Financial service institutions constantly face challenges as they seek to increase shareholder value, profitability and customer loyalty while grappling with stringent, ever-changing regulations.

Some of these challenges include:

• Running a customer-oriented, service-centric organisation while maintaining strict controls and managing risk
• Sharing and presenting information to stakeholders while preserving data privacy and managing user access controls
• Balancing trade-offs between cost containment, automation and transaction efficiencies.

With the recent financial meltdown, it has become imperative for financial institutions to manage the present while looking to the future. Seamless integration of business with technology for cost optimisation is no longer just an option, but rather a necessity.

In order to remain competitive, financial operations can differentiate themselves with both innovative products and technology-enabled services, invariably elevating technology from a business enabler to a business driver.

As a business leader, you expect the partnership you have with your information technology service provider to help you gain a competitive edge. This can only be achieved by allowing you to focus on your core business while your IT partner takes care of your critical support functions.

Gijima is that partner. We understand the core business drivers in the banking sector. With our wealth of experience, we can help in a number of key areas:

Manage and minimise risk with our comprehensive security solutions

Imagine faster, real-time responses to requests for user account changes, separation of duties enforced by role-based access to resources, automatic provisioning and de-provisioning of internal and external users from your IT systems. Imagine implementing an identity management solution that does all this while reducing errors, eliminating manual tasks and consistently enforcing security policies.

Our business intelligence and fraud prevention solutions allow you to leverage existing knowledge alongside external data sources to identify threats and patterns; uncover suspicious individuals and networks; prevent attacks before they occur and manage them when they do; and reuse knowledge for future gain. For example, we can help you identify patterns in data that correlate with loan defaulters so that the process of underwriting or approving loan applications highlights applicants with these data patterns.

There is a sizeable risk of your network and business systems being infiltrated by malicious users contaminating your network, gaining unauthorised access to your business data and records, stealing your identity or committing fraud. Our security solutions, which include endpoint management, anti-virus, network security and physical security systems, can mitigate this risk.

We can help you create a resilient organisation with our on-site or off-site disaster recovery, back up and business continuity solutions, ensuring that your business operations continue even when disaster strikes.

Comply with multiple regulatory requirements

Regulatory compliance, whether corporate, IT or operational, King, ECT, SOX or Basel – is a complex entity. Due to the diversity and complexity of these controls, there is no quick-and-easy, off-the-shelf solution. Your business will need controls to be embedded in your systems and processes, as well as enterprise governance, risk and compliance (GRC) solutions to combine analyse and assess information from the relevant sources.

For example, a reliable document and records management approach creates a culture of compliance to your business records practices, implements corporate quality control, enforces standards and guidelines and mitigates risk if and when documents are not saved or lost.

We can assist with these and other niche control, audit and monitoring solutions, as well as enterprise GRC solutions that meet research house Gartner’s key management functions: audit, policy and compliance. Furthermore, the Gijima solution provides you with reporting and remediation, resulting in a sound understanding of your compliance status and actionable results in plain English.

Improve business performance through optimised processes and efficiencies

Our end-to-end cheque and document processing platform helps you lower costs, increase efficiencies and meet all item processing issues. The solution is simple to use, hardware independent and enables your organisation to adopt a single platform for all item processing needs, including proof of deposit, clearing, corrections, reject re-entry, reconciliation, balancing, edits, sorting, cash letters and statement processing.

You can now plan with certainty by analysing and running simulations as part of branch restructuring projects in order to optimise operations. The simulation method identifies the potential for migration of teller-based transactions to self-service branch systems and to define the resources – employees and self-service equipment – needed for optimal branch operation.

You will also be able to minimise risk and increase cost savings through our cash management solution, which optimises cash reserves and processes. The solution helps you manage and control branch and ATM cash cycles and reserves , including provision for seasonal fluctuations and increased needs.

In a similar vein, bank branch solutions help you optimise your forecourt processes, achieve increased efficiencies and reduce costs. This is achieved by analysing all relevant data and making sound recommendations for the cash systems and devices required, taking specified service levels into account. You can run various scenarios and associated cost analyses to determine the optimum configuration taking into consideration the integration of people, processes and technology systems.

