IBS Journal February 2015


‘Every user received a minimum of three different training sessions on the new system just to make sure everything


was clear to them on the day of cutover.’ Abdel Karem Freihat, Jordan Kuwait Bank


bank. It had performed over the years but there were at least three interlinked risks that needed to be addressed by the bank. The first was that there was no proper documentation for the system. The second was the dwindling availability of resources to support the system and work with the outdated technology. And the third was the extent of customisation. Integrating third party systems with it was becoming increasingly difficult because of this, with treasury, trade finance and other systems having to be interfaced to the legacy core. While there was a group-level policy


to implement ICS Banks, it’s wrong to assume that Jordan Kuwait Bank did not consider its options, Freihat recalls. ‘Burgan Bank previously did a complete exercise where they looked into most available core banking solutions in the market. They also used consultants to work with them. They reached the conclusion that ICS Banks would satisfy their needs, with very reasonable costs compared to other solutions in the market such as Misys and Temenos.’ However, says Freihat, this merely ‘had an influence on our decision’. Before committing, Jordan Kuwait Bank under- took its own exercise. It hired a consultant to make a comparison of ICS Banks and the incumbent system, which came out in favour of ICS Banks. Criteria considered included documentation, functionality and integration with other components. ‘We did our own homework,’ he remarks. The other factor weighing in favour of ICSFS was that it is a Jordanian company. ‘That makes the support for both implemen- tation and post-implementation phases more convenient,’ he explains. Having settled on ICS Banks, there


© IBS Intelligence 2015


were a few stages that the implementation project had to go through. These included a gap analysis phase, a development phase, then integration testing and user acceptance testing. After all this was complete, the bank underwent multiple data migration cycles and had a parallel run before finally cutting over. Throughout the project there was a


training programme at multiple levels, for head office, branches, departments and so on. ‘Every user received a minimum of three different training sessions on the new system just to make sure everything was clear to them on the day of cutover,’ Freihat states. There were also sessions practicing dealing with customer complaints, or helping customers complete transactions. A group of “super users” was created based on performance at training sessions, and these users were given the responsibility to mentor staff at branches, with each branch having one or two mentors at the time of the cutover. The bank decided at an early stage that


its best chance of a successful outcome was with a big-bang cutover. This would avoid the need to run two systems at the same time, and the requirement to build interfaces between the two. ‘The other reason is we had witnessed other banks in the market who went with that approach and it took them four years to complete their migration. It was not a good option for us to take,’ Freihat believes. During the gap analysis phase, the bank came up with a complete list of functionality in the old system that needed to be added to ICS Banks. There were no surprises in terms of coverage, but there were early signs of what would hinder


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