New Gulf mega bank signs IT deal

The Gulf's largest mega bank has signed a multimillion dollar IT change management deal, the first since Emirates Bank International and National Bank of Dubai joined forces in a US$11.3bn merger last week.

Emirates NBD, the newly formed UAE-based finance house and the largest of its kind in the UAE by assets, has signed a seven-year, multimillion dollar Enterprise Financial Management system deal with Satyam Computer Services to implement and service its back office systems.

Virender Aggarwal, director and senior vice president and head of Asia Pacific, Middle East, India and Africa at Satyam told Arabian Business that the deal was worth in the "high single millions".

"The system will help the bank consolidate all of its back office including all of its budgeting and planning structure, financial models, management information system, all of its merged services, property management model," he said.

"This will form the backbone of the bank but won't affect or deal with bank transactions," he added.

This is the first major deal Emirates NBD has signed since the new entity came into being last week and the largest ever deal for Satyam in the Middle East.

The first two years of the IT contract will focus on implementing the software and will bring in the large majority of Satyam's profit from the deal, Aggarwal said.

"The remaining five years will be dedicated to being on hand as technical support for the new bank.

"The first stage will be to implement the business blueprint and assess its system requirements," said Aggarwal. "The second will be to pilot the system among a small number of users in a conference room as we call it, the third to customise and tailor the solutions to the bank and the fourth to assess user acceptance, test the system and migrate it across the entire bank - this is a huge operation," he added.

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