In South Africa's fiercely competitive banking environment, Saambou has enhanced productivity and cut costs through strategic technological planning and development with outsourcing partner SPL Projects Division. Johan Myburgh, group chief executive of Saambou, says South Africa's financial institutions are all striving to increase their asset bases in an industry targeted by international institutions, virtual banks and non-financial organisations offering financial services.
"To survive, we have to be more productive than our competitors while simultaneously reducing costs," he says. "There was a time when we believed we could outsource all our technology problems, but we now recognise that technology must support our business objectives. As a result, Saambou's relationship with SPL Projects Division has evolved into a highly beneficial partnership."
During the past year, Saambou has been restructured with a strong emphasis on sales effectiveness. This called for paper to be eliminated in the home loan environment, and for the bank's dependency on traditional branches to be reduced. At the same time, some systems had to be adjusted to handle the year 2000. Myburgh elected to achieve all these objectives in the course of one development project.
Saambou's customer information and deposit systems, both developed by SPL Projects Division, were already year 2000-compliant. The home loan system, however, needed to be rewritten to cater for both the new millennium and Saambou's move towards image workflow and a paper-free environment.
In addition, a direct banking operation called EasyBank was established to redirect deposits made by individuals at branches. EasyBank allows Saambou clients to perform these transactions telephonically. In this area, the bank has eliminated paper completely.
SPL Projects Division is currently undergoing a period of substantial change. Alongside the appointment of Colin Mayne as managing director is a new identity as a member of Dimension Data's Solutions Group. "As Dimension Data Business Solutions, I believe we will continue to provide Saambou with the competitive cutting edge its looking for,"
Mayne says. "Our new name reflects our commitment to deliverables. Business solutions are precisely what we offer our clients, and the Dimension Data Solutions Group is the right home for the team of more than 200 professionals which I am proud to be leading." Dimension Data Business Solutions is in the process of implementing an imaging and workflow program to achieve similar results for Saambou in its home loan environment. A test branch has been set up in Pretoria, and implementation is scheduled to begin at three branches in Pretoria during November 1998. Once these branches are up and running on the network, implementation at Saambou's 60 nationwide branches will begin.
"As our primary service provider, SPL Projects Division, now Dimension Data Business Solutions, has played a tremendous role," Myburgh says. "On completion of this new system, we will be able to increase productivity, cut costs, and substantially improve our client service. The system enables staff to respond to client queries immediately, as each client's entire history is instantly accessible."
Commenting on the advantages of using a service provider like Dimension Data Business Solutions, Myburgh says development costs and time are both cut dramatically. "They have state-of-the-art tools and know how to use them," he points out. "Dimension Data Business Solutions has the resources to handle multiple projects concurrently. Outsourcing also saves us the exorbitant costs of hiring or employing specific skills for limited periods of time."
Saambou originally outsourced the facilities, operations, development and maintenances services of its information technology division to SPL Projects Division in April 1992. Since then, the partnership has enabled Saambou to optimise business opportunities and get new products to the market quicker than its rivals.
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