IBM, i-flex bag Rs 25-cr BOBL
IT contract
Venkatachari Jagannathan
4 September 2002
Chennai: The city-based Bharat Overseas Bank (BOBL)
has awarded a Rs 25-crore contract to implement centralised
banking solution to the IBM India and i-flex Solutions combine.
The bank zeroed in on the duo with the help of Tata Consultancy
Services (TCS), the project consultant that vetted around
105 proposals.
BOBL chairman G Krishna Murthy says his bank will first
test the core banking solutions in three branches and later
expand to 50 branches in a year’s time. “At the end of 18
months all the bank branches will be fully computerised
and networked.”
IBM India will be BOBL’s single-point contact for implementing
core-banking, tele-banking and Internet-banking solutions.
Nine months back, IBM India and i-flex Solutions had entered
into a strategic alliance to bid jointly for banking projects.
The combine has since then won the Syndicate Bank contract.
i-flex Solutions CMD Rajesh Hukku says talks between the
two companies are on to extend the strategic alliance on
a global scale. That aside, i-flex Solutions is on the lookout
for suitable acquisitions in credit card and insurance space.
BOBL will use i-flex Solutions’ Flexcube as the core-banking
solution, while the hardware will be pSeries and xSeries
eServers from IBM India. Similarly, the phone-banking facility
will be provided to BOBL by Servion, a call-centre player
with whom IBM India has a tie up.
 BOBL
will soon be scrapping its existing IT solutions sourced
from a Kolkata-based company. “All the staff will be trained
to handle the new programme. The surplus staff will be deployed
in the marketing and customer relationship management domain,”
says Murthy. “The bank will be expanding its branch network
from 78 to 110 in two years’ time.”
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