Cooperative banks emerge from technological dark ages New Delhi: Urban banks adopted automation a long time back, linking their branches via core banking systems (CBS). Slowly, but surely, India’s cooperative banks are now emerging out of technological dark ages. Large parts of the sector now tick with a CBS developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), the government’s web services organization, which has brought them to the technology mainstream. The NIC’s cooperative core banking solution(CCBS) works on the Software as a Service (SaaS) model. The software runs from a remote central server, which individual banks access for their purposes via Internet. NIC hosts the service, besides providing implementation support. “E-governance and bridging the digital divide was largely restricted to urban areas or cities, but the people in rural areas were ignored. The business correspondents’ model also didn’t pick up the way it should have in the rural areas. This is our attempt to address some of the concerns around financial inclusion,” explains Shefali Dash, deputy director general of the NIC. Apart from basic banking operations, the CCBS also integrates other services. It is designed to help agriculture societies disburse funds from various government schemes like the rural wage scheme, old age pensions or the mid-day meal scheme directly to beneficiaries’ accounts. The system can also monitor disbursements and update position of funds. Easing the disbursement of funds from the government schemes was a key reason for developing the core banking service. NIC developed a solution, which was infrastructure independent and easy to use. Banks do not need digital infrastructure like data centres or high-end servers and maintenance staff. “We want to provide low-cost solutions to the banks. The objective is to benefit people in the rural areas,” adds Dash. For any core banking project, the major cost heads are application development, data centre, disaster recovery site/information security, data capture, hardware and helpdesk. In CCBS, NIC takes care of all aspects, except hardware and manpower. As the access is role-based, there are many security layers to make sure data is kept safe. Role-based access is an approach by which system access is restricted to only authorized users. Users are charged as per requirement during the implementation phase. NIC developed the system in 2004 for the Bihar state cooperative bank (SCB), which was looking for total branch automation. Other cooperative banks started showing interest in 2010. As of now, the CCBS is implemented at more than 100 cooperative banking locations across Meghalaya and Chhattisgarh. The system operates at the levels of SCB, district cooperative bank (DCB), primary agriculture co-operative society (PACS) land development bank and primary agriculture development bank (PADB). CCBS is operating at the Jila Sahakari Kendriya Bank, a district cooperative bank, in Chhattisgarh. In Meghalaya, 46 SCB branches have been brought under CCBS. Pilot projects are under way at many more locations. Six thousand PACS in Rajasthan, 89 PADBs in Punjab, one Chandigarh SCB, three branches of Delhi Financial Corporation and 315 locations of Treasury Saving Banks in Kerala are using CCBS. The solution can be customized depending on local requirements. Meghalaya SCB still follows old Reserve Bank of India (RBI) clearing guidelines but wanted similar features in their version, says Dash. The CCBS is used for saving and current accounts, term deposits, loan operations, cash receipts and disbursement, account management, standard book-keeping, inter-branch transfers, centralized monitoring and control. It also integrates National Electronic Fund Transfer (NEFT), Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) and Automated Teller Machine (ATM) services, direct benefit transfers, common accounting systems as per Nabard (National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development) standards and text message alerts for every transaction. The journey from manual operations to automation has not been smooth for banks or NIC. Availability power, data connectivity and data migration were major challenges. “We are talking about bank branches which are working in rural areas with limited or no power supply and poor data connections, operated by staff whose average age is in late 40s or early 50s. They have never interacted with technology. Training, connectivity and data migration were the biggest challenges for us,” says Dash. On the other side, the banks had records dating back decades, mostly hand-written. NIC had to make sure that every detail of every account closed or operating was migrated to the servers. “Banks hired data operators, who were trained in using CCBS and all the data was migrated. Training is a very important aspect for a smooth rollout,” says Dash. During the implementation stage, training is given at three levels: nodal officers, PACS managers and direct users. There are various checkpoints to ensure the data entered is correct and complete, says Dash. “There are standard data fields which are compulsory to be filled for correctness and completeness of data. Data quality has to be 100% but in many cases, it is very poor which has to be addressed.” Generators had to be installed in many places which had little or no electricity supply. Since the software is web-based, Internet connection was essential. Most rural areas have connectivity issues; so, the NIC either requests for a leased line from the telecom operator or uses very small aperture terminal (VSAT) technology to connect to servers. The real utility of CCBS lies in its capacity-building features, including easy integration with other online e-governance applications like paddy procurement (Dhan-Kharidi) in Chhattisgarh, local language support, real time PACS status reports and compliance reports. “There are three levels in capacity building: people, process and technology. People and process is taken care of by the user and NIC handles the technology part,” Dash says. NIC is working on adding more features like Internet banking and asset liability management, and is also working to integrate new schemes like Jan Dhan Yojana. Mint has a strategic partnership with Digital Empowerment Foundation, which hosts the Manthan Awards. When the CEO communicates The board meeting had been