FirstBank Deploys Microsoft Solutions

First Bank of Nigeria Plc as part of its on-going strategy to transform employee productivity, customer responsiveness and risk management has deployed Microsoft’s messaging collaboration, a unified communication and information security solution.
Explaining the rationale for the project, Rasheed Adegoke, head of Information Technology (IT), FirstBank said, “We wanted to improve the performance of the messaging infrastructure from largely two perspectives - user experience and integration to other applications, and so far, we have significantly achieved both objectives after migrating our messaging and collaboration infrastructure to Microsoft Exchange 2007.”
Adegoke said that feedback from the bank’s team indicates that the Outlook client is easier to use than Notes, adding that there has been marked improvement in the response time of staff since the migration to ActiveSynch, which is planned to be rolled out across the group.
“One of the major benefits for us really is the SharePoint portal which accommodates a lot more content than the old system.  Staff now finds it more interesting going into the portal to search for information than before,” Adegoke said.
Speaking at the official commissioning of the project and the presentation of IT leadership award to FirstBank in Lagos recently, Emmanuel Onyeje, country manager for Microsoft acknowledged FirstBank’s demonstrable leadership role in making informed IT investments to transform customer responsiveness, improve risk management capabilities and improve employee productivity. 
Onyeje commended FirstBank for remaining proactive in taking the right steps to retain its position as one of the strongest banks in West Africa, saying “I believe information technology can play an important role in helping companies respond to this difficult and rapidly changing economic environment.
Today, there are a number of technologies, some of which we celebrate your organisation for deploying, that help companies lower expenses and improve effectiveness and efficiency.”
He said that organisations like FirstBank that take advantage of these trends will continue to deliver new innovations to their customers, thereby retaining an important competitive advantage now and in the years ahead.  
June Anasiudu, Project Manager at Microsoft said that the FirstBank project is one of the largest migrations to Microsoft Exchange in sub-Saharan Africa, adding that the success of this complex project was driven by the desire and dedication of FirstBank’s technology team to transform user productivity and customer responsiveness.
“We at Microsoft are proud of our consultants, Microsoft Consulting Services, who worked with FirstBank, as well as our partners, Dimension Data and G4V, in successfully deploying these solutions”, she said, also asserting the privilege to be associated with one of Africa’s leading banks (FirstBank).
On the part of Mr. Orlando Olumide Odejide, managing director, G4V and multiple award winner at the just concluded Microsoft Partner’s awards, it is a landmark project not only in terms of complexity but also in terms of scale.  “It is definitely a project that will bring FirstBank tremendous benefits in terms of employee effectiveness and efficiency,” he said.
FirstBank remains Nigeria’s financial services icon providing over a century of dependable services.  With over 4.2million customers, over 8000 staff, ten (10) financial subsidiaries, 538 locations in Nigeria, and presence in the UK, France, South Africa and China, the bank is arguably the country’s most diversified full-suite financial services group.