January 27, 2005

Based in Chili, development center Altec has become the first company in that country to achieve Level 5 Certification in capability maturity model (CMM), the company said in a statement.

CMM is a model that reflects the level of maturity in business processes at companies related to software maintenance and development. US software engineering institute (SEI) created the model, which evaluates companies' adherence to best practices.

Level 5 is the maximum CMM rating and Altec is one of the 10 firms in Spanish-speaking Latin America which have reached this level.

A group of six assessors led by Rajendra Prassad, head assessor at SEI, supervised process quality in Altec's implementations, verifying compatibility with the CMM model.

"It took us nearly 3 and a half years to reach level 5 in CMM. In December 2002 we reached CMM 2 and in December 2003 we achieved CMM 3 but in a parallel way we were developing practices from higher levels," Altec general manager Patricio Melo told BNamericas.

"There are several benefits with CMM 5. Our error rate is significantly reduced and we deliver all projects within schedule. There are some areas that delay the process, but nearly 100% of the time we finish our projects on time," Melo said.

Altec is part of Spanish financial group Grupo Santander (NYSE: STD) and manages systems development and maintenance for all the group's banks in Latin America.

"We do not have plans to expand our operations outside Grupo Santander, although we are now working with [Chilean bank] Banco París. We believe there is plenty to do [for Santander] in Latin America and Spain and our idea is to provide more services to Spain and become a software factory for this country," he added.

Source: BNamericas.com

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