Oracle woos firms in Ghana to adopt its technology
Mr Yaw Asumang, Senior Consulting Manager, of Oracle Cooperation, a leading software vendor in the United States, has called on financial institutions in Ghana to adopt Oracle’s technology to facilitate effective financial modernisation.
He said Oracle’s Performance Management Solution can help banks to institute an effective performance regime based on a closed-loop Information Technology system.
Mr Asumang, who is also in-charge of the company in West Africa, gave the advice at a day’s seminar for 30 commercial bank managers in Accra.
He outlined the importance of performance management in a financial services sub-sector like banking, which had come under a lot of strain in recent times and is grappling with challenges.
He said Oracle’s approach to performance management is unique because it is aims at empowering banks with the ability to undertake what he termed cross functional analytics that unifies risk, performance management, finance and compliance.
“In a more practical sense, banks are able to use the same foundational analytical data and common components such as cash-flow engine, business assumption and modelling frame work to indulge in analytics that cuts across risk management measures such as Economic Capital Computation,” he said.
The financial consultant said, “other benefits the banks will derive are Liquidity Risk as well as value measures such as profitability and return on capital”.
He said Oracle has a sound architecture that supports the sourcing and transformation of data from operational and financial systems to a centralised analytical data repository which support shared computational engines.
Mr Asumang said some of the key features and functionalities of Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management is its scalability and suitability for small and medium sized banks.
Oracle Hyperion can support four key performance management aspects within a bank such as, “Automating and streamlining the financial close process to achieve fast closure at the period or year end in a controlled environment that ensures accuracy, reliability, timelines and compliance to acceptable industry requirements in reporting”.
“Another key point is strategy and score card management which allows banks to distil their long term objectives into operational plans and lower level departmental and individual objectives for purposes of tracking their performance on a continuous basis.
“Others are a comprehensive budgeting and planning application that provides a single platform for engaging in integrated planning space. Significantly, it accords banks the means to engage in analysis and simulation to support key decision making.”
Mr Asumang said Hyperion Performance Management provides banks with a cost and profitability modelling application that allows them to identify manage and allocate costs equitable to gain accurate profitability measures, which can be used to support business decisions such as optional product mix.
Mr Thomas Baafi, Chief Executive Officer of Bsystems Limited, co-organisers of the programme, gave the assurance that his company would partner with banks in Ghana to deploy appropriate solutions that would enhance their operational and management efficiency to achieve growth.
He said the Oracle Cooperation and Bsystems have reaffirmed their commitment to continue to support organisations with innovative IT Solutions such as application, middleware, database and data management tools, and server infrastructure.
Source: GNA