He yanked 5, 000 Transmedia processing machines out of restaurants and combined Dining's classier front-end product with Transmedia's superior back-office system that credited savings on monthly charge-card accounts.

FORBES: No Free Lunch

Her back-office system, the latest version from Dayton, Ohio-based Reynolds and Reynolds, automatically sends out discount coupons by e-mail or regular mail, alerting customers to 10, 000-mile checkups or extended-warranty offers.

FORBES: Dealers 1 Internet 0

Having good middleware layers so you do not tightly couple your mobile app to a particular OS or to a particular back-office application and financial system, this is very critical.

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Daniel Bouton, SocGen's boss, has argued that Mr Kerviel could easily conceal the vast positions he took because he had previously worked in the back office, so was familiar with the system of controls.

ECONOMIST: Soci��t�� G��n��rale

Instead, McKinsey suggested a hub-and-spoke system, with 55 back-office centres serving 10-15 branches each.

ECONOMIST: Indonesian banking

It protects its highly portable assets with a GPS system, which tracks the location of each car and transmits it back to head office using the mobile-phone network.

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Mr. Prendergast departed for the private sector in 2000, the governor's office said, becoming CEO of the TransLink system in Vancouver, Canada, before being hired back by the MTA in 2009 to lead the transit division.

WSJ: Prendergast Picked to Run MTA