IQ’s review department current operations and MIS, enabled the improvement of operational efficiencies and insight into issue areas beyond the operations realm.

The Business Challenge

Within a large financial institution’s credit business unit, various inefficiencies were adversely affecting operational effectiveness.  The urgency of understanding these was exacerbated by internal projects changing existing operating systems and a planned office move. The IQ Business Group with their extensive Credit Operations exposure, IT and process methodology expertise as well as their understanding of the Absa culture was preferred to conduct an independent review to understand root causes and provide guidance for improvement. IQ was asked to review the current Management Information System (MIS), processes and controls within the department.

The IQ Business Group assisted a large financial institution in the end-to-end retail Basel Model implementation.

When a revenue services government agency embarks on a tax compliance drive they were faced with a dilemma: How to handle additional volumes with the same amount of staff? The solution would involve implementing a process architecture, which would reduce turnaround times, increase productivity and ensure that consistent service levels could be delivered across the business.

More efficient, and more effective. IQ’s process improvement intervention applied within a card environment provided a return on investment within two months.

We understand business strategies and deliver pragmatic outcomes.

Centralising a reconciliation function brings with it a multitude of challenges if not implemented correctly, including process misalignment and lack of transfer of knowledge.

The client faced a challenge: they had a large number of un-reconciled items on a number of Foreign Exchange (FX) suspense accounts. These outstanding items were impacting clients and needed to be investigated and reconciled, as soon as possible.

Our client had grown through an acquisition which had resulted in a number of non-integrated disparate administration, accounting and back office systems being used resulting in high cost IT expenditure. This in turn put pressure on its margins and profitability. Our client had to decide what it should do in rationalising its Information Technology environment as any wrong decision could increase the costs and affect its financial position.

Industry Situation

With stringent deadlines closing in, compliance to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) is not something listed institutions have a choice about. Complying with these standards also offers immense business benefits, ranging from increased transparency, to cutting fraud and reducing risk.

In order to report under IFRS, financial statements need to be prepared according to the International Accounting Standard (IAS). All South African companies have been reporting using a set of South African Accepted statements that differ from the internationally accepted statements. The JSE has prescribed that all listed companies with a year-end beginning 1 January 2005 or thereafter will have to comply with IFRS for that financial year and going forward.

Client Situation

The administration platform within our client consisted of a number of separate proprietary in-house or packaged based solutions. There was little integration between the various systems and many of the systems were complex due to the myriad of business rules which were applied across the organisation. Our client wanted to implement a packaged based administration system and standardise its business practices to primarily be those of the administration system rather than catering for the myriad of rules which currently applied.

IQ consultants have developed comprehensive methodologies and extensive experience to deliver process improvements to support process optimisation, SLA mapping and “low-tech” solutions. Significant benefits have been realised by our clients  - some within two months - in terms of reduced turnaround and improved efficiencies.

Client Situation

Our client had to increase customer satisfaction through improved efficiency.  It was also necessary to increase the capacity for a higher volume of cards to be processed on a daily basis and in doing so, create an opportunity for the business to increase their card sales without increasing costs.

IQ’s process innovation framework and card experience purpose was to provide a de-centralised user-friendly front-end for new card application capturing at source.