track KPIs including debt balances, cash flow and net settlements so they can make informed financial decisions in real time.
Results
- Kapow completed a POC in 2 weeks and went live across 300 banks in 3 months.
- Automation reduced Fiserv staffing requirements by 2 full-time equivalents.
- They now have real-time access to global financial data and automated processing of over 10,000 Treasury transactions per day to meet regulatory compliance requirements
- Using robots in tandem with dashboard reporting has enabled Fiserv to consolidate funds for investment, which generates more revenue/income and reduces the number of draws from its credit facility.
JP Morgan cut transaction time by 50% and eliminated errors by automating data flow.
Germany's largest independent insurance broker uses Kapow to automate data flow.
Challenge
- AWD wanted to create integration points for data flows between their employee intranet and agent extranet.
- Traditional methods were too costly and time consuming.
Solution
- Kapow has enabled them to clip and import targeted extranet content.
- Content is migrated between incompatible CMS platforms using an integration robot, providing real-time synchronization.
Results
- Eliminated manual cut-and-paste data entry.
- Significantly improved timeliness of information flow.
Codan, the third largest insurance company in Scandinavia, went from legacy to SharePoint CMS in a few weeks.
Challenge
- Codan needed to migrate approximately 2,000 pages of content from 2 legacy systems into Microsoft SharePoint.
- Manual and scripted approaches did not meet their time and resource requirements.
Solution
- Kapow was used to extract source content from legacy systems and transform it for loading into SharePoint.
- No coding was required.
Results
- After a 3 day POC and 5 days of basic robot development, Codan was able to complete the rest of the migration within a couple of weeks.
- Nearly 100% of content was migrated automatically.
Haspa, the largest savings bank in Germany, saved time and staffing costs by automating new account creation.
Challenge
- Haspa wanted to automate their new account creation process, a manual process with over 25 steps that required interaction with multiple systems in the front and back-office.
- Their existing process required 2 full-time employees to handle approximately 125 new accounts created each day.
Solution
- Using a small number of Kapow integration robots, the entire process has been automated.
- Data flows automatically between the front-end and back-office systems.
- Run rate is about 125 new accounts per day.
Results
- New customer account creation time was reduced from 10 minutes to 1 minute per account.
- 2 employees were redeployed to other bank activities, resulting in significant cost savings.
Viking relies on Kapow for secure, noise-free, real-time web intelligence.
Challenge
- Hedge funds depend on “asymmetrical intelligence” for competitive advantage. When information is commonly known, it is just noise. They needed high quality, noise-free data.
- Security is critical for hedge funds. Viking needed a solution they could build, maintain and host onsite.
- Much of their analysis is based on data over time. It can include seasonality and other factors. Therefore, robots accumulate and persist. They needed an industrial strength solution.
Solution
- They now use Kapow to automate “noise-free” web intelligence.
- Robots are developed and maintained onsite.
- Kapow's debugger accelerates development and improves data quality.
Results
- Kapow robots are 75% faster to develop and maintain than the custom-built robots they were using before.
- Data is secure and noise-free.
With Kapow, analysts and traders get real-time information on factors that affect trading price.
Challenge
- In 2007, the EU introduced requirements for greater transparency in the utilities market.
- Organizations affected by the new regulations had to deliver hourly, daily and weekly reports online.
- Deutsche Börse wanted to capture this information in real time to inform trading decisions.
Solution
- With Kapow, they were able to extract and transform data in real time, providing analysts and traders with critical information affecting trading price.
- The solution retrieves information from 150 websites.
Results
- Kapow was the only vendor who could fulfill the requirements in their timeframe.
- “With Kapow, we built powerful fundamental data models. Analysts and traders get critical factors that affect the price of a trade in real-time.” - Mario Schultz, Director, Market Data & Analytics, Deutsche Börse
Automating web data extraction with Kapow improves the timeliness, comprehensiveness and accuracy of data for this consumer credit reporting agency.
Challenge
- Reduce operational costs and scale to consume more data sources.
- Improve timeliness, comprehensiveness and accuracy of data.
- Speed up aggregation and integration of personal consumer information from financial institutions and government sites to improve credit risk assessment.
Solution
- The Kapow platform automates web data acquisition.
- Kapow integrates this data with internal systems.
