Interview Intix managing partner Marc Braet, by Swiftexperts

This interview first appeared on April 18, 2014 on Swiftexperts.

I know Marc for some time now and we met last time at SOFE in Amsterdam. I really like the Intix solution and naturally we became partners in a way to help Intix in their journey. I asked Marc if we can do this “interview” to share more information and get more interest from our readers and members. If you like, please feel free to put any questions in comments.

Hello Marc, please can you introduce yourself and your company little bit?

Hello Martin, thanks for giving me the opportunity to present Intix to the swiftexperts.com members.

I am one of the co-founders of Intix, and we started some 3 years ago. The idea to launch the company was based on real customer questions and needs. Financial Institutions were looking for solutions to get access to all their archived messaging data, across channels and across standards. Systems did exist but they were always silo-based and never offered the complete overview.

Since they could not find on the market what they were looking for, we decided to investigate this opportunity … . That’s how it all started.

Can you tell us what kind of SW product Intix offers?

So we did investigate on the opportunity, and the technology we are working with allows us to offer a solution as was being searched for by these financial institutions… Our solutions are helping banks and corporate to get a single window access to all their financial messaging data. This data can already be stored in different archives or systems today and may be in many different formats or standards. The Intix solutions can deal with all this data in an easy and efficient way, and allow users to perform detailed (un)structured searches, reports and business intelligence dashboards. The Intix solutions are standard solutions and out-of-the-box, making implementations fairly light and easy, and also ensuring state-of-the-art support and maintenance.

The modules that today are commercially available are the INTIX Message Archive and the Intix Message Warehouse.

Where can potential customers meet you?

Intix is present at most SWIFT events such as Business Forums, SOFE and SIBOS. Of course people can also contact us directly via our website www.intix.eu or send us a mail to info@intix.eu . We have a Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/intix.nv) and we also manage a LinkedIn group where customers and interested prospects can share experiences and raise questions (http://www.linkedin.com/groups/INTIX-Message-Suite-Community-7466000/about) . Your members are most welcome to Like our Facebook page and/or join our LinkedIn group.

In which way your product is unique on the market comparing to others?

We are unique in the sense that we can offer access to all data, in all possible standards, and with an out-of-the-box solution. We are not modifying or translating the data, but still offer a unique ‘model-view’ on the data to make the life of the end users easy, so that they do not need to understand the complexity of every single message format.

Who actually can benefit most of its functions?

Our solutions are relevant for all institutions involved in financial messaging, so typical financial institutions and corporate. Within these institutions, we see people from business, IT, Audit, Claims handling, Relationship Management,… using it, and all for their own specific (different) purposes. The solution is so easy to configure to your personal needs, that a wide implementation or roll-out is possible and as such the costs can be shared among all these departments. Users do not need software to be installed locally, they just need a browser on their computer.

What kind of additional values does it have comparing to standard SWIFT Products like Swift Alliance Access or Entry.

SWIFT Alliance Access and Entry are messaging interfaces. The Intix solution is complementary since it can deal with all the Alliance data once the messages have been exchanged. We can also import the Archive back-ups so that you do not go in the complex restore procedure if you need to retrieve an old message. Also the SWIFT Interfaces do not offer business reporting or dashboard functionality. These functionality are offered by the Intix Solutions.

How about LITE2 ? Is it possible to use it together with LITE2 ?

Absolutely. Lite2 is a nice solution for banks that want access to SWIFT, but do not want to have the complexity of the connectivity. However, SWIFT only keeps the messaging data of the Lite2 users for 124 days, and after that period the data is lost.

Intix offers Lite2 users the opportunity to build their own messaging archive so that this one can be used as a Long-Term message archive for message retrieval, reporting and business intelligence purposes.

SWIFT offers a product called SWIFTWatch, which is also an analytic tool with business intelligence features. Please, can you describe differences comparing with the Intix solution?

SWIFTWatch is only looking at SWIFT MT messages that were exchanged over SWIFT. Also SWIFTWatch is delivering the data in average 30 days after the exchange via a webportal. SWIFTWatch offers banks access to a number of predefined reports and dashboards, and only to a list of named users.

The Intix Solutions can handle all your messaging (also compressed file content), and all data is available in real-time mode. Also the data is residing at the bank’s or corporate’s infrastructure. Every one (who is entitled by its bank or corporate) can get access to the solution. We offer access to an agreed number of concurrent users. This number can easily be upgraded if needed. All users can make any kind of report or dashboard as they want or need it, so they are not bound to the list of predefined reports. Based on experiences from our users, the Intix Solutions are very easy to use.

By the way, what is your relationship with SWIFT itself?

Intix is an official SWIFT registered vendor, and we do have a very good relationship with SWIFT. Last year at SIBOS in Dubai, Intix was one of the invited speakers at the Standards Forum.

Which features do your customers likes most?

The fact that all standards can easily be processed, the ‘model-view’ to make complex messages (e.g. MX) look easy and understandable, its user-friendliness, its flexibility, its quality in general, but also the fact that it contributes a lot to an improved efficiency and a lower Total Cost of Ownership.

Is it possible to tell us what is the biggest volume of some of your customer?

Today our biggest customer brings in average 15 million messages per day to the Intix platform. We manage to process in average 4.000 messages per second (on a single host system), so this total volume can be processed in 1 hour.

Which message formats can be implemented?

Very simple, all formats ! Our technology allows to deal with any kind of format going from international standards (e.g. SWIFT, FIX, EDIFACT, …) to domestic standards (CODA, CFONB, …) to even proprietary or bank specific formats.

Of course people would like to know how much does it cost.

Our pricing is very simple and transparent. Today we have 2 modules commercially available: the Intix Message Archive and the Intix Message Warehouse. Both modules have a pricing in ‘volume bands’ offering low volume customers the access to the solution at a low price, but users with higher volumes will pay more. However, when expressed in cost per transaction, it becomes cheaper per transaction with higher volumes. We also have a separate price list for Service Bureau’s.

Can you tell us little bit more about those analytic tools?

All kind of desired analytics can be generated, based on counterparts, volumes, values, size, … . All users can create reports or Business Intelligence dashboards on this.

Can customer create own reports and dashboards? Is it difficult?

All users can make dashboards or reports relevant for their own needs. The creation of these reports or dashboards is very intuitive so that everyone can do it without having to follow expensive training.

All results, reports, … can be easily exported into Excel, Pdf, …

We are continuously enhancing our current modules, the Intix Message Archive and the Intix Message Warehouse. We have now added language support for example so that the GUI and on-line help is available in English, French, Russian, … .

What are you planning to introduce? Any new features?

We will also be launching 2 new modules. We are currently piloting the Intix Message Tracker with one of our customers. This should be commercially available by Q3 2014. The Intix Message Tracker helps institutions to link individual messages or transactions into conversations by correlating them. More detailed info can be found on our website.

Early 2015 we will be launching the Intix Message Monitor. The Intix Message Monitor will provide content based predictive monitoring on volumes, values, cut-off times, liquidity, … More detailed info can be found on our website.

We will be updating the status of these new modules via our website and newsletters.

If someone wants to get more information or have some question, how to proceed?

They can contact us, and we will then get in contact with them as soon as possible.

Do you have any open positions?

We are regularly recruiting and all open positions are mentioned in the jobs section on our website.

Thank you for your time and good luck with new prospects!

Thank you very much !