Westpac and TCS are building two integrated command centres

Westpac will today officially open the first of two new integrated command centres operated by Tata Consultancy Services that will provide “24x7 management of critical services”.

Group chief information officer Craig Bright said in a LinkedIn post that he would attend “the opening ceremony with Tata Consultancy Services for the first of two new integrated command centres to serve the Westpac Group” today.

“These will be the focal point for 24x7 management of critical services,” Bright wrote.

“They’re the culmination of two years of work by our service management team committed to building a world-class practice. 

“In the last year alone, the team has more than halved incident volume and customer impact, and are well poised for the next phase of their journey using real-time telemetry, operational analytics and automation to achieve the highest possible standard of service for our customers.”

Bright said that the command centres came about to address service uptime and availability.

“Today's customers expect seamless availability and performance of banking services,” he wrote. 

“Service quality is never coincidental. It’s simply the product of the maturity at which we operate and the level of risk inherent in our environment.”

He goes on to say that recognising service management “as a professional practice” is the first step. 

“Then, it’s through establishing the right operating model, capability and culture that we attain the standard of maturity and level of risk needed to achieve a markedly improved and sustainable level of service quality at a lower cost of operation,” Bright added.

The command centre model is used by TCS with other financial services customers globally, such as UK insurer Aviva, which uses the model “to proactively monitor an issue before there could be a major impact to the business, thus enabling the IT support teams to” intervene.

A Westpac spokesperson contacted by iTnews declined to comment.