Providers of payment solutions are continually challenged when required to connect disparate endpoints for the routing and authorization of financial transactions and to manage the timely production of deliverables to the business community’s schedules.

Network interfaces have traditionally been developed and maintained by Information Systems (IS) staff. The business community has struggled to meet business demands and get products to market in a timely manner. Both sides attempt to manage this traditional process resulting in late implementations and missed deadlines.

Another major area affecting the development and maintenance of interfaces is driven by the fact that the EFT industry, card association mandates and endpoint changes are a constant challenge for both IS and the business community. For a service provider which supports and maintains multiple endpoint systems, the complexity of managing the mandates and changes among all the versions and releases of their interface software, has become a monumental task.

To stay competitive, service providers are constantly challenged to find ways to reduce cost, be more productive and provide faster services. While the age old answers have been different, more processes and/or more people are merely band-aids put in place, reacting to a set of problems, rather than resolving them.

Ultimately, the challenge is to adopt a new methodology and process tools that allows both the business and technical communities to jointly manage the cost and time-to-market requirements, at the same time, freeing up valuable senior technical resources for more demanding projects.