This week InfoWARE scored a major win over SAP and 3i-InfoTech. After over 1.5 years evaluation conducted by PWC and an in-house team, a major financial institution in Abuja, Nigeria selected InfoWARE ERP solution over SAP to run their business. This further validates InfoWARE ERP as a best of breed solution better adapted to emerging market conditions with superior ROI, better ease of use and lower cost of ownership. In addition, the choice of our cloud SaaS deployment will speed time to market while allowing for unprecedented scale out capability.
The initial evaluation field was 4 companies which included 3i-InfoTech and eventually InfoWARE and SAP were left standing. SAP had the advantage of being a known global brand which most evaluators would consider “safe”. However, InfoWARE ERP solution’s breath of coverage, out of the box functionality, knowledge and expertise of the industry, low cost of ownership and proven ability to proactively adapt quickly to changing business and regulatory requirements eventually won them over.
The financial industry in Nigeria where this client operates is poised for strong growth over the next few years. The client wanted a one stop solution with little to no integration costs that would provide business financials, multi-branch and multi-company financial reporting, investment banking and wealth management, Loan origination and management, Document management, Business intelligence and analytics to provide critical business insight to management, Executive Dashboards and to top it up, Risk monitoring and risk management that covered every aspect of their business. Then they wanted scale up and scale out capability that would enable them deploy the modules in phases, open multiple branches without missing a beat and without having to hire a boatload of consultants for integration. The InfoWARE ERP cloud solution won in being the most ideal fit.
Summary
This is a strategic win for InfoWARE ERP and cloud SaaS based on InfoWARE’s best of breed solution for financial institutions. This win over SAP and 3i-InfoTech, two large multinational companies once again emphasizes InfoWARE’s leadership in technology and applications in the fast growing emerging market economies.
For more information contact us at Solutions@infowarelimited.com
As I meet and talk to CEOs and CIOs, one of the biggest challenges CEOs and CIOs face is selecting the right software and software vendor to partner with. This is one of the most important decisions facing a company. The wrong software could sink a company; but the right software implemented properly provides a strong competitive advantage and not only reduces cost in the tangibles like reduced labor cost but more importantly increases organizational agility in areas not typically thought of such as retaining organizational knowledge, IP and business skills irrespective of employees coming or going. Can your software do this or are you beholden to some employee(s) whose presence or availability is crucial to your understanding what is going on in your business.
One of our customers, (a subsidiary of one on Nigeria’s leading banks) had to literarily beg and treat its main asset manager like royalty. This asset manager ran a couple of Mutual Funds but nobody had a clue what he was doing; the software he was using was inadequate, it took weeks to arrive at the Mutual Fund valuations and they had to take his word for it. He spent practically every weekend in the office and had this massive excel spreadsheets no one else understood. If this guy sneezed, management caught a cold. Then here came the kicker; their stock brokerage business was moribund like everyone else and they had plans to aggressively grow their asset management business but were scared stiff because it was clear their existing infrastructure couldn’t handle it.
InfoWARE was called in in desperation to implement both the Wealth management and Mutual Fund modules. Bid and offer price determination is now an end of day event at the click of a button; Fund valuation and risk management is instantaneous; Fund composition is clear and available in detail and graphical view; the asset manager now focuses primarily on investment decisions and monitoring while retail operations (for example fund subscriptions) are handled by customer care management. Our integrated financial control and risk management provides all facets of the organization (financial control, senior management etc) the information and business insight they need, sending reports directly to their mailboxes as and when they need it. And BTW, that walk on water fund manager is no longer with this company but it now manages an asset base more than ten times (10x) larger but with ten times (10x) less the effort.
For one other customer (a non-bank subsidiary asset management firm in Victoria Island, Lagos), the MD first got to know that a fund they managed had dropped nearly 30% in value at a quarterly management retreat. Why? Because the Fund manager himself only became fully aware of the extent of the problem when the he spent the previous week frantically doing the valuation for presentation at the retreat. The right software should have been able to tell the fund manager on a daily basis what the fund valuation was. InfoWARE solutions goes even further; with the risk management and risk monitoring deployed, the fund manager and/or the CEO would have been warned directly via alerts before the problem got that bad.
The good news is that InfoWARE’s end to end ERP solution with its integrated internet banking/retail module is allowing companies in Nigeria and other African countries to out maneuver and out run their competition.
