Development Bank opts for R2m locally-developed solution to support knowledge management drive

The Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) is to implement a R2 million South African developed IT solutions framework. This will assist the bank to leverage its knowledge resources and be better able to control the massive regional funding projects in which it is involved.

"The installation of nVisionIT`s Charisma Solutions will allow the DBSA access to business intelligence, customer relationship management (CRM), document management and workflow solutions from a single interface and at a fraction of the cost of competitive systems," says Graham Tate, DBSA, Manager Information & Technology Services.

"Our initial focus is on knowledge management because one of the issues was lack of full control of the information our people have on the projects and clients they handle. When people leave the organisation there would be no record of either the projects or clients.

"We decided to approach the whole implementation from a knowledge management perspective initially because we wanted to retain our intellectual property on our clients and the projects we are involved in," says Tate.

The need to retain knowledge at DBSA is critical due to the extended completion timeframes of the infrastructural projects it funds and the fact that its highly skilled project managers are being recruited by other organisations. Key client personnel also change jobs mid-project.

"There were no means of tracking, storing and accessing all the communications between all the players," says Tate. "If personnel changed, we virtually had to start from scratch."

With Charisma, DBSA is now able to track and store all communications and events on both the DBSA and client sides - e-mails, meetings, documents, files and any other transaction or communication.

"We want to be in a position where anyone - from top executives to project managers - can look at a client record and see exactly what`s happening on the project. Not only that, we want to be able to leverage this information to our advantage and to that of our clients. Information is power, and if you don`t have it, you are powerless," he says.

Charisma was initially evaluated because it is developed on the Microsoft platform and DBSA is standardising on the Microsoft environment. The fact that the development house, nVisionIT, has a close relationship with Microsoft is a Microsoft Gold Partner as well as being part of the Proudly South African initiative was also important to DBSA. Much of Charisma`s leading-edge functionality, flexibility and interoperability are attributed to its leveraging Microsoft`s .Net technologies such as Office, SQL Server, Exchange and BizTalk server as well as the use of standards such as XML and Web services.

The solution was also considered because it was locally developed by nVisionIT and so met the DBSA`s commitment to SMEE empowerment wherever possible. But going local did not mean that DBSA was compromising on functionality. Tate says he realised that DBSA was getting much more with Charisma than global, market-leading products could offer.

"It wasn`t just the rands versus dollar pricing advantage, though that was significant. It is what we get going forward," he says.

Charisma is a front-end solutions framework able to leverage back-end information without the need for expensive integration and database synchronisation projects. It adopts a building-block, components approach to front-end business solutions such as CRM, business intelligence, service desk, workflow, document and knowledge management, all of which can be used with single sign-on access and security profile rather than having separate logons and needing to open each application individually.

Tate estimates that had the DBSA gone the traditional information management route entailing the creation of a single repository, it would have cost at least R1 million for the adapters to get to the repository level alone. This excludes the cost of acquiring and implementing the individual solutions.

"We got the data repository plus all the adapters to access the relevant data from our existing back-end systems. And as we expand the repository to meet other MIS (Management Information Systems) needs we have the infrastructure in place to ensure we are working from one version of the truth.

"By investing in Charisma we are addressing all aspects of MIS needs, and are able to built on our repository to tackle business needs such as CRM to keep track of what is going on with our customers and to better service them."

The solution`s ease of use was also a major factor in the decision-making process. Because Charisma uses the look and feel of Microsoft Outlook, users do not have to embark on a major skills upgrade and there is far less resistance than learning a new interface.

"Our people are very comfortable with the system and its implementation has entailed very little change management.

"One thing we need to do now is change the culture of users holding rather than sharing information. The more you share knowledge the more empowered everyone is," says Tate.