Chapter 1: The National Bank of Kuwait

1.      How has NBK benefitted from the implementation of SHOROUQ?

·         Become the largest financial institution and leasing bank in the Middle East.

NBK was awarded the title of Best Bank in Kuwait and the Middle East 2008 by Euromoney. It is ranked in the top 100 most successful banks of the world, and third among Arab banks.

·         Help the bank to be more flexible and more productive

NBK executives the new ERP system would help the bank more flexible and more productive by coordinating its business processes more closely and integrating groups of processes so that it could focus on efficient resource management and customer service.

·         Deal with different types of information and new products.

SHPROUQ can be upgraded easily, and additional server capacity can be added without a great deal of maintenance. This new system can integrate data from legacy systems for mining purposes makes SHOROUQ more flexible and dynamic when dealing with different types of information and new products.

·         Expand its market locally and worldwide

SHOROUQ helped the company to expand its market locally and worldwide, and beyond the Arabian Peninsula and the Middle East.

2. List the advantages and disadvantages of implementing the SHOROUQ system at NBK.

Advantages:

• The old system has different information systems for every department. However, new system makes all departments close to each other and flow of information is easier.
• The new system able to overcome many of the shortcomings of the old system, particularly the costs of maintenance.
• The new system can easily upgrade, additional server capacity can be add without a great deal of maintenance.
• This system ensures that data quality and high availability could be maintained.
• This system enables effective business operations, decision-making and reporting.
• Identifying the most profitable customer as well as potential customers more effectively.
• Successfully meet the organization’s overall needs.
• Efficient resource management and customer service.

Disadvantages:

• This system was costly to develop and establish.
• To make this system come to reality or achieve the objectives, The National Bank of Kuwait invested too much time and money.

3. How do you think NBK’s business would have developed if it had not integrated SHOROUQ?

If NBK had not integrated SHOROUQ,

- It will unable to expand its market share, locally or globally.

- It will unable to target their current and potential customer efficiently.

- Slow speed of information flow between organization, employees and customers.

- Management decisions to counteract market changes were slow and costly.

- Maintenance cost of the data is high.

Moreover, NBK may choose to use others IT strategy, such as:

• Core system changes, the building of an SOA-driven integration platform and the delivery of a BI system as part of a fluid information architecture.
• A new Operational Data Store (ODS) is effectively a data warehouse that would consolidate data from across the enterprise and provide NBK with the ability to drive all of its enterprise BI and information requirements, and support all decisions out of one place.
• SAP Business Objects software was also chosen to cover operational reporting as the vendor’s distribution and access were felt to be in line with the needs of the bank.