IBS Journal June 2015


Second chance


Union Bank of Nigeria has completely overhauled its operations with the introduction of a new core banking system, Flexcube 12.0 from Oracle FSS, plus a range of additional Oracle tools and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. It has also onboarded Gieom for training and change management.


The bank is the oldest in the country, dat- ing back to 1917. It has been using the Flexcube core banking system since 1997. In the course of the banking sector reform in the late 2000s, Union Bank was placed on the watchlist by the central bank, with instruction to turn its operations around in three years. It gained a new CIO, Yomi Akinade, in 2010, who moved from the US to assist with the much needed technology overhaul at the bank. There was a string of senior management appointments across Union Bank of Nigeria at the time, includ- ing a new chairman, Emeka Emuwa, who joined in 2012 from a lengthy tenure at Citi- bank. There has also been a major recruit- ment drive across the board to bring in people with up-to-date skills, says Akinade, as it was felt that the existing skillset was ‘very old fashioned’. ‘We went through reengineering across the board: people, processes, technology,’ he says. On the technology side, the legacy


solution, Flexcube 6.7, was far behind the - est Flexcube version, 12.0. The bank consid-


ered changing the core altogether, recalls Akinade, but having examined the set-up, it was concluded that it was not the soft- ware itself that was the biggest problem, but rather a people factor. In the previous instance, there was a lack of understand- ing of the importance of the requirements -


prehensive supervision and controls in place, and no rigorous testing, he explains. ‘Perhaps they did not know exactly what they wanted,’ he muses. Accenture assist- ed at the time, but when the new man- agement took over and looked at the work provided, it felt it left much to be desired. ‘There were a lot of gaps,’ Akinade recalls. ‘So we decided to give Flexcube another chance.’ This also meant at least some mit- igation of change management risks, he adds. Flexcube was to be re-implemented and this time the bank would be fully pre-


requirements and controls in place to oversee the project and monitor the pro- gress. Oracle FSS provided specialists to assist with the implementation on site, and


Accenture (‘believe it or not’) was called upon again, but this time for a ‘very limit- ed role: quality assurance only’. A 98-per- son team from the bank was assembled to work on the project. The bank also took time with the


implementation, starting in early 2014 and completing in April 2015. There was a lot of ‘ground work going on behind the scenes’, some of which had started a year or two before the implementation of the core. The old hardware set-up, for instance, was dis- bursed, with each branch having its own servers and software installations, resulting in 300 servers across the bank’s network. They were replaced by a centralised instal- lation at the HQ, leaving no hardware at the branches. However, for the new set-up to be successful, the bank had to modern- ise the communication network, ‘as we were now fully depending on it’. VSAT was


monitors and CPUs had to be replaced with modern equipment. Overall, the bank has carried out nearly 70 technology-related projects over the last few years The bank also went through enter-


prise-wide process reengineering, to intro- duce best practice and to avoid exces- sive customisation of Flexcube. ‘From the


‘From the outset, I was very firm in my decision to minimise the customisation of the cor and introduce only those changes that are absolutely necessary.’


Yomi Akinade, Union Bank of Nigeria


minimise the customisation of the core and introduce only those changes that are absolutely necessary,’ Akinade states. The result is that Union Bank runs the least cus- tomised version of Flexcube in Nigeria, but achieving that was a challenge, he admits. There was resistance from various depart- ments of the bank that wanted to ‘custom- ise practically every process’, he recalls. However, this can be resolved if there is a clear directive from the top of the organisa-


34 © IBS Intelligence 2015 www.ibsintelligence.com


case study: union bank of nigeria


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