Case Study

Success at al khaliji
This is the story of a highly successful implementation
in which al khaliji, the fast-growing next-generation
bank in Qatar, replaced its fragmented legacy core
environment with a single fully-integrated Temenos
platform that covers all lines of business.
Temenos Case Study
02

Executive Summary

T
his is the story of a highly successful implementation in which al Together, these factors turned a complex and potentially risky
khaliji, the fast-growing next-generation bank in Qatar, replaced transformation into a remarkable success.
its fragmented legacy core environment with a single fully-
integrated Temenos platform that covers all lines of business. Shortly after the implementation, al khaliji was named Best
Operational Bank Qatar by the Global Financial Market Review, in
With the Temenos solution in place, al khaliji has a massively scalable recognition of its highly efficient transformation.
bedrock for growth and has reduced its IT costs as a percentage of
total operating costs. Also recognized Best Premium Bank in the Middle East and Best
Commercial Bank of the Year in Qatar in 2014, al khaliji is now well
In this case study we examine five key factors that made the set to become a leading bank not only in Qatar but also in the Gulf
implementation a success. These factors encompass people, Cooperation Council (GCC) region.
process and product.

By setting detailed expectations, scope and accountabilities, the joint

project team was able to entirely focus on delivery once the project
began, limit the number of material scope changes and minimize the
impact of these changes on the timeline.

Having a clear project plan let Temenos provide the right expertise
at the right time, which enhanced the efficiency of the delivery and
fostered strong trust and collegiality.

The project was treated as a business transformation rather than a

IT system delivery. Senior business representatives of the bank were
involved on a daily basis, as was Temenos senior management when
appropriate.

To prevent scope creep, the bank adopted the solutions model

processes rather than adapting them. 85% of al khalijis requirements
were catered for out-of-the-box by Temenos solution and less than 5%
of additional development man-days were identified during the project.

Finally, the banks business users owned their data during the
migration cycles, reducing latter cycle times to 6 hours and lifting
data accuracy to 99%. Comprehensive pre-UAT training by Temenos
lifted the UAT pass rate to 96%.

The implementation of the integrated Temenos

solution in such a short timeframe was made possible
by extremely efficient project planning and execution,
impeccable professionalism and the fact that 85%
of our requirements were met out-of-the-box. With
T24, we now have a modern platform that integrates
with any external system and has the flexibility and
scalability to grow with us.
Fahad Al Khalifa, Group Chief Executive Officer, al khaliji Bank
Temenos Case Study
03

al khaliji, the next-generation bank Selection of Temenos

al khaliji, established in 2007 and already one of Qatars leading
banks with USD 13 billion in total assets, offers a full range of
banking products and services to premium, Business banking SMEs
and corporate customers in Qatar, UAE and France. Positioned
as the Qatars next generation bank, it has placed innovation in
technology, products and services at the heart of its operating model.
Since 2010, its focus areas have been corporate banking, treasury
as well as affluent and wealthy customers for which it has created a
distinctive Premium Banking offering. al khalijis strategy has been
eminently successful and has generated total asset growth of 39%,
loans growth of 54% and deposits growth of 44%, respectively, at the
end of Q3 2014 compared to Q3 2013.
al khaliji examined bids from all major core banking providers. It selected
the solution proposed by Temenos, the only vendor to offer a fully
integrated and highly-scalable solution that spanned the banks broad
requirements, namely: superior customer experience, massive scalability,
cost-efficiency and easy integration with third-party systems.
Three things made al khaliji confident that Temenos would deliver
the solution to specifications, on time and on budget and with
minimal deviations to the rollout plan: the solutions high level of
pre-configuration, the tried-and-tested Temenos Implementation
Methodology (TIM), and support from the right experts at the right time.
Also, because Temenos banking solutions are widely used throughout
the world and the Middle-East, al khaliji knew that it would not
struggle to find the right expertise over the solutions lifecycle.

