Microsoft Releases Tool To Link Office 2007 To Financial Back Ends

Microsoft continues to build bridges between Office and back-office applications.

This time, it's launching an effort to tie Office 2007 front ends into banking applications. The new Office Business Application Reference Application Pack (OBA RAP) will be available today, targeting Loan Origination Systems (LOS).

Also starting today, Microsoft will post articles and provide architectural guidance and free source code for integrators and VARs using key Microsoft technologies -- Office 2007, Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services, and Visual Studio Tools For Office -- to build tight integration between back-end and front-office systems.

Webcasts will start later this month; Microsoft will speak more about this tool at an upcoming financial services strategy conference it will host in New York in late April.

"There is a natural affinity between the goodness of ERP or CRM delivered in a way the user would prefer to use it," said Daz Wilkin, program manager for Microsoft's Platform Strategy group.

Wilkin cited a quote-to-cash process as the type of application most people assume is automated, but actually requires a ton of back-and-forth e-mail, data entry, etc.

"There's a big gap between wanting a mortgage and getting it. It's a horrible manual process that can easily generate 40 different documents and 300 pieces of paper," said Mike Walker, Microsoft's architecture strategist for global financial services

In Walker's theoretical scenario using this RAP, if a customer wants a 30-year fixed loan, the broker would go to a portal, key in information about the customer, set up a profile and then, using Web parts in SharePoint, flow all that data into an enterprise messaging bus to different back ends.

The result? If the system is integrated, the broker can come up with new selling opportunities relevant to that customer. "Because we can integrate across boundaries, we can cross-sell a credit card, give her a point off and pay for closing fees," Wilkin noted.

These RAPs, and OBAs themselves, are part of Microsoft's push to move customers to Office 2007, which has been shipping generally for just more than a month. While some of the OBA capabilities can surface in older versions of Office, Office 2007 is the best set of clients, Wilkin said.

The Duet technology jointly developed by Microsft and SAP for tying Office to SAP ERP systems is yet another OBA, as is the new Office client for Microsoft's own Dynamics ERP applications announced two weeks ago.

OBAs themselves evolved out of Microsoft's Information Bridge Framework.

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