Mass IT rollouts are never easy, especially those involving something as fundamental to daily operations as a core banking system. When the installation takes place across more than 30 sub-Saharan African countries, the complexity and logistical difficulties are ratcheted up several notches.
By 2006, such a rollout had become a necessity for pan-African banking group Ecobank Transnational, however. Since opening its first subsidiary in Togo back in 1988, the bank had expanded to encompass operations in 12 countries, and was eyeing up expansion to a further 18. The strain was beginning to tell on IT systems, explains CEO Arnold Ekpe. In particular, the bank’s core platform – Temenos’s Globus system – which had been in place since the bank's inception, was proving less and less efficient as it grew due to the non-centralised nature of its installation.
