Johannesburg – South Africa, 11th June 2015:This forum was opened with the opening remarks from the event chairman, Pritesh Kotecha, SVP – Middle East, Turkey, Africa & South Asia - SmartStream, followed by a formal introductory speed networking session where participants introduced and interact with each other and know fellow participants.

Roland Brandli, Sales Manager, Middle East & Africa - SmartStream,demonstrated on an Outlook for Operational Excellence in Africa, by highlighting ROI budgeting process providing a glimpse of high ROI solutions implemented by banks across Africa during 2014.

The ANNUAL COO PANEL, entitled as “Bridging the Gap by applying reforms within the Operational Excellence Strategy ”, focused on the strive to improve process flow to enhance efficiency across operations. The panel elaborated on solutions to manage transformation, cost and balance policies/procedures with service excellence, while answers to
• How can operations create value for the customer, while tackling technology and fraud issues?
• How to harness latest technology to support customers and process re-engineering?
• Repositioning Target Operating Model and picking up the right tools, techniques and metrics to deliver an acclaimed operation management system

This panel was joined by Vallance Kennelly, Group Chief Operating Officer - African Alliance Investment Bank; Simryn de Jager, Chief Operating Officer: TPS Africa & Global Sales - Standard Bank; Thomas Gachie, Director, Operations - National Bank of Kenya, and moderated by Pritesh Kotecha.

Beverley Hunkin, Head of Process and Strategic Projects - First National Bank, in his presentation -BPM 3.0 – Bringing Data and BPM Together, focused on effective use of event-enabled processing and services-oriented architectures, while achieving world class operations were explained by Thomas Gachie, Director: Operations - National Bank of Kenya. Dr. Ismail Ali, Director: Sales Channels at ITS, in his presentation - "Process Improvement in Technology Operations", highlighted on methodologies to implement bank-wide process automation and enhanced transactional efficiency.

Pritesh Kotecha, the event chairman acted as the head facilitator, for the Focused Roundtable Group Discussion, which emphasized on:
• Making BPM success happen: Aligning your strategic objectives with your business’ tactical demands
• Managing the risks associated with change management (and anticipating change better)
• Lean Design Thinking: Applying Lean Techniques with a Customer Centric Approach

Smartstream partnered at the event as the Platinum Sponsor while ITS Global Financial Solutions was on board as the Gold Sponsor. Embodied with deep industry knowledge the sponsors provided solutions and services and helped to pave a path for securing optimum level of operational excellence for the African financial service sector.

Post lunch the first session was addressed by Tebogo Molapisane, Chief Executive Officer - BPESA, where he shared insights on a winning formula for developing globally competitive customer service offering, followed by a session on process improvement management with a focus on building efficiencies in post-trade processing by Brett Kotze, Head of Operations- Clearing & Settlement at JSE Limited.

The first day of the event concluded with an interactive panel discussion on “Process Integration for Customer Management: Transforming Business Results.” Moderated by Pritesh Kotecha, the panelists for this session included Brian Boby, Head of Business Process Management - National Bank of Malawi; Josephine Jabangwe, General Manager – Operations at CABS and Syed Umer Adil Madani, Head of Retail Operations - Bank of Khartoum.

Today, is the second day two of the conference, which featured key sessions such as the panel discussion on How do you improve Cross-Border Operational Capabilities? and Why is Business Process Management critical for Organizations today?

Fábio Leo Vitoriano Santos, Deputy Head of Information Systems – Organization Department - Banco Económico, conducted a case study on Achieving Operational Excellence – Angola Case Study, while implementing an End-to-End Quality Management System to Boost ROI, lower costs and improve customer experience was explained by Larry Borowitz, Deputy General Manager, Health Intelligence- Discovery Health.Jero A. Omare-Ogah, CEO - Fortis Microfinance Bank Plc, informed the audience about maximizing business productivity through exceptional operational performance

This two day conference delivered highly informative, interactive brainstorming and knowledge sharing along with exclusive networking.