Strategy 4 IT

South African Banks @ War

2012-03-29T03:23:00.000-07:00

It took a very long time for Standard Bank to re-look at their pricing strategy and amend it in accordance with what the South African Government has been driving –having lower bank fees. In October 2011 Deputy Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene said that the Government was in discussion with the banking sector to reduce transaction fees in order to foster savings according to Business Report.

However Standard Bank went about it in an unruly manner which backfired triple fold. Was it necessary to complain against FNB to the ASA? But more disappointing is the fact that FNB reverted back in the same manner by complaining against Standard Bank with regards to their new Pricing Strategy promising to save customers (such as myself and you) up to 50% on bank Fees from the month of April 2012.

The recent Twitter war that took place between FNB and Standard Bank was completely unnecessary and childish. Yes the competition is high and it does not help that two of the BIG Four Banks have been outdone by Captiec’s brilliant Zero Bank Fees Pricing Strategy.

Capitec’s Global One account was in 2011, the least expensive current account. This was followed by FNB according to the Solidarity Research Institute. The institute reported that Standard Bank and Absa were the most expensive of the five banks (ABSA, Capitec, FNB, Standard bank, Nedbank).

Having said the above, we wait in anticipation to see whether Standard Bank’s new pricing strategy will enable it to move from being one of the expensive banks to bank with; or closer to Capitec’s lower-transaction fee strategy. According to Peter Schlebusch, chief executive officer of Personal and Business Banking, the company plans to cut bank charges by about 500 million rand.

Great Speeches

2012-01-03T11:14:00.000-08:00

My Career, My Personality

2011-12-29T05:36:00.000-08:00

Ever wondered why some people are always so unhappy at their jobs? These individuals have all sorts of excuses such as: “Ï am not paid enough”, “My manager doesn’t like me”, “My work is boring”.

In an attempt to find more satisfaction, the individual would seek other employment opportunities, only to find themselves in the same scenario again. I would advise that instead of looking at the organisation as the problem, perhaps we should look at the career choice we have made.

For starters, I am an extrovert. I will be very miserable if I had to be paid to keep my mouth shut. Knowing your personality type helps in understanding weather the career choice you make are best for you. Sixty percent of our time in a day is spent doing work related tasks. This means that if we are unhappy about your career, you are generally a sad person, which leads to being unproductive employee.

Use the link below to determine your personality type and the type of work that will best suit you and share your thoughts. Is your career choice aligned with your personality type?

http://kisa.ca/personality/

Head-hunted Business Analyst Profile

2011-12-29T02:52:00.000-08:00

Everyone wants to be head-hunted and offered the best paying job. I would like to be in Kenny Kunene’s shoes and be known as the Queen of sushi. But not everyone gets a piece of the pie. The 80 – 20 rule still applies.

For those of us who just entered the career world or who would like to fast forward our career we still have hope. The following pillars will aid us in being top of the class in 2012

As a business analyst, it is imperative that all your stakeholders have confidence in you. This ensures that they trust your judgment and respect your recommendations. The only way to ensure such trust is to put your best foot forward by managing their expectation and by communication. Maintaining a consistence high quality of work throughout your career solidifies you as a credible business analyst.

Going the extra mile in ensuring that customers are satisfied by the services and products will always put you ahead of the pack. Remember the customers are our bread and butter. These individuals could be external to the organisation or internally, depending on who is paying for the service or product.

A R400K salary as a junior business analyst is everyone’s dream. Howvever no company is willing to give out such a huge amount of money before they see results. Be passionate about your work and the money will follow.

Operational agility is core to the success of your career. Collaborate with your colleques and engage with them in matters that you know will help in career. Become a team player and I can assure you that you will climb that ladder sooner than you think.

Business Analyst - Misguided role within organisations

2011-12-27T08:22:00.000-08:00

We are all familiar with the business analyst job description. The various job descriptions range from an individual who has a list of technical skills such as UML, BPMN, SQL etc. The individual must also have various soft skills such as communication skills, problem solving skills and the list goes on.

Often the BA role is used as an umbrella to fit any information science role or tasks that is imaginable. This means that the BA is often expected to manage project scope while preparing functionality prototypes and doing their core role of analysis. Other BA’s are expected to write and understand SQL in order to retrieve data and make recommendations. If this is one of the core responsibilities of a BA, then what is the role of a Data analyst?

On top of that, organisation looks to BA as people who should have answers to all the questions. This is a misguided expectation and it is one that leads to a lot of project failures and frustrations within the IT division. The BA is an individual who is responsible for making recommendations on what business has requested him/her. By no means must a business analyst make decisions on behalf of management or the project management and by no means must they be under the chopping board if there is scope creep.

FNB - the only secure website 4 online banking

2011-12-04T10:58:00.000-08:00

When entering the URL for any of the four major South African Banks (ABSA, Standard Bank, Nedbank and FNB), the only bank that has HTTPS in the URL is FNB. All the other banks use HTTP.

This is quite shocking, and it solidifies the belief that perhaps these banks do not care about their customers as much as they proclaim. Instead of moving forward, they are moving us backwards.

Online Banking Security @ Risk

2011-11-29T04:48:00.000-08:00

The growth for Online Banking within the South African market has been phenomenal. It was reported by Edwin Naidu that 2,4 million people were using online banking in the year 2008.

Amongst the four large banks (First National Bank, ABSA, Standard Bank and Nedbank); the South African consumers have continuously provided support and loyalty to these financial institutions without fully understanding the risks that they are exposing their money to when transacting on the internet.

However, little do consumers know that 2011 is a year where we saw the fall of internet security due to the following security breaches:

The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) was compromised by a prototype called BEAST as reported by Anup K. Ghosh

Jeff Hudson has reported that five Certificate Authorities (CA) were also compromised this year. These CA are as follows:

Stuxnet

Comodo

STratSSL

Diginotar

DuQu

The two-factor authentication used by RSA security was also compromised. This resulted in the loss of the secrets used to generate the one-time passwords

During the month of September 2011, the number of online fraud reached an all-time high of 38 970 attacks – South Africa is one of the top five countries in terms of phishing attack volumes, according to RSA, Monthly Fraud Report.

The diagram below shows that South Africa is the third highest country which is being targeted for online fraud:

So word of advice this festive season: Be careful who you bank with because you may be one of 38 970 phishing victims!!!