CLIENT SUCCESS STORIES

The Customer - CRANE BANK, UGANDA
Crane Bank, carries repute as Uganda's most aggressive retail banks and is part of the Ruparelia Group in Uganda, which is one of the most widely diversified business enterprises with interests in Banking, Insurance, Real estate, Hospitality, Media, Horticulture and Education. The customer ran one of the country's most popular lotteries a few years ago.

The Challenge
Technological advances in the de-regulated telecommunication sector in Uganda, spurred business growth in the medium segment of the market. The banking industry quickly re-aligned their operations to target this segment with attractive low cost retail products and thereby exploring cheaper, faster delivery channels. While keenly pursuing the deployment of ATM solutions in response to this strategy, Crane Bank was concerned with the monopolistic tendencies that a single duopoly NCR-CR2 were imposing on the banking sector, resulting in Huge TCO - upfront and recurring maintenance costs, lengthy implementation and delays in service delivery without the ability in implementing product and service differentiators that a large investment on projects of this nature would demand.

The Solution
In keeping with the bank's tradition in leading the market in delivery of innovative solutions, Crane Bank aggressively launched their Crane Access product. The bank had acquired 10 NCR ATMs early in the year and experienced tremendous success almost immediately, with growth in depositor accounts and volumes. This stimulated the need to broaden their ATM Network throughout the country.

The EFT switch deployed was the proprietary CR2 solution which presented numerous technical challenges in enabling the bank roll-out innovative products on time. In cognisance with the above challenges, Crane Bank approached the ComputerPoint Kenya group's Uganda subsidiary Technology Associates who presented a world class solution comprising Wincor Nixdorf's ProCash 2150 full function ATMs. So impressed was the bank with the quality of the product's functionality and more keenly the attractiveness surrounding the investment that they decided to broaden their investment to 20 units (from an earlier need of 5 units) in an even more aggressive deployment program covering high volume real estate sites in Kampala, Jinja and Entebbe.

CraneAccess at Crane Forex Bureau Outlet Side View located on junction of Entebbe road & Kampala Road, Kampala, Uganda. And Crane Forex Bureau Outlet Front View

CraneAccess Outlet at a Kobil Petrol Station and CraneAccess Outlet at Kisementi Shopping square, Kololo

CraneAccess at the impressive Garden City complex entrance – “complex View” and CraneAccess Outlet at the Garden City complex entrance – “Front View”

CraneAccess Outlet at Crane Chambers - Crane Bank Head Quarters with Two Procash 2150 Full-function ATMs and CraneAccess Outlet at Crane Chambers - Inside view

At the time of signing, this was the largest single ATM deal in the country. "Due to the tremendous success of our new product, Crane Access, and in order to expand our ATM network in Uganda, we have signed an order for 20 ATM's at one go. By mid 2003, Crane Bank will have the largest ATM network in the country," said Sudhir Ruparelia the founder of Crane Bank.

The next phase of the bank's self service project initiative will include the deployment of the country's first largest EFT POS network. The Banker awarded Crane Bank the Uganda country award for FY 2003. The ComputerPoint Kenya group is extremely proud to be associated with East Africa’s most coveted Bank and has an interesting success described below with yet another previous year winner....