Klaas Kruger, Chief Information Officer of Standard Bank, PBB Rest of Africa, and his team visited Computer Warehouse Group (CWG Plc) headquarters in Lagos, Nigeria recently.
The visit was aimed at strategic discussion on technology solutions that CWG Plc offers and the value it can add to the bank’s operation.
In his presentation, Mr. Austin Okere, chief executive officer of CWG Plc, used the key ring concept to explain CWG’s solutions offering.
The concept denotes the Company’s ability to handhold an institution’s entire Information Technology needs end-to-end to assure the customer of a single responsibility partner across the IT solution stack and thereby significantly minimizing risk.
According to Okere, CWG Plc has world class IT facilities and capabilities as well as strong relationships with global technology brands and esteemed clientele spanning over two decades, and is poised to replicate the unique value Pan-African wide to meet the growing requirements of her global customers, who want a consistent service level across their Africa operations.
“These three factors—Facility, Capability and Relationship have given us an edge in providing IT services and support in various industries in our countries of operation especially Telecom, Oil & Gas and Banking. About 50% of Mobile calls in Nigeria are routed through enterprise servers and storage managed and supported by us while 40% of Telecoms Information Systems Managed Services are also provided by CWG” he noted.
“Same applies to the banking industry, about 30% of Automated Teller Machines’(ATMs) transaction pass through CWG’s Wincor-Nixdorf ATMs while about 35% of ATMs installed base in Nigeria are supplied and supported by CWG” Okere enthused.
Similarly, Mr. James Agada, chief technology officer of CWG Plc, emphasized; “60% of banking transactions in Nigeria happen on our Finacle Core Banking system, installed in 10 of the 21 Nigerian banks, and about 20% of bank branch transactions on data links are carried out through CWG’s Network Infrastructure” “CWG Plc and her partner, Infosys have also extended the Finacle Core Banking System to other African Countries where we have physical presence, with CWG’s certified technical staff handling both the implementation and support” he noted.
In response, Mr. Kruger expressed his excitement about working with CWG on the bank’s upgrades and support of their Finacle system. He also said that they are looking forward to extracting more value from the later version of Finacle.
Thereafter, the team toured CWG Plc’s IT facilities, including the Tier 3 Datacentre, Network Operations Centre, Customer experience Centre and Academy, which assures continuous quality skills to support her continental expansion ambitions. CWG Plc currently has direct operations in Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda and Cameroon and partnerships in 18 other countries.