In summary, Kaddah said: 'There were the usual ups and downs during the project, but what was very positive was that ICS managed to adapt themselves very quickly and fill in the gaps.We are quite satisfied on both the business and the technical side. The information base will help us as we expand.'While the crux of the project, and the reason for delays, was in the gap analysis and the localisation stage, Kaddah remained complimentary about ICS and happy with the bank's choice of core system. Bank and vendor were able to compromise successfully. 'The effort for us was to review our processes and maybe take a decision in some cases to change them. But the decision to modify the core and the applications itself was quite prompt from ICS. They never resisted that.'
A final lesson for Kaddah was timing procurements over the length of the project. 'A project like this could never be implemented in less than two or three years. So you have to schedule your procurements. You can't procure your hardware and the system licence too early, otherwise you will be paying money and losing state-of-art technologies before you start running. So you have to manage your procurements carefully.'
ICS meanwhile can use IDWBE as a reference in its sales processes elsewhere in Egypt. 'ICS is now talking to me to support it in getting more business in Egypt. I'm helping the company because the more customers it has here, the better it's going to serve me. And because its package is now fully localised, I believe ICS will be capable of implementing it in any bank in record time,' Kaddah affirmed.
