The company's Global Transaction Banking division began the BPM project in late 2008 with the aim of standardising and simplifying the processes of starting up and running client accounts. GTB manages payments and securities transactions, and as the world's largest clearing bank of the Euro currency it clears €1.2 billion (US$1.7 billion) daily.

Abhijit Gupta, chief enterprise architect at Deutsche Bank, yesterday told delegates at the Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit in London: "We took this project to the global head of the unit, to avoid needing to get buy-in later. It was too fundamental a change not to."

The key to the project's success so far, Gupta said, was fitting IT processes to a blueprint, which was created by top level business strategists. The blueprint also involved key stakeholders who used the systems being asked what they needed.

Under the first two phases of the programme, now running, the firm's legal contracts for new customers, and the processes of starting new accounts, were essentially standardised -- within the context of the local regulatory environment and the products on offer.

In the final phase of the project, due by July, ongoing operational systems will be fully standardised, with legacy technology being removed. Previously, Gupta said, any 'onboarding' process of new customers could involve over 12 systems.