Monday, April 6, 2009

Organizations using blogs.

‘A weblog is a hierarchy of text, images, media objects and data, arranged chronologically, that can be viewed in an HTML browser.’ Source

There are many different blogs differing not only in the content but also in the way they are written and the way the message is delivered. Blogs used by organizations are known as Corporate Blogs.After searching the Internet, I have found that more than 12% of the Fortune 500 companies blog externally. Market research done in the first half of 2006 indicated that 34% of large companies had established weblogs. Another 35% planned to do so by the end of 2008, thus bringing the total to nearly 70%. However there are many advantages and dis-advantages of organizations using blogs.

Advantages -:

  • Leaders can communicate directly with customers, suppliers and investors, as well as employees, helping disseminate and explain strategies. Blogs create a friendly ambience for company members where detailed description about almost anything can be shared.

  • People are far more likely to give great feedback if they know someone specific is listening. The power of these feedback loops can generate big benefits for the organization.

  • They boost your search engine rankings if you add fresh content on a regular basis. Google and other search engines rewards sites that are updated often, that link to other sites and most importantly, that has many inbound links.

Dis-Advantages -:

  • There are plenty of areas of business where people are judged on their knowledge, and the competitive edge - and thus the safety of everyone's jobs - is the thickness of a single good idea. Sharing it all on a weblog, with competitors or (worse) an office rival is not really wise.

  • Blogs make many organizations look like disorganizations, with multiple tones and opinions. Contrary to what some might think, the average customer prefers it if the organization they are about to purchase from is at least somewhat coherent.

  • Even if senior managers trust staff not to give away the company's commercial secrets - and many don't - there are still enough worries about libel and (for publicly listed companies) stock market disclosure rules to have the legal department waking in sweats for months to come.

To view and example of an active organizational blog click here

FLEXCUBE - Positive and Negative impacts.

Advantages -:Implementation of FLEXCUBE BY ORGANIZATIONS ...

FLEXCUBE enables banks to standardize, transform and optimize their business processes. Banks can use FLEXCUBE to simplify and streamline processes, track and administer complex multi-step transactions, efficiently distribute workload and improve customer service by using predefined custom processes for different segments of customers.

Banks can achieve competitive differentiation by developing innovative business offerings and to fine tune their processes based on insight and measurement. The release of FLEXCUBE enables banks to and accomplish this holistically.

FLEXCUBE provides users with dashboards to measure process performance and identify bottlenecks for process improvement. The product serves Governance and Risk & Compliance frameworks allowing institutions to be compliant with changing regulations, monitor fraud and manage their risks .

The release of FLEXCUBE which offers wholesale banks for their cash, trade, payments, treasury and lending and retail banks for their savings, deposits and loans businesses. Other key features of this new release include SWIFT 2007 enhancements, SwiftNET connectivity and comprehensive support for SEPA Payment Processing. FLEXCUBE, since the first release of the application in 1997, offers users of their software the ability to configure new products without any software code change. It allows them to process these for multiple entities from a single-instance of the application installed in the bank.

http://www.oracle.com/industries/financial_services/pdfs/oracle-flexcube-universal-banking-br.pdf

http://www.oracle.com/industries/financial_services/oracle-flexcube-universal-banking.html

Success Stories -

  • Citi-Bank - Citibank, one of the largest banks in the world(www.citibank.com), was managing its banking operations through a multicountry system. This system—with 59 versions in 94 countries made it difficult for the bank to carry out systemwide modifications. i-flex FLEXCUBE (now Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking
    was initially deployed to replace the legacy back-office application. ( read more ......) Click here
    http://www.oracle.com/industries/financial_services/pdfs/oracle-flexcube-universal-banking-br.pdf


  • Natixis - Ranked among the largest banks in Europe, Natixis was experiencing problems with its information systems and processes. It wanted to deploy a solution with technical and functional homogeneity across all European branches without compromising local requirements, and to reorganize and streamline international operations and build strong information systems and processes.The bank initially planned to deploy Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking for its branches in Spain and Germany but subsequently extended the deployment to Panama and Dubai. ( Click on the following link to read more ......) http://www.oracle.com/industries/financial_services/pdfs/oracle-flexcube-universal-banking-br.pdf
With rave reviews such as the rankings published in March 2003 by a trade journal calling flexcube the best-selling banking software product in the world and with so many arising success stories it is difficult to find the associated issues with flexcube. However, users of flexcube complain about certain aspects of its functionality. One of the biggest disadvantages with i-flex is that local developments are not handled by the client but rather through India and includes additional license fee’s. T24, on the other hand does, In addition to this, working with i-flex can become very frustrating as well because of I-flex’s policy of only hiring Indian IT professionals. This can be cause issues with countries requiring travel visa’s.

The implementation of flexcube can also be costly since the bank will be obliged to hire professionals from Oracle. The few problems with flexcube can possibly be blamed on the current economic situation regarding service exports and the political situation involving travel between countries, regardless flexcube’s business model remains a outstanding success.



Saturday, April 4, 2009

FLEXCUBE - Technical and Training requirements

FLEXCUBE TRAINING
Using an application software, such as Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking in any organization, requires all users of it to have the essential technical knowledge and skill along with the right training requirements in order take complete advantage of the software. However Oracle offers training of their products in various different formats -:

There are many FLEXCUBE learning centers which gives their customers an opportunity to ac hive intensive training in both banking operations and technology platforms. These centers will train individuals on functional and technical aspects of FLEXCUBE. The centers covers courses from various different banking operations such as investment banking, retail banking, trade finance, securities processing, risk management and various different technology platforms (Windows 2000, Unix and Oracle). The main motive of the organization is to train industry personnel towards harnessing technology in a changing financial industry. The centers will invite leaders from various different world leading organizations to come and speak on subjects of relevance to the financial industry.
http://www.rediff.com/money/2001/aug/14flex.htm

FLEXCUBE uses various different kinds of materials and other resources in there training programs.

