Case Study: DFL Microfin - Caribbean
In February 2007, Fern was contacted by DFL Microfin whose headquarters are in Port of Spain, Trinidad. They had been developing their own system on Oracle for some time but it was proving to be expensive and never-ending. Including this internally built system, they used three different systems.
The group is made up of 7 branches with a consolidation of all branches at head office to a Microsoft Great Plains GL. The branches are located in Grenada (1), Guyana (1), St Lucia (1), Suriname (1) and Trinidad (3).
We negotiated the contract by phone, carried out a presentation to one of their officers in London followed by an online presentation from our office in Ireland to senior management located at the company's head office in Trinidad. One of their key demands by the Managing Director was absolute minimal customisation. This had the desired effect of speed and implementation on time and within budget.
We agreed the contract and two Fern staff went to Trinidad for one week and installed the software in all branches (with the exception of Suriname). A fast data conversion was achieved by sending them a pre-formatted Excel spreadsheet which Fern then used to populate the Abacus OneWorld SQL databases. We installed the Abacus software and the databases remotely before the Fern staff arrived in Trinidad.
To help the DFL staff make the transfer smoother, Fern wrote an import function that took transactions from their third party system into Abacus which they have run as required. These transaction import functions are now part of the standard Abacus OneWorld system.
Initial training was also delivered the same week where all staff were brought to DFL's excellent central training facility in Trinidad from the different locations. Training is now provided by DFL's own internal staff. We provided all training material as part of the contract.
Every branch now has the same software, products, chart of accounts and a single reporting export to the central GL. Fern mapped their standard Great Plains Chart of Accounts to Abacus.
Costs were kept to a minimum and the customer is satisfied with the functionality, flexibility and loves the efficiency and reporting consistency achieved through standardisation. We have not had to go back to Trinidad since - all support and updates to all sites are performed remotely.
It is their ultimate objective to centralize all operations when they feel it is appropriate.
Case Study: The Kuyasa Fund - South Africa
The Kuyasa Fund has its Head Office in Cape Town and is a non-profit organization. It was established in 1999 in response to identified shortfalls in access to credit as a key constraint in the housing process. Thus it uses microfinance as a tool to improve housing conditions for poor people initially in the Western Cape. It does this by supporting community groups to save towards housing and by granting loans to individuals qualifying for the (rather meagre) state housing subsidy.
Fern has been involved as their technology partner since inception throught the installation of its software package, Cubis. Fern has provided continuous support for eight years now in line with their growing loan book. Loans advanced by Kuyasa to date have been utilised as follows:
- 57% New homes
- 23% Extensions
- 16% Thermal Efficiency
- 4% Finishes
Kuyasa believes that the poorest of the poor are credit-worthy, and that through mobilising savings they are able to build financial and social capital. Kuyasa draws its funding from a range of donors, but dependency on grant funding has been progressively decreasing as its financial sustainability improves. Initially, its startup wholesale finance (required to make loans to worthy clients) was obtained via a loan from the Urban Sector Network Opportunity Fund, which was back-funded by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA).
Other funders over the past five years included the EU, USAID, the Culemborg Municipality, the Gilles Foundation, CORDAID, Misereor, the Ford Foundation, Anglo-American Corporation and the Rand Merchant Bank.
Kuyasa has upgraded its saving s and loans system, Cubis, to Abacus OneWorld as their new core banking system. It is integrated with mobile and web-based technology to improve their capacity to manage a growing client base and enable geographical branch expansion throughout S Africa. At the end of the project, Kuyasa should have the IT platform that
- Enables it to operate multiple branch and multi product operations and
- Improve the reporting framework for better fieldwork monitoring.
Fern has worked with Kuyasa to implement the system with the least disruption to their busy schedule and to integrate the Automated Field Operation System (AFOS).
Case Study: National Development Bank - Papua New Guinea
Fern was invited to tender for a new system in mid 2005. The contract was signed after a two-day onsite in depth presentation to senior management, external consultants, the PNG government Regulator and the auditor.
Whilst we did not know all the previous history it appeared that there had been a new board appointed by the PNG Regulator and the old software was long overdue for replacement. We gathered that a few software suppliers had already tried and failed.
Another challenge had now presented itself to Fern. In one of the most distant locations for a company located in Europe, we now had a customer who wanted a brand new system and they had chosen Abacus OneWorld.
Probably the biggest challenge for both parties was that the organisation itself was going through significant changes in management, positioning in the market place and recovery of bad debts created under the previous board of directors. Basically they were creating a new regime as the system was being installed. This led to a significant amount of customisation.
However it was also an opportunity for Fern to develop an extremely flexible and robust system based on a demanding environment both in geographical and functionality terms. The new management was not just going to be satisfied with the products and restrictions of the old system. This was their chance to get an up to date platform which was easy to use and handled all the detailed parameters covering fees, interest, penalties and loan origination documentation. They also wanted to improve management reporting, implement integration to a new third party receivables and payables ledger and use the Abacus GL to cope with branch reporting from around 30 branches scattered far and wide throughout the country.
The name has subsequently been changed to the National Development Bank of PNG and they have been granted a licence to take deposits and will be implementing the Savings Module of Abacus OneWorld.
In brief the system has now been running for a year without interruption. Online transactions and receipts are processed at all branches on almost 100 workstations.