Results
- Increased efficiency and eliminated the delay, cost and errors associated with manual processes.
- Improved information products available for customers.
- Provided greater scalability for web data acquisition.
With “directory assistance” from Kapow, this top 5 U.S. bank increases conference call security and engagement.
Challenge
- The bank had no visibility into who was joining and dropping out of conference calls.
- They wanted to maximize conference call participation and productivity while preventing unauthorized access.
Solution
- With Kapow, they were able to aggregate internal and external caller information from internal HR phone registries and public white pages.
- A custom web interface enables real-time call monitoring. They can now monitor all joins, drops and time spent on the call.
Results
- Eliminated unauthorized call access and security breaches.
- Demonstrated viable use of aggregated data for “long-tail” solutions.
- Required development of fewer than ten robots and a simple web interface to integrate data feeds.
TD Insurance made their move to Tridion CMS in 3 months with no coding and no content freeze.
Challenge
- TD Insurance needed to migrate 6,000 pages of content into a new Tridion CMS system.
- Manual content migration was too costly and time consuming.
Solution
- They used Kapow to extract source content and break it down into component parts.
- Data was transformed into a structure that could be easily consumed by the Tridion loader.
Results
- Using Kapow, they were able to migrate 90% of the content automatically.
- The new system was up and running in about 3 months.
With Kapow, this global payments technology company wraps internal solutions as services – a non-intrusive approach that allows speedy integration of legacy applications.
Challenge
- The company needed to enable existing internal web-based solutions as services for a workflow management framework designed to save time and money and improve customer service on critical business processes.
- The project had to be done within 5 months.
Solution
- Kapow made it possible to wrap existing applications as services.
- The non-intrusive approach made for speedy integration of legacy applications that would otherwise have required huge efforts in programming, redeployment and testing.
Results
- Kapow enabled them to complete the project well within the 5 month deadline.
- The new solution can be enhanced, modified and maintained with ease and at low cost.
Innovative online lender automates web data extraction from partner sites with Kapow.
Challenge
- The lender's website allows customers to search through a database of thousands of entries, but each required manual web intelligence of photos, descriptions, prices and locations.
- Manual data entry was error prone and costly.
- When source data changed, there was no way to automatically update the information on the lender site.
Solution
- Kapow automates web data extraction from partner sites and integration to lender site.
- Data is automatically updated as changes occur, based on ongoing monitoring of partner sites.
Results
- Significant savings by eliminating manual data entry.
- Data on the lender site is up-to-date and accurate.
With Kapow, ZFS completed content migration to their new CMS in 10 weeks.
Challenge
- ZFS needed to migrate 3 different sites into their new CMS.
- The old sites were based on Gauss, FrontPage and Lotus Notes.
Solution
- Using Kapow, they were able to migrate content automatically.
- Content migration required no coding and no content freeze.
Results
- The migration was done in about 10 weeks.
- A comparable manual effort for 6 employees would have taken 26 weeks.
Standard is using Kapow to surface content in internal applications and to automate web intelligence.
Challenge
- They needed to provide data to Yodlee in real time to take advantage of Yodlee's data, payments and risk management utility.
- They also wanted to provide web access to an internal financial application.
Solution
- Kapow technology will automate data extraction and migration to Yodlee.
- By clipping the financial service application into a Kapow-hosted portal on Amazon EC2, they are able to surface it on Standard's Jive platform using an iFrame.
Results
- Kapow technology enabled Standard to provide data to Yodlee in real time.
- Kapow's solution for surfacing the internal financial application saved 1 year of development time.
With Kapow, Credit Suisse was able to roll out self-service access to valuable portfolio management tools without a lengthy development cycle.
Challenge
- To compete effectively, Credit Suisse needed to expand self-service offerings to their clients.
- Rewriting existing applications for self-service access would take 2 to 3years.
Solution
- With Kapow, Credit Suisse implemented a portal to give their clients access to internal financial reporting and investment management applications.
- By re-purposing the existing HTML user interface so it could be displayed in the portal,
- each user sees a customized view, updated dynamically, that is unique to their profile.
Results
- Customers have self-service access to portfolio management tools.
- Significant saving over providing phone support for external customers.
- 90% saving in development time.
- Kapow was able to address security requirements and deliver the self-service applications they needed in 4 months.