Black Sea Trade

Choosing the right solution: SAP integration a must

The BSTDB documentation surrounding the finance applications is both complex and lengthy. Many versions and types of documents are required. Access is also required from a wide range of locations and devices. Therefore, with the introduction of SAP, an appropriate solution was essential. The Bank chose OpenText™ Extended ECM for SAP® Solutions in 2011. “We needed a 360-degree view of every piece of information relating to banking projects, including documents, emails, faxes, financial data and much more (information processed in SAP). OpenText was the only vendor that could provide this without extensive custom development,” said Markos Dolopikos, principal officer, IT, Black Sea Trade and Development Bank. With both OpenText and SAP being trusted and valued Bank partners, and with OpenText being a long standing partner of SAP, the synergy was immediately apparent. And for real-time monitoring, reporting, and unified administration, the Bank also added VILT Group’s Fuse Management Central to the mix. The prime objective of the Bank is to have a single view and monitoring capability of operations in a single place, by building a complete Enterprise Information Management (EIM) system.

Setting out the wider objectives for the project

The Bank set high internal standards based on international best practices and compliance with international regulations, for example, in the way the Bank monitors, manages and archives email communication. “One of the many ways OpenText helps us meet our compliance standards is through email monitoring, ensuring that a full, auditable record of communications is captured and recorded,” added Markos Dolopikos. With many of the Bank’s staff travelling to various member countries, secure access to information while on the move had been a key area to contend with. Many employees choose to use their own mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. (The Bank is currently developing its own “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) policy). To support these needs, the Bank selected OpenText™ Content Server Mobile and OpenText™ Tempo to assist in providing secure, reliable access from a range of devices including Apple IOS, Android and Blackberry devices.

“It’s crucial that our staff can quickly, easily and securely access and store information while on the move. Security, of course, is of paramount importance, and we must have confidence that should a device be compromised, lost or stolen, there is no real danger of our information being at risk. Using OpenText ECM as our unique information silo assists us to provide what we need in terms of security,” added Markos Dolopikos. The Bank also enhances OpenText products applying additional capabilities such as digital signatures to automate business processes that include approval steps, eliminating delays on approvals and reducing paper records that later require expensive physical storage.

Success Factors, building the team and realizing benefits

With so many parts, a project of this complexity can only be successful when everyone involved plays its part and all are on board. From the outset, BSTDB involved all affected parties to ensure they all had a voice as the principal content creators, contributors and consumers of content. “From the outset we wanted to build sufficient internal knowledge to be self-sufficient. For this, we established a common understanding framework with OpenText specialists in different areas, and their assistance so far, when it was asked, was vital for the success of our projects. We’re now established and able to build upon the solid foundations we’ve laid together,” added Markos Dolopikos.

The solution is providing numerous other benefits, such as the ability for non-SAP users to access reports that include SAP data, something that was not possible without Extended ECM for SAP Solutions. The Bank’s clients are able to complete application documentation and provide supporting documents, uploading them directly to a secure workspace using OpenText™ Connected Workspaces. This speeds up the submission and collection processes and enforces document standards, streamlining processes downstream. With information securely managed and accessible via OpenText, searching has greatly improved. Users are now able to quickly search, subject to their access rights, across all information types, producing a single, consolidated result set. There is a much improved level of trust as the information presented is complete, up to date—one single source of the truth.

A better service for customers and future plans When an application for a new operation/project is made to the Bank, customers are able to submit information more easily through the OpenText web interface, reducing delays. The Bank has been able to significantly reduce customer delays through a combination of automation and routing of activity to the most appropriate team or staff member.

"Using the broad capabilities of OpenText, we’ve seen a reduction in business proposals processing times and improvements in our customer relationships. The beauty of OpenText is that they continue to innovate. We view ourselves as being state of the art, and OpenText is helping us to reinforce our brand and reputation,” added Markos Dolopikos.

Having laid solid foundations with OpenText, eliminating information silos, creating a single, reliable information strategy covering both structured and unstructured information, the Bank now focuses at ways to improve its operations. Using extensive mobile information management capabilities from OpenText, the Bank is preparing to implement the BYOD program, making more extensive use of information in OpenText to provide dashboards to both customers and staff.