Ken Thompson, previously the First Union CEO and now the new Wachovia CEO, issued a challenge to employees and a commitment to customers and shareholders: The two banks would complete the merger with no customer impact. The bank also went public with its customer service rankings and pledged to hit specific customer service rating targets throughout the merger period.

For Davis, Thompson’s challenge had a profound impact on how she approached the monumental task of systems integration. "It wasn’t about a time line being as quick as it could possibly be," she says. "It was not about making it as cheap as it could possibly be. It was always, ’What will the customer get?’"

Remove Politics from the Equation

Deciding which bank’s technology to use after the merger happens is a process naturally fraught with politics. Jim Eckenrode, vice president of consumer banking research at TowerGroup, likens IT departments to collections of fiefdoms. "If there’s no centralized control," he says, "often inappropriate decisions are made?decisions that are good for somebody’s career, but not necessarily good for customers, the bank or shareholders." To avoid that fate, IT leaders need to be clear about the IT game plan. "A well-defined, clearly articulated IT strategy from the top down is very key," says George Tubin, a consumer banking senior analyst at TowerGroup.

Before Wachovia and First Union began the process of choosing systems, Davis and her team worked with each line of business to draft a target environment design. That meant first defining the desired customer experience and then figuring out what technology would be needed to support that. Each line of business presented its design document to a group of executive committee members for review. "It gave a lot of people a chance to poke at the plan," says Davis. "We got cross-functional input about what was feasible, and what should the experience in the end be for customers."

Davis helped form a team with equal numbers of people from each bank to vet both banks’ technologies. Because the banks agreed to merge as equals, they didn’t begin with an assumption that one bank’s technology was better than the other’s. To discourage territorial decision-making, Thompson attended the first meeting about system selection, reminding the assembled troops that even though they came from different banks, now they were on the same team and their task was to make good business decisions.

First Union and Wachovia IT executives systematically evaluated both banks’ technologies, considering scalability to support future growth, business functionality, ability to support the bank strategically after the merger and how all the technology would be integrated. Risk, cost and ongoing support requirements also factored into the equation.