Commonwealth Bank is on track to complete its A$1.1 billion core systems revamp by December.Incoming CBA chief executive Ian Narev, who was branded a "tech savvy" boss yesterday by the bank's CIO, Michael Harte, said he was as committed to the core systems program as his predecessor Ralph Norris. Technology was, he said, a "source of competitive differentiation". In the half year to the end of December, the bank invested $188 million in its core systems program. During the six months, CBA moved business deposits and savings accounts into the new core and migrated more than a million business deposit and transaction accounts on to the new platform.The implementation of the SAP Business Partner program during the half year allows business processes to be streamlined for individual customers - essentially, delivering a key element of banking's holy grail, which is to deliver relationship banking services that orbit around individual customers, rather than individual banking products.Before the end of June, the bank plans to migrate all business deposit accounts across to the new core platform and also to start moving across business-lending capability.The new core system has long been touted as a key element in the bank's stated ambition to achieve an operating expenses-to-income ratio of 35 per cent. It's not there yet as the cost-to-income ratio for the half year was reduced, but remains above the target, at 38.3 per cent.Narev said that the progress of the core system program to date had been measured largely in terms of milestones, such that the programme delivered specific capabilities on time and on budget. "From the end of this year the debate moves to the impact on the business," he said, adding that this would be tracked in terms of bank revenues and operating expenses.Although the bank does not envisage another technology program on the same scale following completion of the core program, Narev indicated that technology would continue to be a focus for the bank and that core systems' staff could expect to be redeployed to other areas of the business after December.It is likely that a sizeable team will be needed to maintain and manage the new core, and also to migrate it into other parts of the business, such as Bankwest and ASB. Harte said there would be a further strategy update in April that would provide more detail on the core upgrade, new mobile products and the bank's cloud computing strategy.Besides the overhaul of the core systems, Narev trumpeted the success of the Kaching iPhone application. It has now been available for 58 days and around 105,000 copies of the app have been downloaded, according to Harte.