The MD of yet another major bank subsidiary that switched to InfoWARE just a few months ago called their previous software (that used an Oracle backend) “Crap” compared to InfoWARE’s solution and wondered how anyone could even compare the two solutions. InfoWARE enabled them to
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Eliminate the need for internal IT employees
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Quadruple financial control capability while reducing the manpower required by over 50%
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Institute efficient workflow processes that keeps all employees focused on delivering value to customers rather than on operations
To find out more: InfoWARE is holding a users event for customers to provide our product roadmap, to sign up send an email or call us at +234-702-710-7895. It’s free and lunch will be provided but space is limited so call early to reserve a spot. Roadmap topics include
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New equities analytics for market makers and asset managers
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Our FIX implementation even ahead of what the NSE is doing
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Introduction of HR module with integrated Biometrics
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Introduction of Inventory and manufacturing modules
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Extensive improvements to our asset/wealth management modules to handle all asset classes with flexible fee accruals
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New mobile platform initiatives including Windows 8
InfoWARE Password Policy Enforcement
InfoWARE provides for a very powerful yet flexible password policy that administrators can configure to meet their security policy requirements. Below is a table that describes each policy requirements
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Password Policy
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Default
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Weak
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Medium
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Strong
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Very Strong
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Minimum Password Length
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6
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6
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6
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8
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12
|
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Requires Digits
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No
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No
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Yes
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Yes
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Yes
|
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Require Mixed Case
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No
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No
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Yes
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Yes
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Yes
|
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Disallow UserName Sequence in Password
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No
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No
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No
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No
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Yes
|
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Requires Special Charactars
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No
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No
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No
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Yes
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Yes
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Maximum Character Sequence Count
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All
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4
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4
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3
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3
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Password Expiry (Days)
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30
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30
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30
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30
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30
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LockoutDuration (Minutes)
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0
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0
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5
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30
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60
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Lockout Threshold (number of tries)
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3
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3
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3
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3
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3
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In addition, our security system does the following
- Maintains an internal dictionary of commonly used password phrases and disallows them when found to be used. We continuously update this internal list as research dictates. We use IEEE as well as other scientific publications to keep abreast of this continuously changing field
- InfoWARE security uses a special algorithm to check passwords for well known sequences based on research data from the security industry. Some of the sequences we detect include,
- Alphabetic sequence : For example “1234″, “defghijk”, etc
- Querty US KeyBoard sequence : For example, “xcvbn”, “yuiop[]\”, etc
- Querty UK keyboard sequence : For example, “!”#$%^&” etc
- Azerty keyboard sequence : For example, “zertyui”, “qsdfg” etc
Please note: The sequences are not limited to the length of the examples above. InfoWARE detects sequences irrespective of length. Also, a failure is triggered only if there are at least 3 characters are found in sequence. This is done to avoid disallowing longer passwords which may have accidental sequences.
- InfoWARE detects Elite encoded passwords (which uses the 1337/Leet substitution approach) then implements a reverse substitution before applying policy checks
According to Dr John Jodan, Executive director, Center for Digital Transformation, Smeal College of Business, Pennsylvania State University:
“Many of today’s small and midsize businesses are successfully competing against larger firms by exploiting ‘economies of speed.’ By creatively combining the Internet and enterprise information technologies, these companies can expand their geographic reach, partner in complex transactions, and respond quickly to dynamic market opportunities.”
BUSINESS PROBLEMS
- I have one branch today but I want to open 10 more in less than 10 months
- I want IT and software solutions that scale from just my 5 users today to more than 100 in ten months
- I want to focus on my business and not worry about IT infrastructure, Servers, network connectivity and all that jargon
- I want my employees to be empowered to work from home or office but with high powered security that I can control exactly as I want
- I want to be able to track my business online while vacationing in Hawaii
- I want to deal with a single partner/solutions provider I can hold responsible and won’t bounce me around with excuses
- I don’t have millions to spend on IT people and infrastructure assets
HOW WE SOLVE IT
- Scalable Application Licenses as your business grow
- Scalable Infrastructure to respond to fast changing business needs
- Plan for growth without incurring the upfront cost
- End User Empowerment
- Significant cost savings and staff efficiency
- Single point of responsibility. InfoWARE is fully accountable irrespective of what the support issue is
Ah ha!! You wipe out your IPad, launch your enterprise application, swipe your way to the approval module and immediately approve the transaction and send a notification to the Abuja account officer. The account officer is able to complete the transaction and sends Chief XYX on his merry way. As you sink back into your seat relieved you don’t have to fight the traffic back to your office, your phone rings and it’s Chief XYZ. He’s calling to compliment you on the great service he just received from your Abuja Account officer despite not having a senior manager around. He jokingly tells you he wants to know the secret technology sauce that makes your people so efficient even on the go without a laptop and with only just an IPad. And on a serious note, he tells you that you will be getting more of his business. As you put the phone down, you smile to yourself, not a bad way to end the day. If only Lagos traffic could be half as efficient as your enterprise software. Oh well!
