German bank managing a whole new Y2K problem

Commerzbank, one of the three biggest banks in Germany, is responding to customers' Y2K-readiness questions with help from Documentum's document management system.

Hundreds of inquiries arrive every day at Commerzbank's Frankfurt headquarters, asking about the bank's Y2K strategy, budget and time constraints and contingency plans, as well as IT and infrastructure issues.

"Given the volume and wide range of information our customers were asking for, it had become virtually impossible to provide a personalized response within a reasonable period using traditional methods," said Ernst-Otto Schlodinski, manager of the Commerzbank's Y2K Customer/Supplier Inquiries Project.

Y2K inquiries are now scanned, read and evaluated, and stored into a Docbase repository in Documentum's EDMS 98 system. Documentum's EDMS 98 also automates the process of generating individual replies.

As a result, Commerzbank employees are spared the painstaking task of replying to hundreds of individual replies each day. "We have managed to master the flood of inquiries, and we are now able to guarantee rapid and individual responses," said Schlodinski