AFRICA
working relationship with the service providers , everything goes down the hole ,” Ramphul comments . “ You need to be agile . It needs to be a two-way working partnership . We can ’ t just expect a system integrator to do everything for us . We need to understand our customer requirements and communicate those to our service providers .
“ This relationship needs to be developed and nurtured , not only in terms of contractual agreements – there needs to be trust . We need to understand each other properly . That ’ s where a true vendor-customer relationship needs to be at its optimum operating capacity , otherwise it doesn ’ t work . We really need to be on our toes and make sure everything is being developed in the proper way – it ’ s not about being a watchdog over them , but being collaborative and guiding them as well as them guiding us and making sure that the relationship is working .”
With a well-established international presence , a key challenge for the bank going forward will be to maintain levels of quality and brand expectations whilst also catering for the local communities it serves . “ The market context is very different in Mauritius , India and Kenya ,” Ramphul comments , “ so before we bring in any kind of solution or innovation we always do our market research and have a proper business case in place to ensure that any solution we bring in will truly add value .”
Already , SBM has launched a plethora of digital solutions and the bank ’ s digital transformation journey is still ongoing . It has been vital to keep staff on board with all the new developments and implement proper change management . “ When we launched the new internet banking and mobile banking
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