In an exclusive interview with Biztech 2.0, Sarabjeet Anand, Head IT for India, GSSC & Nepal, Standard Chartered Bank, speaks about the challenges in setting up a Disaster Recovery Site, Core-Banking and the bank’s latest IT initiative.

What are the essentials that a business should keep in mind before setting up a Core Banking Solution (CBS)?

There are two aspects to setting up a CBS. The first would be the setting up of a new CBS, and the second would pertain to setting up a secondary CBS, or replacing the existing CBS with another.

If a business chooses to do the former, then it must have a fair idea about its different products and services, growth plans, plans for the next three years, and so on, so that this knowledge can be used in the planning of the Core Banking Solution (CBS). Once a business plan is made, research must be done on the solutions available in the market, and then the right one must be opted for, for the organisation.

In the latter case, which involves changing or replacing banking solutions, the foremost thing that must be done is ‘Functionality Mapping’ with the business. Once a business is aware of the functionality gaps, the next step would be to look at bridging these gaps, as a part of the developmental efforts. A business’ needs and aspirations play a major role in the developmental phase, after which the test cycles are put in to action.

What are the challenges in setting up a Disaster Recovery Solution (DRS)?

Before setting up a DRS solution, a business must focus on gathering as much knowledge as possible from a business perspective, as sometimes, adequate information is not available. If a business engages and communicates in the right manner, and builds a right urgency level, then it can definitely overcome this challenge.

While gaining knowledge is important, analysing the criticality level is also as important. This would include determining, which applications are needed and what the recovery time objective of the business is. Once all of this is clearly defined, applications should listed out priority wise, in order to set up the DRS in a more efficient manner, which invariably increases chances of success of the solution.

What are the measures that must be taken, to make the DRS more robust?

Robustness in any solution comes from testing. A business would be able to set up the perfect DRS, if the needs and the criticality of the business have been understood, thus resulting in having a solution that is in accordance with the needs of the business.

However, just doing that is not enough. Regularly testing the solution, at least once in six months or quarterly is important, depending on the needs or regulatory requirements of the business. This would result in valuable learning, and continuously improving the solution, which is the key to success.

Your comments on Off-shoring of Disaster Recovery Sites

We have off shored our entire data centre, to which is linked our DR site, in the same country. What matters is not off-shoring or on shoring, but what the Business Continuity Management plan is and how it suffices the needs. What must be kept in mind is that, the country to which the off shoring has been done is of no consequence, as long as it fulfills the needs.

Can you share the most recent IT initiatives of Standard Chartered bank?

The most recent initiative that Standard Chartered has taken is the launch of two new products. The first product includes services that enable transactions being done using PDA devices for our wholesale banking customers.

Our second initiative is the setting up of Kiosks, which can be rolled out either in remote areas, allowing customers to transact using them, or the other alternative could be, to set up the kiosks at our customer base itself for more convenience. The key thing that we believe in is not inventing technology, but using existing technology to launch new business initiatives.