  • An expert team of trainers and consultants with experience of both "KEY-USER" and "END-USER" training for FLEXCUBE Universal Banking Solution.
  • A team with several years experience of user assistance and call center maintenance.

  • Well developed and localized "end' and "key" user manuals and other materials.

  • An in-house produced web application manual for end-users.

  • Flexible models/programs for training and demonstrations adaptable to specific customer requirements.

TECHNICAL and Software Requirements -:
With the continual success of Oracle FLEXCUBE in the financial sector, improved versions of the software are being launched with better system compatibility. Oracle lately made FLEXCUBE available on Oracle 10g. This has been designed specifically for grid computing. By the implementation of running FLEXCUBE on Oracle database 10g and Oracle application server 10g makes it better for its users as it supports open standards and runs through simpler, automated data center to enable business continuity. Oracle Flexcube Universal Banking is a robust, low maintainance, high performance and high availibility solution for the financial sector, which supports out-of-the-box interoperability with numerous third-party applications and tools.

http://www.oracle.com/industries/financial_services/oracle-flexcube.html

Software Requirements - view the following link -

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E05579_01/books/E05579-01.pdf

( this website explains the software requirements for flexcube)

FLEX-CUBE -: Users, Process and Tasks ......

FLEXCUBE Universal Banking is a key solution that provides an unified back office processing enviornment for Corporate, Retail and Investment banking operations. FLEXCUBE'S unique design offers great flexibility to financial institutions giving them an opportunity to easily adapt to the needs of their markets and at the same time makes it possible for banks to improve their overall operational effectiveness.

Business Process - : The process for Oracle Industry different model for banking are organzied by various different lines of business, including trade finance, cash management, investment banking aswell as different functional areas such as risk and control and marketing. With Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking products and services can be offered to customers through a variety of different delivery channels Branch/Teller aswell as interfaces to external systems for typical channels such as ATM, Point Of Sale and Mobile Banking.

For more information on how the whole process of works ( data loading ) visit the following link
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E05579_01/books/E05579-01.pdf

For he development of the Universal Banking model, Oracle has leveraged the best technology in the industry e.g. Business Process Execution Language, SOA along with the help of strategic partnerships with proven industry leaders like IBM. This model allows users gain an advantage in the company business process management initiative using a package of well proven processes that all the necessary diverse and manual interventions. In addition to this it also monitors risk indicators and serves as a very important tool in the implementation of a risk control self assesment framework.

FLEX-CUBE GIVES YOU THE OPPORTUNITY TO MEET ALL YOUR BANKING NEEDS!!!

Tasks -: FLEXCUBE offers the following functionality for Corporate Banking.

Trade finance: "Automates and audits the lifecycle of trade finance and payments processes in real time in accordance with Universal Computer Protocol and Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) standards."

Commercial lending: "Manages the entire loan contract lifecycle and supports many types of corporate lending, including term loans, working capital facilities, import and export pre-shipment and postshipment financing, overdraft facilities, and financial guarantees."

Cash pooling and cash concentration: "Meets your end-to-end cash management needs and improves funds collection, payment dispatch, and funds use."

http://www.google.ca/en&q=FLEXCUBE+UNIVERSAL+BANKING+technical+requirements&meta


FLEXCUBE offers the following functionality for Retail Banking
Term deposits: Manages the full range of retail term deposits.
Accounts creation and processing. Creates and processes current and savings accounts.

http://www.oracle.com/industries/financial_services/pdfs/oracle-flexcube-universal-banking-br.pdf


Transfer Agency and Fund Accounting-:
Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking offers a simple investor servicing solution that automates the entire transaction, processing and transfer agency functions within a mutual fund company.

Treasury and Investments -:
Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking offers a complete, integrated treasury and investment solution that covers the following areas: Money Market, Securities, Over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives which supports forward rate agreements.

Friday, April 3, 2009

Basic Information about Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking



Oracle financial services software, is a leading provider of banking solutions. It is preferred by more than 350 different financial institutions in over 120 countries worldwide (IBS-UK) has ranked FLEXCUBE as the No. 1 selling Universal Banking Solution in the world. With the implementation of Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking CitiBank will save an estimated amount of US$110 annually in reduced maintenance costs and rapid development times.

Oracle FLEXCUBE is a complete banking product suite for retail, consumer, corporate, investment and asset management and investor servicing. Since 1997 this solution has been helping financial institutions excel in the way they do business.

Oracle Universal Banking FLEXCUBE is a comprehensive solution that covers all retail, corporate and banking needs across multiple delivery channels and regions. Oracles FLEXCUBE integrates with business intelligence and external systems with great ease and keeping track of regulatory compliance at all times. Oracle's FLEXCUBE Universal Banking provides robust functionality and advanced, next-generation technology—helping you achieve greater agility and gain an unassailable lead over your competition.

Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking, which is a service-oriented architecture, successfully allows banks to address new business requirements, integrate easily with disparate systems, streamline processes and incorporate existing services or update existing ones in a similar manner. Oracle Flexcube Universal Banking has a variety of different modules from which business's can select those most suitable to problem.

http://www.oracle.com/industries/financial_services/oracle-flexcube-universal-banking.html

http://www.tbics.com/system/files/Introduction%20to%20FLEXCUBE.doc.