Oracle forms alliance with EBZ Online

NEW DELHI: Enterprise software company Oracle India on Thursday announced an alliance with EBZ Online to offer back office solutions to co-operative banks in India.

Under the initiative — which will target community banks, credit unions, urban and rural co-operative and agricultural banks, amongst others — Oracle would also set up a centre of excellence to sharpen focus on the co-operative banking space.

“Oracle and EBZ Online have created a solution framework that will address the core needs of co-operative banks, enabling them to enhance operational efficiency while reducing costs.

The Oracle-EBZ online solution framework will help consolidate financial accounting, enable better asset deployment and management and ease the procurement process,” Oracle India managing director Krishan Dhawan said at a press conference.

There are currently 387 district cooperative banks in India reaching out to an estimated 200 million people engaged in the agriculture sector, members of cooperative housing schemes, beneficiaries of government grants and relief.

The solution would allow co-operative banks to consolidate their transactions on a daily basis, a function that was so far difficult given the operations model of these banks, their geographical spread and low IT penetration.

EBZ Online has an customer base of 50 co-operative banks, which run BankEasy, the company’s front-office branch automation solution. As a result of this new initiative with Oracle, EBZ Online will now implement Oracle Applications at these banks in a bid to provide effective integrated information systems.

“We will enter into a dialogue with these customers to scale up. EBZ Online is currently implementing Oracle Applications at Pune District Central Co-operative bank as part of their head office project. This implementation is targeted at automating the bank’s entire back office processes,” Mandar Agashe, managing director EBZ Online said.