With business intelligence, consolidated information can be analysed, focusing on product profitability, portfolio performance and scorecards or dashboards for a specific line-of-business or profit centre. Increased profitability analysis, customer growth initiatives and improved financial consolidation and reporting can help increase revenues.

Achieve cost reduction by optimising your IT infrastructure

Our integrated monitoring solution provides a centralised overview, reporting and analysis of all self-service terminals (including ATMs), enabling early recognition of and response to any problems. This, combined with cash forecasting to maintain sufficient cash reserves, helps reduce costs while increasing the performance and availability of your self-service terminals.

Now you can optimise cash replenishment processes, saving you interest, reducing cash-in-transit costs and remotely managing cash points to minimise operating costs.

Maximise the return on your ICT hardware and software assets through consolidation, virtualisation and co-location. The result is not only a reduction in costs, but also significantly lower energy usage.

Instead of worrying about the cost of attracting, training and retaining employees to manage and support your IT environment, allow Gijima to manage your infrastructure. This includes servers, desktops, applications, network and end-user support, either by deploying technicians to your premises through cost-effective, remote tools, or a combination of both.

Remotely supporting your IT infrastructure means we can manage and resolve faults with no technicians visiting your site. This not only increases the likelihood of a shorter resolution time, but also eliminates the cost of travel.

We offer ad-hoc and varying infrastructure services on a usage-based pricing model (software as a service), giving you total control of your operational expenses.

Our outsourcing or co-sourcing solutions enable you to reduce costs through long-term strategic collaboration with Gijima that manages your changing business environment.

Our ten-year track record in IT infrastructure outsourcing has helped our clients to reduce costs and improve operations through long-term, strategic and collaborative relationships. Within the outsourcing sector, we have achieved a client retention rate of more than 95%.

Improve customer retention levels through effective information management

Our analytic tools give you a holistic view of your customer, helping your organisation identify and retain your most profitable customers.

In addition, our enterprise content management solutions help you build customer loyalty and optimise new products and services by integrating customer data and delivering the right information to frontline staff. The result is enhanced customer relationships and improved insight into product development and marketing.

Through the addition of electronic signatures, you can create an effective, auditable and automated process, which reduces time lost, minimises potential errors caused by media breaks and minimises the risk of fraud.

With more individuals travelling locally and internationally, you will want to make it convenient for your customers to transact with minimal delays. Our web content management solutions enable you to conduct business and correspond with customers electronically, helping you meet customer service expectations.

Achieve a single view of the customer through complete, integrated data

Financial institutions around the world want a single view of their customers. This is now easily achievable, with no complex data migration, system changes or integration effort. While our solution can quickly integrate and leverage combined customer data following a merger or acquisition, master data management provides the elusive single view of the customer with tremendous benefits such as:

• Understand the value of the overall relationship with your customers
• Simplify account administration for existing customers
• Analyse product penetration on a customer-centric basis
• Maximise marketing expenditure by cross-selling more intelligently.
• With this integrated, complete data at hand, you can turn every customer interaction into a sales opportunity using communication and collaboration tools that allow your employees to work efficiently. Our business intelligence solutions help you drive profitability by gaining deeper insight into your customer database, enabling you to develop profitable relationships. 

Why Gijima?

Gijima is a trusted IT partner and thought-leader with large, global and local clients, offering a wide-range of IT solutions to the banking sector.

• We are privileged to have a selection of blue-chip local and multi-national clients with which we collaborate by providing thought leadership and guidance to optimise their business drivers and unlock their human capital potential
• We offer year-round, 24x7 professional support through our Incident Services Management Centre (ISMC) that ensures that your IT services are always available to support your business. Underscored by our 70 points of presence across South Africa, we are able to provide on-site support and ease of access to each of our clients.
• We have the highest level of accreditation with the majority of our OEM vendors and technology partners. Gijima constantly collaborates with them to ensure that we offer value to you through innovative solutions and competitive pricing.

Please contact Gijima Financial Services sales on 012 675 5000 or e-mail financial.solutions@gijima.com for further information.