Gravity: everything about Santander’s giant technological project (2024)

By Mariano Saúca.

Gravity represents a highly disruptive transformation for Santander regarding the management of its technology platform. But it’s not just about the technical aspect; it also involves the improvements it brings to the business and, ultimately, to the customers.

In this article, we’ll delve into what Gravity is, the challenges we’ve faced, and the benefits it will bring to the Group.

In a nutshell, Gravity is the Group’s strategy to migrate our entire technology platform to the Cloud and help the bank become a fully digital company.

While this might sound like a typical message any company would convey to articulate its technological evolution goals, it’s crucial to understand why this is particularly relevant or special for us. First, let’s consider some notable aspects:

◾ Technology for banks is crucial, unlike many other industries where it merely supports the business. Banks 🏦 are arguably the only industry where almost 100% of their business is on a computer. If you think about it, apart from some physical items such as cards or cheques (now almost obsolete), everything is computerised. On the other hand, other industries use information technology as a business support, but they are mainly based on physical means (telecommunications have their communications networks, electricity companies have their towers and cables…). This means that this type of technological transformation is much more complex for a bank than for any other industry, so taking on a project of this magnitude is a big gamble, not without significant risks.

◾ The technology that most banks use for their business (which in our jargon is called “Core Banking”) is legacy. Some say it’s too old, obsolete, outdated… 🧓 But the reality is that this technology has provided (and continues to provide) a service adapted to the needs of banks. However, the new times and the increasingly demanding demands of customers require more agile responses from the business, which new technologies can provide better than the old ones.

◾ Maintaining outdated technology incurs higher costs compared to modern solutions, especially in terms of basic Hardware (HW) and Software (SW) infrastructure. This is also helped by the fact that, until a few years ago, practically all the infrastructure was provided by a single supplier, whereas now it is more open and there are more possible suppliers, which facilitate competition, and result in more competitive 🏆 costs.

Once this is understood, we can complement the brief opening sentence of what Gravity is, saying that it is the migration of the Core banking to Cloud platforms, with the main objective of helping the business to better serve customers, while also reducing technological costs.

As mentioned earlier, executing a project of this magnitude involves significant risks, necessitating meticulous risk management at various levels.

The main challenges we have had to address have been the following:

🥊 Performance and customer impact

Migrated applications needed to have zero impact on users and end customers. This means that the performance of those applications had to be at least as good as the originals. This has required carrying out a significant number of tests and validations, both of the new infrastructures and of the migrated applications, to ensure that their operation adhered to the demanding requirements that we have in the Group in terms of response times and other aspects that affect the user and customer experience.

📉 Project execution risk

Any IT project that is developed for a business usually generates some instability until the implementation is completed. There comes a time when the switch is flipped, and the new system replaces the old one hoping that everything will work properly. In the case of Gravity, we developed a parallel testing model that was zero risk, as the original system was still working as before, while we were testing the new one. We have called this model “Dual run” and it is an innovative and simple idea to certify a new system, automatically and without risk. In addition, in case of unexpected problems once the switch is activated, we develop quick reversing mechanisms, designed to restore the original systems in a very short space of time if necessary.

⏳ Time and cost of the project

No matter how attractive a project is, a priori, if the execution period is very long or the cost is very high, it will not find the support of the organization for its development. These types of projects that comprehensively affect the “Core Banking” are usually very long and very expensive, so we had to think about the approach quite a bit, until we reached a viable solution, based on two main keys:

1. Automating tasks: We were able to automate activities that would have taken up most of the time, such as the technical migration of applications (programs and databases) and certification testing of migrated applications. In this way, we were able to drastically reduce execution times and costs.

2. Minimal need for specialized resources: the automatisms developed have made it possible to minimize the time required for our experts, who have been able to continue with their usual activities focused on providing service to banks. In other words, during the period of development and implementation of Gravity, it has not been necessary to stop other projects, so the bank’s business has been able to continue evolving as if the project had not existed.

We can distinguish two types of benefits that Gravity brings to Santander:

1️⃣ Quantitative

Which are those that provide the Group with cost savings:

· Technology management savings: The basic HW and SW infrastructure to run Gravity is significantly cheaper than the original systems. This means 💰 recurring savings, since apart from the acquisition cost, which is only incurred once, there are also maintenance costs that are paid on an annual basis.

· Simplification of applications: with the implementation of Gravity there will be a set of SW components that will become obsolete and, therefore, will no longer be necessary. This will allow a decrease in application maintenance 🧑 🔧 costs .

· Optimization of banking processes: Gravity incorporates components that simplify the bank’s operational processes, especially those carried out in branches and in central services (Back-office). This simplification has two benefits: processes are executed faster 🏃 and the effort required to execute them is lower. Therefore, both factors influence a reduction in operating costs.

· Reuse: at Gravity there is a lot of focus on reusing ♻️ what is done in the banks and drawing lessons learned that avoid “reinventing the wheel” every time a new project has to be tackled. In this way, a reduction in costs in implementation projects is achieved at a global level in the Group.

Thanks to all this, Santander has managed, among other things, to reduce the bank’s energy consumption for the technological infrastructure by 70%, which contributes to its responsible banking goals.

2️⃣ Qualitative

Which are not economically tangible, at least directly, and which represent improvements for the business:

· Better “Time-to-Market”: in other words, the implementation of new functionalities for users and customers is faster and is based on the use of immediately available information. Thus, the business can react faster to the needs of customers, and therefore they will be more satisfied 😀. Meanwhile, the Group is better positioned against its competitors in the market.

· New business models: in the constant challenge that large banks have when it comes to competing with smaller and more agile niche entities, Gravity facilitates the rapid definition of new business models, which respond ☎️ to specific needs of users, and which do not require large investments or unfeasible deadlines.

· Modernization: In addition to all of the above, the new platform is very innovative from a technological point of view. This positions the Group at the highest levels of modernity in the financial sector. And at the same time, it allows our professionals to leave behind the oldest technologies so that they can develop professional 🧑 🎓 careers aligned with the latest advances.

In short, we can conclude that Gravity is possibly the most relevant technological project carried out by the Santander Group in recent years. And after all of the above, the reasons seem to be clear:

The BENEFITS you are bringing in terms of:

✅ Cost savings.

✅ Business improvements.

✅ Technological modernization.

The METHODOLOGY used for its execution:

✅ Focused on thorough risk management.

✅ Focused on having zero impact on users and customers.

✅ Based on automation and reuse as far as possible.

✅Feasible in terms of time and cost of execution.

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