general ledger, in this instance Oracle Financials. Both SAP and Oracle are well established in the country. CDB wanted to remove the manual processing and gain the flexibility to offer more innovative products to its customers. The market was highly competitive, said the bank’s deputy director, product process management, finance and accounting, Cheng Jun. The senior management of the bank were convinced that the way to maintain CDB’s position was to adopt a package which would support international business processes and services, thereby delivering the sought-after innovation. The shortlist came down to Temenos – which had a project


at an early stage at Bank of Shanghai – and System Access, which teamed up with a local partner, Digital China. In the end, Symbols was deemed to have a closer fit with the bank’s business requirements. Its technical architecture was also felt to be an advantage, so too the integrated design. Price was not a major consideration, said Jun.


The system went live with a ‘big bang’ cut-over for all


branches on 1st April 2005. Five months were spent on the gap analysis and the functional specification and documentation stage. Seven months, to November 2004, were taken up on systems set-up, using the parameterisation within Symbols, alongside preparations for testing. In parallel, System Access worked on customisations, mainly within the lending side of the system, according to Jun. This was System Access’ first implementation in China and the regulatory environment was both complex and changing. However, the adaptations to the system relating to local requirements were not too great in the end, he said. The bank entered into a dialogue with the central bank and was able to convince the regulators that, with the new system, its monitoring would be more advanced than the existing requirements.


The cut-over itself was somewhat later than planned, with a five month parallel run, with this time also used to train staff and prepare operations guides. Jun cited two main reasons for the delay. First, a lot of bugs needed fixing, with the problems worsened by the resultant need for regression testing. Second, preparations for the new system took longer than intended due to a lack of internal bank resources. The shift from old to new processes was more complicated than expected. Jun admitted that the bank’s requirements were not very clear and kept changing. There were no major problems after the cut-over but there were a lot of minor ones, which all added up to plenty of headaches. In total, he estimated, there were around 500 problems. Some were to do with software errors, others with incorrectly set parameters, and others to do with static data. The bank set up a single unit to manage all of the problems. While most bugs were fixed, and a lot of the operational issues had been eradicated, the bank had not resolved all problems by Q3 2006.


474


Setting aside the issues, the sought-after product innovation had been achieved, with the bank gaining greater flexibility and the ability to deliver tailored products to its customers, as well as to its agents. This meant improved services for the customers, said Jun. There were also improvements in data management and more automated and flexible accounting. The main accounting is done in Symbols, with general ledger entries then sent to Oracle Financials. Running on a Sun platform, the performance of the system had been fine, he added, although the end-of-day run needed some fine-tuning.


A smaller deal for System Access in the first half of 2003


came from Amen Bank in Tunisia, which took Symbols for core processing on deposits and loans, as well as CRM, trade finance and treasury. Steria was involved in the implementation. The supplier was also seemingly heavily involved in a bid at Banque du Liban. The central Lebanese bank was seeking to put in place an ASP solution for use by itself and other banks in the country. There were a number of aspects to this, including internet banking and payments, and it was seeking a number of systems, including a core back office platform. By the end of 2003, Adnan Elassad, head of strategic accounts, was ‘cautiously optimistic’ but the deal did not seem to materialise. There was less cause for optimism elsewhere as Erste Bank again put on hold its roll-out in the Czech and Slovak Republics. This looked like a potentially significant blow for the supplier. A source at the bank said that the project had been delayed and was under review because of escalating costs. The ultimate decision would rest with Erste’s head office and he was unsure when this was likely to be made. The bank was in ‘re-negotiations’ with System Access. The intention had been to try to implement the system in the Czech and Slovak operations in parallel but this was proving too difficult. He confirmed that Symbols was live in the Czech Republic for all of Erste’s corporate and treasury business. Indeed, he said the system had ‘settled in well, people like it’. He added: ‘It is stable and supporting the operations adequately.’ Nevertheless, the retail side was by far the larger portion. It seemed as though there was a strong internal lobby


from the Slovak side of the bank. It used a locally developed Oracle-based system, which might be applied to the rest of the bank. This was built by a 120 person Slovakian software house, AssetSoft, which was subsequently acquired by the bank. The company was originally spun out of the Slovakian Post Bank. These staff formed a central European competence centre for the bank and might be used for any alternative strategy. However, the system was decentralised so would have


required considerable investment to bring it up to scratch. The bank had invested a lot in Symbols (a figure of over $11


Universal Banking Systems Market Report | www.ibsintelligence.com


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