Mark Whitfield @ The Software Partnership – Timeline of technical focus areas

During his time at The Software Partnership (acquired by Deluxe Data International in 1994), Senior IT Project Manager Mark Whitfield operated as a Programmer and Lead Analyst. This era lasted from 1990 to 1995 and focused on foundational electronic banking software frameworks, specifically the sp/ARCHITECT-BANK platform.

The key projects and focus areas within this era are structured below by client timeline, focus areas, and technical outputs:

🏦 1990–1992: Barclays Bank (Knutsford, Cheshire)

  • Focus Area: On-site architectural design and core mainframe development for high-profile business banking.
  • Technical Output: Designed and coded back-end software modules for the Barclays Business Master II (BBM II) desktop banking project.

📞 1992–1993: Girofon (Denmark)

  • Focus Area: Telephonic integration and automated remote banking solutions.
  • Technical Output: Developed an automated, menu-driven touch-tone phone banking suite. This allowed voice commands to dial into a Periphonics VRAM device to fetch live customer balances directly from back-end mainframes.

📊 1993: Barclays Bank (Poole, Dorset)

  • Focus Area: Financial transactional automation and corporate service invoicing.
  • Technical Output: Created and integrated a custom batch billing suite of modules that attached to the BBM II application to automate client usage invoicing.

💻 1993–1994: TSB & Bank of Scotland

  • Focus Area: Early digital forensics, fund movements, and logic architecture.
  • Technical Output: Conducted digital investigations and engineered logic design and mainframe code to support early inter-account desktop money transfers.

🌍 1994–1995: Rabobank

  • Focus Area: International systems deployment, optimization, and validation.
  • Technical Output: Led software optimization protocols, wrote custom electronic coding patches, and validated on-site deployments for global operations.

⚙️ Core Technical Stack & Environment Summary

Across all eras at The Software Partnership, the standardized environment utilized for these outputs included:

  • Hardware & Operating Systems: Tandem Mainframe Computers (now HPE NonStop) operating on the Tandem Guardian O/S.
  • Programming Languages: COBOL85, NonStop SQL, SCOBOL (Screen COBOL for “green screen” terminal emulations), C, C++, and TAL.
  • Subsystems & Tools: PATHWAY, PATHMAKER, ENSCRIBE, EMS, and INSPECT.
  • Methodologies: Early iterative development and structured Waterfall lifecycles.
Unknown's avatar

Author: Mark Whitfield

Welcome to my site! After graduating in Computing in 1990, I accepted a position as a programmer at a Runcorn based software house specialising in electronic banking software, namely sp/ARCHITECT-BANK on Tandem Computers (now HPE NonStop). This was before the internet became more prevalent and so the notion of enabling desktop access to company accounts for inter-account transfers and book keeping was still quite a cutting edge idea (and smartphones only ever hinted at in Space 1999). The company was called The Software Partnership (which was taken over by Deluxe Data in 1994). I spent 5 years in Runcorn developing code for SP/ARCHITECT for various banks like TSB, Bank of Scotland, Rabobank and Girofon (Denmark) to name but a few. I then moved onto a software house in Salford Quays for further bank facing projects. After a further 23 years in the IT industry and now a Senior IT Project Manager (both Agile and Waterfall delivery), I thought I would echo out my Career Profile in this corner of the internet for quick and easy access.

Leave a comment