Ra Mc Dougall

R.A. McDougall

Visionary initiator of, and for a number of years the driving force behind, the BankOfMontreal Mechanization system (see also BmoMech). At a time when the other banks of the Canadian "Big Five" were customizing variants of the COLT memo-post system, he was able to convince the officers of the bank of the competitive advantage of the bank having its own home-grown, real-time, multiple region, banking system. This huge project, which probably took upwards of 3 person-centuries, has amply succeeded in satisfying its original goals, and has been successfully extended over the following 30 years to support the requirements of modern banking systems.

Interestingly, one of the CEOs of the bank, TonyComper?, now retired, was at one time a programmer on the 'Mech'anization project, so he was probably one of the few bank CEOs (at least in Canada) with a DP background.

CategoryPerson