IBS Journal June 2015


‘It is a diffrent company to what it was in its I-flex days [India-based I-flex was acquired by Oracle in 2005], and the metality there has been changing too.’


Yomi Akinade, Union Bank of Nigeria


tion down, he believes. From day one, the leadership of the bank was clear in its com- mitment to adapt to the new technology, not the other way around, he says. Another challenge was ‘the lack


of knowledge’ at the bank, so a ‘mas- sive recruitment programme’ was put in motion. There were also complications with the


old data. As it was not properly maintained -


cial and customer, was incomplete and inaccurate. Cleaning it up and augmenting it has been a major undertaking that is still going on to this day, says Akinade. Some training on the new system was done in Bangalore, but the majority of learning was done onsite. For this, a cloud- based e-learning platform, Gieom (Graphi- cal Intelligent Electronic Operations Manu- al) was rolled out, supplied by India-based specialist vendor Gieom. Akinade says that he was original-


ly thinking about deploying Oracle’s own


(UPK), as he had experience of working with it in the US. In his research of the mar- ket he came across Gieom and found it a better alternative. ‘Having UPK would have meant having a full-time developer on site, whilst Gieom can easily be rolled out by ourselves. It is fast to deploy and easy to use,’ he explains. ‘It is fool-proof thanks to its visual environment, which means each user can see what steps they need to take to perform a certain transaction.’ The chances of a user learning a new system are much higher if they can visualise it and practice in an environment identical to the actual one, rather than reading pages of text in a manual, he comments. It is also of great help to those users that lack skills or


© IBS Intelligence 2015


experience, he adds. There is a full track- record in the Gieom system for the super- visors and management to monitor the progress. ‘Gieom is now our go-to applica- tion for training and knowledge transfer.’ It has already been used for the Oracle ERP and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) training (another recent implementation at Union Bank), Microsoft Dynamics CRM (currently under imple- mentation) and Oracle Financial Crime and Compliance Management (FCCM) for AML and compliance (also being rolled out at the moment). Another project underway at Union Bank is the deployment of Flexcube Direct,


this case, unlike with the core system, the bank is taking full ownership of the prod- uct, and the bank’s team is now travel- ling to India to learn the system and car- ry out customisation. Internet banking requires quick time to market, and this can be achieved by owning the system rath- er than being dependent on the develop- er, its available resources and timescales. ‘Doing it ourselves will be faster, easier and cheaper. We have explained it to Oracle FSS and I think we have managed to persuade


acquired by Oracle in 2005], and the men- tality there has been changing too.’ The wide-reaching modernisation


project has also encompassed the bank’s subsidiary in the UK, also a long-standing user of Flexcube. It too migrated to the 12.0 version, which was done before its parent’s conversion. It is a separate installation and the work was largely carried out by the UK team, with just ‘high level’ supervision from Akinade.


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