Client Situation
Our client is amongst the youngest and fastest growing Islamic Bank in Oman. The bank operates across Retail, SME, and Wealth Segments. Bank has designed a digital roadmap for next 2-3 years, with help of Cedar. As one of the digital initiatives Bank has a vision to launch a digital only bank in next 12-18 months for its Retail and SME customers.
Cedar’s Approach
Cedar was mandated to assist the bank to identify and finalize the right digital only Bank platform for its Retail, SME, and Wealth customers.
- Built a 1000+ use cases and capabilities covering all areas of businesses (CASA, Loans, CRM) and segments (Retail, SME and Wealth)
- Conducted market research on best-in-class digital only bank platforms regionally and globally
- Shortlisted 5-7 digital only bank platforms, based on key criteria, in discussion with key stakeholders in the bank.
- Designed detailed RFP for requesting quotes from shortlisted platform suppliers
- Conducted Use-Case based POC with the shortlisted suppliers for the duration of 1 week per suppliers with Banks functional and technical SMEs
- Evaluated the digital only bank platforms and suppliers based on experience, capabilities and POC outcome
- Identified areas of potential negotiations (commercial and contractual terms) with the top 2 shortlisted suppliers
- Assisted bank to conduct outcome-based negotiation, resulting into significant cost reductions by suppliers
Outcome
The focus on selecting the platform for providing all end-to-end banking services from customer onboarding to product selection to customer servicing. The result included
- Shortlist of best-fit digital only bank platform, for further discussions with the bank.
- Overall supplier TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) aligned within the budget of the Bank
- Negotiated 75+ key contractual terms and 35+ key commercial terms along with Banks procurement team
- Designed high level implementation Roadmap to implement project in a phased manner, with minimum time to rollout
- We made strategy and innovation work.