ALL the 222 branches of Afribank Plc nationwide have gone live on a new upgrade from Globus to T24 banking software. The new implementation covers all the facets of the bank’s operations including retail and channels, treasury, trade finance and corporate using  IBM hardware platform.
Confirming this development, last week in Lagos, Victor Oladapo, assistant general manager, information technology, Afribank, described the process as “one of the smoothest implementations he has witnessed in his career.”
Oladapo said the development is made possible thorough tremendous level of support the bank got from all the bank’s stakeholders including the system supplier. “The level of support we have received has been encouraging and wonderful,” he said. “The implementation has been a huge success without any complaint from customers of irregularities in their statements nor hitches in the profit and loss situation of the bank.”
According to him, although the implementation is not without few hitches, especially in the area of change management, the successful upgrade would enable the bank deliver  better operations to all its customers across the country and assist it deliver its processes in a more effective and efficient way.
Oladapo disclosed that the management of the bank decided to implement the new upgrade of Temenos T24 because it is an integrated banking package which automates all banking work and has the capability to cover all operational requirements of the bank with regard to retail, wholesale, treasury and private banking for front, middle and back offices. T24 is also a modular package which consists of a core system that provides all common operations between various banking activities and a series of modules which cover the various different operational requirements of users.
Although, the management of Inlaks Computers, representative of Temenos in Nigeria and other West African countries that carried out the implementation, was unwilling to comment on the development, sources disclosed that the implementation, which started in February 2010, was a total re-built of Temenos T24, from the process re-design which was part of the consultancy assignment Atos-Origin carried out for the bank.
The critical success factors, according to sources include the experience and knowledge of the consultants, active involvement of the bank and commitment of the top executives.
Industry observers are of the opinion that Afribank has succeeded where some others have failed pointing out all negatives around T24 in the market place that was capable of discouraging Afribank from implementing the software.  Common reference always pointed to Zenith Bank’s experience.
Investigations show that Zenith recently upgraded its Phoenix software after a 10-month exercise but not without challenges associated with a large scale project.
The successful go-live of Temenos T24 in Afribank may have helped the resurgence of Temenos in the Nigerian market.  This would unarguably help a product that is adjudged the leading product worldwide and has as its uniqueness, propensity to help banks manage costs, improve service delivery while maximizing earnings.