The need for swift transformation

In 2012, with the assistance of Platinion, a Boston Consulting Group
(BCG) company, al khaliji completed an assessment that found that
its fragmented systems platform could not support its mid- and long-
term business goals.
The bank decided to move its operations on to a unified, functionally-
rich core banking platform that would support fast growth in Qatar
and internationally, sustainably reduce operating costs, improve the
customer experience and upgrade easily.
Most importantly, al khaliji needed to complete this transformation
fast in order to protect and exploit its hard-earned position in the
competitive domestic and GCC markets.
Scope of the implementation
The integrated Temenos solution replaces al khalijis fragmented
legacy core systems (provided by leading names in the industry) and
covers personal and commercial banking, treasury operations, treasury
front office, trade finance, CRM and business intelligence.
At the heart of the integrated Temenos solution at al khaliji is
the award-winning Temenos T24 core banking platform. T24s
Arrangement Architecture module offers outstanding flexibility and
efficiency in banking product design and innovation.
The two other key elements of the integrated solution are Temenos
Treasury Trader for advanced front/middle-office international
treasury operations and Temenos Insight which provides powerful
risk-mitigation and profitability-calculation capabilities to facilitate
informed business decisions.

The solution was deployed in a very short time, and

we were confident from the start that it would be.
Knowing that Temenos was adhering to a tried-and-
tested implementation methodology gave us a lot of
comfort. The bank was racing against time and wanted
to get some quick wins out the project. We got these
and much more. We would do it all over again.
Hesham EzzEldin, GCOO, al khaliji Bank
Temenos Case Study
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A highly successful implementation

The implementation of the Temenos solution was a resounding
success from both al khalijis and Temenos view.
First, all key expectations were met. The full solution went live in
November 2013, respecting the planned 15-month implementation
timeline and budget.
Second, from the very outset of (and throughout) the project, al khaliji
felt certain that it would reap the full benefits of the transformation in As a result there has been a considerable reduction in IT costs as a
a timely manner.
integrated platform giving the business holistic views, streamlined and
automated processes, faster go-to-market and massive scalability.
Moreover, the platform interfaces seamlessly with multiple local
systems, and accommodates all local regulatory requirements.
Also, operating efficiency has been dramatically improved: 91%
of processes have been fully automated, including regulatory and
management reporting.
percentage of total operating costs.

Third, a collegial and trust-based working relationship was built and
maintained between al khaliji and Temenos throughout.
Fourth, al khalijis business is better off. The Temenos solution
has replaced a number of scattered legacy systems with a single
The question we will address now is: how did al khaliji and Temenos
turn a complex and potentially risky transformation into such a
success?

Key success factors

To answer this question, this section looks at five key success factors
that encompass people, process and product:

Clear expectations, scope and

accountability from the start The right expertise at the right time

4 0
Only 4 material change requests, unplanned changes in the
minimal impact on the Temenos core delivery team
pre-agreed timeline during the project

Often, project expectations, scope and accountabilities are not detailed When an implementation lacks a solid plan or drifts from the timeline,
early enough, forcing the project manager to revisit them instead of the lack of synchronization between needs and specialized resources
focusing on delivery. can become a costly and complex problem.

To avoid these problems, al khaliji and Temenos first devised a detailed Because planning was done rigorously with al khaliji, Temenos was
project plan that included clearly defined deliverables, specific delivery
able to provide the right expertise (business, technical, data migration
dates, clear responsibilities for each role and explicit ownership. and project management specialists) at the right time and for the right
This enabled both parties to secure resources in their respective duration, which kept the efficiency of the project team extremely high.
organizations and focus on execution. For instance, Temenos development team came onsite during testing
to resolve issues rapidly. al khaliji engaged two Temenos premium
As the project plan and scope was not prone to interpretation, only four support specialists full-time, five months before go-live, to fix issues
material changes were made to the scope during the project. These identified by the delivery specialists.
were dealt with rapidly through a change-management mechanism
with an efficient decision-making process to minimize impact on the The absence of improvisation also fostered strong trust and collegiality
overall timeline. within the joint project team.

To foster accountability, a weekly report was sent to the steering

committees, detailing what was on track or not, why so, and who was
responsible. Because no one wanted their name to be on this simple
report, it became a strong motivator for anticipating issues.
Temenos Case Study
05

A clear scope supported by an

out-of-the-box solution

5% 85%
additional development man-days identified of al khalijis requirements until 2016
during the project. catered for out-of-the-box.

