Central Bank of Oman Implements Integrated Financial Applications in a Highly Secure Environment to Support Rapidly Growing Business
 
 

Central Bank of Oman Implements Integrated Financial Applications in a Highly Secure Environment to Support Rapidly Growing Business

Printer View Printer View

Central Bank of Oman (CBO)—regulator of the Sultanate of Oman’s financial services industry—is responsible for maintaining the value of the national currency, as well as ensuring monetary and financial stability in Oman’s deregulated and open financial system.

Previously, CBO relied on a manually intensive, legacy financial system to complete key business processes, such as defining fair value adjustments for Oman’s security market, publishing official daily exchange rates, and scheduling the bank’s daily operations. CBO deployed Oracle E-Business Suite to streamline and automate its financial reporting environment, and realized productivity benefits not only to its reporting system, but also in its procurement, invoice, supplier management, and fixed-asset management systems. 

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from Central Bank of Oman

  • “Oracle E-Business Suite enables the Central Bank of Oman to provide Oman’s commercial and banking institutions with secure, reliable, and affordable access to the financial data they require to conduct business efficiently and successfully.” – Mazin Mohamed Abdul Qadir Al Shahwarzi, Senior Database Administrator, Central Bank of Oman

  • Establish a stable database environment with 24/7 availability to transparently and efficiently handle several terabytes of a commercial bank’s data, including transactional, savings, and money market accounts
  • Eliminate long delays when operating the general ledger and producing financial reports and statements, such as debit and credit reports, monthly transaction reports, as well as quarterly and yearly budget reports
  • Achieve proper data backup and archiving methods for several terabytes of financial data contained in the bank’s legacy systems
  • Automate purchasing processes to reduce costs and optimize spending

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Automated key processes, such as defining fair value adjustments for Oman’s security market, publishing official daily exchange rates, and scheduling the bank’s daily operations
  • Achieved full integration between financial subsystems—reducing the time required to operate the bank’s general ledger and accounts payable
  • Used Oracle Financials Accounting Hub to create detailed, reconcilable, and auditable accounting data for the bank’s legacy systems, resulting in error-free reports as well as more secure and properly archived data―while saving the bank’s accountants many hours on reconciliations and audits
  • Implemented Oracle Database, Enterprise Edition to consolidate data and enhance database performance for the bank’s financial data
  • Ensured round-the-clock data availability as well as integrity of critical financial information―not only for Central Bank of Oman, but for all market players, such as financial institutions, government entities, and insurance companies that depend on CBO’s services
  • Provided the highest possible data security by assigning application and database access according to user roles and enabling audit trails both at the application and database level
  • Gained the ability to conduct incremental backups every day and full backups during weekends, taking less time and allowing for faster restoration
  • Enabled authorized users at all levels of the bank to gain immediate access to information from Oracle Database and Oracle E-Business with Oracle Discoverer, providing them with an easy-to-use tool for running ad-hoc queries, reports, and analyses
  • Automated production of financial reports, such as detailed balance sheets, income statements, and currency evaluations―reducing the time required to generate month-end financial reports from 10 days to 5 days
  • Established a completely paperless environment for the bank’s purchasing processes, enabling managers and their personnel to request and approve all purchase requests electronically, accelerating the process, and freeing internal resources for other priorities—without printing a single sheet of paper
  • Made more reports available (such as balance sheet details) and automated reports that had been generated manually before (such as income statements)―providing CBO with valuable insight into key statistics and optimizing its decision-making capabilities
  • Ensured rapid adoption with easy-to-use applications

Why Oracle

“We chose Oracle E-Business Suite for numerous reasons, including various technical features, such as report automation for balance sheets, income statements, and currency evaluation documentation. It also enabled us to automate exchange rates and fair value adjustments for the Muscat Security Market on a daily basis. Furthermore, we appreciate Oracle E-Business Suite’s user friendliness, its excellent online help facilities, and the fact that we can deal with a single, proven vendor. And, Oracle Premier Support’s quick responses helped us to gain quick buy in for the new environment,” said Mazin Mohamed Abdul Qadir Al Shahwarzi, senior database administrator, Central Bank of Oman.

“Through its partners, Oracle covered the entire spectrum of our implementation needs, including configuration, integration with legacy systems, and problem solving. With Oracle E-Business Suite, we are well prepared to meet the growing needs of the financial sector in Oman,” added Al Shahwarzi.

Partner

 

Resources