Pros
BMO is a larger company than Bank of the West and is primarily located in the Chicago area
Cons
BMO from an IT standpoint, farms out most of their IT Operations, system maintenance to third party contractors instead of employing people long term that would work to maintain and support Networks, server side and applications. The result is that there are many people from BMO who aren't as knowledgeable on day to day operations because they let the 3rd party companies handle the bulk of the work. This created many additional problems and communication breakdowns during our conversion process. It was less than smooth, There was a lot of customer confusion about the changover that negatively affected the business. Also when asking basic questions about the process, many times the management would have npo clue as to who to talk to for real answers, or you would get no response at all. This does not condone confidence in the company. In my over 10 years of IT experience, I have never seen major projects run with so little information about troubleshooting the process when it fails. Example- Online Banking failed in major markets and the helpdesk was overwhelmed to the point of being unusable. Many Branches had to deal with failing systems and no where to go for help.