Stannic, the asset finance division of Standard Bank, has completed the first phase of its new customer centric IT solutions, part of a radical refocus aimed at delivering cost effective service excellence and gaining market share.
Says Ivan Shutte, assistant general manager Stannic and Corporate Centre Systems: `Our challenge in successfully repositioning Stannic was to deliver a customer centric IT solution that would improve our competitive edge by providing our customers with a vastly improved service, as well as allowing us seamlessly to add new products and services.`
Says Victoria Vaksman, MD of
Shared Objectives (Pty) Ltd, the systems integrator supporting the implementation of the new solution: `South Africa`s banking and financial services industry is highly sophisticated and extremely competitive.
`Customers are becoming more demanding, and in return banks need to become more flexible and to position themselves to offer products that meet the market`s requirements. In order to respond rapidly to changing market forces banks need to have IT solutions in place that both deliver today and position for future growth,` she says.
Shared Objectives was tasked by Stannic in early 1997 to define the appropriate business architecture and to develop an IT solution that would support it. Shared Objectives designed an object-oriented IT architecture that would enable future rapid implementation of business solutions based on a mix of developed solutions, new packages and products.
Says Shutte: `Our new architecture facilitates business change and means that new business requirements can easily be accommodated. The fact that the customer management system has been implemented in only three months is proof of this.`
The new customer management system will allow Stannic`s business development officers to operate on a remote basis, and access the central database from home or from a customer`s site.
The system will support four centralised administrative processing centres, or hives, in Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town and Pretoria.
`One architectural component of our new customer management system is Siebel which we see as the most appropriate customer information solution for Stannic. Siebel`s applications are designed to seamlessly link users to create a comprehensive, closed loop, sales, marketing, and customer information system that enhances sales productivity and marketing effectiveness, and improves customer satisfaction,` ends Shutte.
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Shared Objectives
Shared Objectives is a leading edge systems integration company, that provides mission critical business solutions to the corporate market. Being vendor independent allows it to build solutions based on customer requirements and the most appropriate components.
Shared Objectives provides business solutions that are able to adapt quickly to changing business requirements through its focus on business analysis, systems analysis and project management, augmented by its commitment to object orientation as an approach, and experience and expertise in large and complex systems integration projects.
Shared Objectives` consultants are especially strong in the provision of electronic business solutions, that require the integration of information and communication technologies, and have extensive expertise in financial services, such as insurance, general banking, investment management, treasury and fleet management. Key customers include Standard Bank, Nedcor, and the Liberty Life Group.
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