Fixing Problems

Notwithstanding meticulous advance planning and a series of preparatory steps, we faced

many problems and hiccups in the initial stages. The staff of the prospective core banking
branches was genuinely apprehensive about the problems or interruptions and consequent
customer complaints, they could face during implementation. They were not wrong.
Migration to any new system is always fraught with such eventualities. Right in the first week
of migration to core banking, some branches experienced unusual delays in opening new
accounts. For example, government business module did not function properly or operated
extremely slow. Such issues directly impacted operations and affected basic customer
service. In some branches, this led to customers protesting against the new system.
On the staff side, some members resented that the entire branch staff had not been provided
CBS training, and this came in the way of smooth change-over. Many had to work late hours-
until 10:00-11:00 pm-on several days initially as it was taking a long time to close their book
for the day. Branch champions and project team members stationed at branches facilitated in
sorting out these initial hiccups and complaints. Wherever necessary, HP’s interventions on a
macro basis were sought to find solutions.
It took, on an average, about three months per branch for the system to stabilize and for the
staff and customers to feel comfortable with the new system.
As the roll-out proceeded at brisk pace, as per the schedule, the Bank had to face a major
breakdown-almost amounting to disaster-of the. Entire operations across all CBS branches,
for two days in 2006.This was due to some major defect in the storage servers at the data
centre and the disaster recovery centre. For two full days, the Bank's operations were nearly
down and extremely slow and our staff had to switch over to the manual system to address
urgent cases.

Project Money Tree

Various activities like selection of locations, obtaining approval of the board committees,
selection of premises, obtaining licenses from RBI, placement of orders for various
equipment’s, authorizing zones/regions for installation of ATMs, coordination with various
vendors, connectivity with switch managed services and resolving many other issues, all were
addressed by the project team. In spite of many problems that came up during
implementation, the project team made sure that the 501st ATM was inaugurated well before
the deadline of 30 June 2005. We created a sort of history in the Indian banking industry on
15 June 2005 when 201 ATMs were launched on a single day at the hands of Honourable P.
A new chapter was written by our Bank in the Indian banking history by installing 330 ATMs
in just 60 working days and launching 201 ATMs on a single day. On an average, 5.5 ATMs
were installed per day. The successful completion of the Project Money Tree lifted the spirit
of the entire staff of BOB and created an electrified atmosphere in the Bank. Launching of
201 ATMs on a single day and its high profile inauguration by the finance minister received
wide coverage in the media. Enthused by this achievement, expansion of the ATM network
was further taken forward and by March 2008, the Bank had reached a Pan-India network of
over 1,100 ATMs. Success of the ATM project was a glowing tribute to the energy,
enthusiasm and resoluteness of our people who executed the project on strict timeliness. The
amazing speed with which the ATM project achieved its goal in spite of the bureaucratic
structures demonstrates that if employees are convinced that something is absolutely
necessary to protect the reputation of the organization and retain the customers, they would
walk many extra miles in fact, structural constraints are often used as a pretext for non-action.

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