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.

