LAHORE: Rejecting allegations of a local IT firm, the Bank of Punjab (BoP) management says it has selected Oracle, the No. 1 ranked core banking platform in the world.

A BoP statement issued here on Saturday says in 2011, the bank brought Dr Umar Saif, chairman Punjab IT Board and a renowned IT expert, to its board of directors in order to implement a transparent bidding process based on best practices for IT governance.

One of the key recommendations from PITB was to procure core banking on a turnkey basis (i.e. inclusive of all necessary hardware and software and on a total cost of ownership basis).

It says the RFP (issued in 2013) resulted in a single bid from Oracle with its local partner Techlogix. Although the PPRA rules specifically allow for a single bid to be accepted, the board decided to cancel the RFP to ensure healthy competition.

“To further ensure participation of multiple bidders, a meeting was held by the bank to which all prospective bidders were invited including AutoSoft Dynamics and other local vendors as well as international ones such as Oracle and Fidelity,” it reads.

The local vendors expressed their concern regarding the inclusion of hardware in the bidding process.

However, the meeting minutes have shown that the same vendors categorically stated that their solutions worked with all international hardware solutions such as IBM, Dell and Fujitsu.

On their request, a meeting allowed them to bid their solutions in foreign currency to procure the necessary imported hardware.

Having adopted a proactive stance in securing competition for their RFP, the bank issued the latest RFP in March 2014.

This RFP attracted a considerable interest from vendors including AutoSoft Dynamics who asked for two extensions in the RFP response time, both of which were granted. The bank obtained two bids in the latest RFP: from Oracle and Temenos.

“After a detailed technical evaluation and a demonstration of the proposed systems and opening of bids, the Oracle solution was found to be priced lower by almost 30 per cent,” it said.

The statement said after the bank’s IT Steering Committee placed its recommendation to the BoD, a disgruntled local vendor, AutoSoft Dynamics, sent a lengthy letter of allegations to the board. But later these were found as wrong and baseless.

Published in Dawn, December 28th, 2014