IBS Journal January 2016


‘SAP had more at stake… We insisted, forced them,


compelled them to do this project.’ Rahul Modi, Adarsh Credit Co-operative Society


having to convince the supplier to bid. It emphasised that it is the pioneer in India around financial inclusion and would there- by constitute a flagship client. Banks that have been first with soft-


ware in new countries have often strug- gled, whether working with SAP or other suppliers. And Adarsh had a number of domestic heavyweight suppliers on its doorstep, of course, with proven core bank- ing systems. However, ‘SAP had more at stake’, says Modi. Moreover, he feels that a lot of the risk is reduced if an organisation itself is ready. ‘It is all about how well you prepare for the project.’ Adarsh’s IT team and that of SAP spent


a lot of time together before the start so that there was the right level of preparation and so that the supplier understood the bank’s processes. That ‘homework’ started in December 2013 and ‘gave us confidence’. A steering committee was set up, includ- ing Modi and the CIO, and there was close attention from SAP’s global head of finan- cial services, Ross Wainwright, and other SAP big-hitters. There were monthly meet- ings with SAP senior managers to review the status of the project. There were a lot of sessions in SAP’s Bangalore labs look- ing at the requirement gaps and at what workarounds could be made. SAP was the implementation partner, with no third par- ty involved, at the insistence of Adarsh, which is different from the supplier’s usual way of working, which is to insist on third


party delivery. ‘We insisted, forced them, compelled them to do this project.’ To ramp up the financial inclusion


at the speed sought by the government, mobile is bound to be important and the government is aiding this, such as through aspects around online Know Your Custom- er (KYC) checks. Providing financial services through an agent network was the starting point for Adarsh’s project. This was centred on SAP’s channel solution which is derived from Sybase (the Sybase 360 solution which, again, had no users in India at this time) and the project ran through 2014. Here there was a third party involved in the implementation, Finland-based Mistral Mobile. After a pilot, there was a rapid roll- out to the bank’s 135,000 or so agents and a resultant productivity improvement that Modi puts at around 20%. At this time, the new mobile platform


was integrated with the old core banking system but thoughts then turned to replac- ing this as well. The project began in mid- June 2014 and went live with a ‘big bang’ cutover on 19th January 2015, for more


© IBS Intelligence 2016


than one million customers, 2.9 million accounts and 32.6 million payment trans- actions. There is 1 MBPS connectivity via MPLS to the branches (65% of which are in rural and semi-urban areas). The suite of SAP software includes the lower-end BCA solution (now called Deposits), CML for lending (Loans Management), SAP Treas- ury, ERP for Banking, CRM, ICM (incentives and commissions management), BW (data warehouse), FI (financial accounting) and MM (material management). Again, this was remarkably swift. One


area of preparation was data cleansing, with this carried out for several weeks and with around 60% completed by the start of the core banking system implementation. Data templates were devised ahead of the project, based on the early ‘deep dive’ train- ing sessions with SAP. There was some customisation. First, as


a credit society, Adarsh has to enroll peo- ple as members before they become cus- tomers and there was a need to build this member platform, which includes man- aging dividends. The agency model also


www.ibsintelligence.com 37


case study: adarsh credit co-op


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