Zenith Bank In A Mess With T24 Software

 ZENITH BANK IN 24 MONTH MESS WITH T24

Zenith Bank as at last month was in a state of great disorder due to failure in their system upgrade. News has it that the Information & Technology team at Zenith sent emails to customers on the 28 November, 2007 assuring an upgrade to the T24 banking system from Temenos, whose implementation had since 24months been in a deplorable state at the bank.

There was pandemonium in the banking halls as the new software was not debiting accounts as at first week of December. The Emirates airline which Zenith services, was thrown into a state of intense desperation and a rival bank has moved very quickly to Dubai to take over the business. To worsen the already bad situation, T24 which claims that it has no end-of-day processing runs end of day for four or more hours. Arik was also having problems with them.

Our sources had it that Zenith switched back to the Phoenix Banking System on Monday 10th December, which it had implemented in 1999 after only four months attempt and which had remained unwavering.
                                                                                                                                                           
Stakeholders are having difficulty understanding how Zenith with its hundreds of IT staff could not pull this much glorified technology through in over two years.

A confirmatory statement from Zenith staff has it that the reversion to Phoenix is to dodge trying something new while the IPO is on. But the IPO was already on before 3rd December when the T24 cutover was tried unsuccessfully. This is a case of escaping bad publicity and doubtful speculations about decision making at Zenith.

T24 had been selected after a ‘thorough’ evaluation involving Equinox from Neptune, Flexcube from Iflex, and Finnacle from Infosys. At the period of selection, T24 was alleged to be the most technically advanced banking system available, which makes the other evaluated systems look like labor-intensive systems. As it now turned out, over blown image and sensation of being a first user of a new software played a part in the evaluation with a high ranking IT staff telling our source that T24 is a monster.

It's true, my sister recently left Zenith and before then she was required to spend nights in a hotel just to learn to operate the software. She gave the same misgivings on the software and had predicted the software was over hyped. The post just confirms her point.

tuneh

Well, thanks for the info,

What I want to know is this; do you think, this software problem will have impact on the profitability of the bank and do you think this will affect the end of the year profit?

@ mike.ola,

hmmmmmm. So well-written and such informed details. Makes you wonder!

I HAVE FOLLOWED THIS ARGUMENT ON ZENITH BANK GO-LIVE OR NO GO-LIVE, I WILL LIKE TO DESCRIBE THIS AS "roforofo" FIGHT.  IT SEEMS TO ME AS CORPORATE WARFARE BETWEEN THE COMPANIES STRUGGLING FOR THIS BUSINESS.

SOFTWARE IMPLEMENTATION IS NOT THE SAME THING AS HARDWARE INSTALLATION, THERE WILL ALWAYS BE ISSUES IN ANY IMPLEMENTATION EVEN IN EUROPE AND THE AMERICAS.  IF ANYONE KNOWS ANY ENTERPRISE SYSTEM THAT IS FAULT PROOF, THEY SHOULD LET ME KNOW.

I felt the impact of what ever this thing is as my It took one month for Stock broking account to be updated from when I paid in my check which was cleared instantly. Their stockbroking software is still in a mess as you cannot get account balance on-line for about a month now. However the staff appear reassuring they will get over the mess. But it has made me divert some trading away from them in the interim.

I heard about the T-24 implementation about 2 years ago and I was seriously surprised Zenith Bank was willing to take such a big risk as a first mover. I was more surprised to learn they had reverted to the old system. Such a colossal waste of time and resources. I love to keep things simple. They say if it aint broken then don't fix it. That was not the case with Zenith Bank. I mean, they are back on the old system and have been for a while. So it makes the decision to change quite questionable.


Let's forget about all the technical jargons. Change Management, Requirement Sign-Off etc. The bottom line was these guys either did not do their home work or the key decision makers were hell-bent on using T-24 for reasons we shall never know. I suspect the latter. System implementations could be tricky but I doubt if the competency of the IT department should be questioned. IT guys always find a way if the decision was well thought of.

Some things just require common sense (which is in short supply). What competitive advantage was T-24 going to bring to the stable? It had not been tested on such a grand scale. No Nigerian bank was using it. The only bank using it at the time was the Central Bank of Nigeria. Which we can argue would not face the operational issues faced by Zenith & others. Why was Financle not considered? Afterall, many large banks use it. It would have gained from Economies of Scale. I suspect the bank was banking on success and hoping to partner with selling the solution in Nigeria. So, what happened to the need to focus on it's core-competence? A lot went wrong on this decision and we would never know the half of it. I appreciate Mike Ola's glib response but it is such glib and self-interested arguments that got them in this mess in the first place. It should have been ruled out as a viable replacement within an hour. No long thing.


It was an embarrassing choice and I hear no heads really rolled after making such a miscalculated decision (maybe no calculation was done actually). That is also why I feel the decision was completely out of the IT professionals & Business Strategist.

The truth however is that this implementation would have eroded share holders value which no one seems to be talking about. I guess most of it would have been Capex so the effect would be gradual. IS investments are usually recommended to be OpEx though due to un-predictable cases like this. Just like in the Pharmaceutical industry. So, the final 2 questions are: How did Zenith reflect this project in it's financial statements? And for Mike Ola, What is the Re-Scheduled Go-Live date since the title is all wrong? We really need to start asking questions.