Phillips Consulting Scores Nigerian Banks Websites High

Philips Consulting Limited, focused on creating and managing change in organisations by helping them formulate and implement customer focused strategies, has commended the innovative and creative prowess of IT experts that manage websites of Nigerian banks.   

Foluso Phillips, chairman and chief executive officer of Phillips Consulting Limited made the remark while speaking at the Web Jurist Award Version 11.0, describing the websites of most Nigerian banks evaluated recently by the company as “pretty good”.

Phillips believes that those websites can compete with their counterparts all over the world.

“I think the websites of our organizations; especially the banks are prettily good. This is where our youths in the IT world have excelled themselves. They come up with good websites; they are some that when I go into them, occasionally, I am always fascinated by the level of innovations and varieties that they display.

 “We are holding our onus as far as global look is concerned. For the banks, when you look at international banks and the Nigerian counterparts we are operating at the same level.

On the essence of the Web Jurist Award, he said, “We have been holding the Web Jurist for close to 12 years now. The whole idea was that when website was becoming very fashionable and the banks were being very active in that area we thought of a platform to start evaluating their websites. It was becoming a new marketing tool for them, new branding for them; and it was interesting to see how well they were doing in the management or usage of the new tool. The initial evolutions were basically on the brochure way: how they were presenting themselves.

“Over the years we have delved into more sophisticated means of website evaluation. We can claim the glory of increasing the awareness of banks as far as website is concerned. When we started they were really struggling to see who wins. Banks that use to win in those days actually put the emblem of web jurist winner on their website and advertisement. To a great extent we have raise the awareness of website advertising. They have become very cautious that such have become very important tool in their hands”.

The Phillips Consulting chairman added that, overtime; there have been remarkable improvements among contestants’ websites.

“The proof to that is that the banks would want to know when we are evaluating the sites, which we never tell them. Secondly, few banks employed webmasters; a particular bank that won in a particular year attempted to fire a particular person in-charge, fortunately they won that year. When we were to make the announcement, the person was physically afraid. Definitely they have taken it seriously and they are operating at an imaginable level of efficiency.  Meanwhile we have different categories to show their areas of strengths”

At this year’s award tagged Version 11.0, Access Bank emerged, the overall winner in the Banks category keenly followed by Enterprise Bank and First City Monument Bank.

Also, Etisalat led in the Telecoms category; AIICO Insurance was crowned the best in the Insurance category while BGL emerged the Best in the Investment houses category.

Speaking to Nigeria CommunicationsWeek on the award, Chineze Amanfo, public relations officer, Etisalat Nigeria, expressed happiness at the recognition.

She said that Phillips Consulting has once again exhibited professionalism, unbiased and good judgment as nominees were not pre-informed on the evaluation processes.

“Actually, Phillips Consulting Limited has made another indelible mark hence we were not even pre-informed on the nomination. We try as much as possible to listen to customers and follow their demands in developing our sites. We shall not continue to maintain the tempo,” Amanfo said.

Criteria used in evaluating the websites include: aesthetic use of graphics and good design principles; technicalities-navigation, functionality and security; site content like accuracy and presentation. Other criteria are customer experience: customization, investor information and content details and accessibility or assistive technologies.