stormy, the annual general meeting that followed witnessed an unusually heavy flow of comments and questions. There was the investor call to follow and some media interactions. But what the chief executive officer (CEO) really looked forward to was his employee connect—his quarterly reach-out to employees. This is when he really came into his own. He inspired, cajoled, chided sometimes and envisioned the future, sharing the wins of the last quarter, the challenges ahead, where the organization was and the trajectory that it should take. With technology his close aide, he could reach out to employees across locations, real time. He could invite questions, seek comments and address concerns, all the while speaking to many and addressing the concerns of the individual. This initiative had been started in the organization just a few quarters ago, a low-hanging fruit in a bouquet of solutions, aimed at engaging with the employee more robustly. Cynics called it lightweight, waiting for it to peter out quickly. But the impact it was having on the organizational psyche was slowly becoming apparent. There was marked improvement in the health of certain key indicators that the company was tracking—connect with senior leadership, clarity among employees on organizational goals and purpose, and, most importantly, greater alignment of employees with organizational intent. The importance of a robust internal communication framework in organizations is well known, but the case in point is slightly nuanced with the focus on the tremendous impact that a strong direct connect with the CEO brings. Of course, it is important to cascade messages down the organization, get first-line managers to stand up and address their teams, even have regular updates of happenings and developments in different parts of the organization. It is great if different leaders take turns to speak. It demonstrates the depth of the leadership pipeline. And it gives employees perspectives from the vantage point of different specializations and functional heads. But when the No.1 in the organization speaks, it is a different matter altogether. Because it is the numero uno who apexes all stakeholder interests, the customer, the investor, the employee and even society. The buck stops right there. Her message rightly gives a cross-stakeholder perspective and organizational bird’s-eye view, which no single functional head can normally provide; or lend as much credibility to the organizational message. No wonder then that impactful CEO communication provides a totally different impetus to organization building or rebuilding, as the case may be. “The charm and pull of a face-to-face with a charismatic CEO is heady. But in the real world this becomes virtually impossible with large and dispersed workforces. Smart leaders then leverage technology to address this challenge,” said a veteran change management consultant. The change can be startlingly apparent when a great orator CEO succeeds one who either was not a good public speaker, or was loath to speak. Unfortunately, the vice versa is also true, draining organizational energy at an alarming speed. I am not being simplistic about this. Employee speak in various organizations will actually bear me out. Not just in the corporate world, the case holds true for real politick as well. Take the case of the great oratory of former British prime minister Winston Churchill. His famous words, “…we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender….” at the height of World War II had the ability to energize an entire nation from the slough of depression it was steeped in and was in itself a call to arms and courage. In more recent times, the strong oratorical overtone of our national election struck a similar powerful chord in the electorate and reinforced forcefully the strength of hearing the leader speak. A leader’s speech in any form is welcome—whether it is of the podium kind, the virtual bazaars or even brown bag lunches with informal groups. But the power of great extemporary communication (of course, with well-researched messages) is indeed unbeatable. And when such speeches are peppered generously with both data and humour (even of the self-depreciating kind) the wow effect enhances. Leaders are indeed blessed if they are born with such oratorical skills. But I have seen that it is by no means impossible for them to train to become good orators, to transform from the proverbial goongi gudiya (dumb doll) to attention-capturing, charismatic orators. The transformation cannot be an overnight one and requires painstaking effort—communication coaches who tend to the tone, manner and even mindset, with undivided focus on content to keep the message simple, direct and clear. Brian Tracy, the entrepreneur and author, got it right when he said, “Communication is a skill that you can learn. It’s like riding a bicycle or typing. If you’re willing to work at it, you can rapidly improve…” Communicating is important, but then so is living up to promises made from the podium. “Record commitments, follow them through” is the mantra that a charismatic CEO who has mastered the art adopts. This needs working on especially, given the rather cavalier approach in meetings these days to the small matter of actually documenting key decisions, responsibility holders and due dates for delivery. A leader I admired always started the Q and A session of his speech with all the commitments made in the last communication and where he and the respective responsibility holder stood on those commitments. This showcased beautifully the intent to honour previous commitments and hold responsibility holders to hard deadlines. So leaders please put aside your inhibitions, your other calendar conflicts and reach out to your employee base and see how the “vitamin of leader speak” really invigorates organizational spirit. And if like our CEO protagonist above, you embrace this on your calendar right there with the investor and media speak at crucial times like the annual and quarterly results, then more power to you. Hema Ravichandar is a strategic human resources consultant. She serves as an independent director and an advisory board member for several organizations. She was formerly the global head of HR for Infosys Ltd
Posted on: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 06:17:16 +0000
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