When a bank tries to adapt a solution instead of adopting it, the project
invariably suffers from scope creep (insidious growth), entailing extra
time and costs and distracting delivery teams.

Rather than adapt them, al khaliji chose to adopt the solutions model
configurations and processes (which encapsulate the experience of over
a thousand Temenos implementations) because they covered over 85%
of the banks long-term business requirements.

Some custom development was required to address new local

regulatory requirements, but its scope was locked down in detail before
the project began.

Development and change requests during the course of the project

increased development man-days by less than 5% (versus the initial
estimate).

Involvement of banking
business representatives

60%
of the banks project team
members from the business side
(not IT)

Banking managers often fear changes to the way banking tasks are
performed. In reaction, they tend to disengage from systems projects, and
the projects end up addressing IT issues instead of business requirements.

At al khaliji, bank-wide buy-in was secured to ensure the project would

be a business-led transformation rather than an IT system delivery. The
banks Group Chief Operating Officer (GCOO), a member of its executive
committee, was made the project sponsor. The business heads of
premium banking, corporate banking, treasury, the GCRO, the GCFO and
the GCEO were members of the project steering committee. The GCOO
updated the board of directors bi-monthly, with the project progress.

Teams of empowered business people (not business analysts) were

made to report directly to the GCOO during the project in addition to
the IT and project management teams. In the planning phase, the bank
requested all stakeholders to define their deliverables, testing scenarios
and UATs.

During the project, the GCOO was involved on a daily basis, attending
the morning and evening project meetings, which enabled faster and
binding decisions to be made at all times.
Temenos Case Study
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Highly structured data

migration, training and UAT

99% 96%
data accuracy at pass rate
time of migration in last cycle of UAT

Upon go live, business people often find themselves confronted with
unreliable data because they remained disengaged from the data
migration process (despite being the real owners of data).
Also, because they are neither properly trained nor sufficiently
involved in UAT, they might perceive that the new system is not
performing as expected.
al khaliji and Temenos took a highly structured data migration
approach (extract, transform, upload reconcile), staggered in 12
clearly defined cycles to make space for improvement. The business
people who own and use the data were required to reconcile data
themselves and sign off on it.
The project team enforced structured UAT cycles during which al
khaliji ran almost 5000 test cases in 9 test cycles and achieved a 96%
pass rate (last cycle). At this stage, al khaliji took the decision to take
the new system live.
Since go-live, the number of issues reported by users has dramatically
diminished. Half of the issues are user-knowledge-related and usually
caused by the expectation that the Temenos solution does exactly
what the previous system did with similar screens. al khaliji has been
able to resolve 95% of these issues and stabilize the daily operations
in less than three month with the help of Temenos support services.

As a result, the cycle completion time rapidly fell from multiple weeks
to the targeted 6 hours, and data accuracy hit 99% at the time of
migration.

Before UAT, Temenos trained the business users to proficiently

operate the system in their respective domains and the IT staff to
administer and manage the system independently from the UAT
onwards. Business users were also required to set clear acceptance
criteria before the start.

The Temenos implementation team

Temenos Case Study
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Conclusion

Planned and executed together, these five key factors let al khaliji
and Temenos turn a complex and potentially risky transformation
into a success.

In the space of 15 months, the bank and Temenos managed

to replace a fragmented legacy core environment with a fully-
integrated and highly-scalable Temenos platform covering all lines
of business.

The success of the implementation earned al khaliji recognition

in 2014 as the Best Operational Bank Qatar by Global Financial
Market Review (GFMR).

Also named Best Premium Bank in the Middle East and Best
Commercial Bank of the Year in Qatar in 2014, al khaliji is now well
set to become a leading bank in the GCC region.

Moreover, the cost to al khaliji of maintaining its core system has

substantially decreased and is forecast to fall further over the
coming years.

The cost for the bank of keeping up with functional and technological
innovation has also fallen; al khaliji now has full access to Temenos
regular upgrades and expert services.

This case study shows that, by implementing Temenos solutions, any

bank can undertake a core system renovation without significant risk
and become more competitive, cost-efficient and scalable.
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