Oracle has announced that NSITF has chosen a comprehensive suite of products and technology from Oracle as the foundation for the trust fund’s transformation to the leading social security institution in Africa. Following a thorough evaluation process, Oracle was found to be uniquely positioned to deliver complete solutions with vertical and horizontal applications, middleware, database, operating system, virtualization, servers, storage and management.
Furthermore, Oracle has solutions targeted directly at the specific challenges faced by social security organizations, which will allow the fund to put contributors (clients) at the center of the NSITF business operation. The result will be improved contributor outcomes, the ability to target services efficiently, integrate service providers in to the system more effectively, and increase the efficiency of the operation as a whole.
The project to put a modern infrastructure in place to provide social security benefits to the aged, the unemployed, child welfare recipients and the physically challenged, started with an exploratory phase in 2014 and the implementation is expected to run through 2016 in phased approach.
Following the results-oriented Oracle Unified Method (OUM) for efficient and rapid implementation, the organization also developed agency-specific learning modules in conjunction with Oracle University.
A project of this size needs to be rolled out in a phased manner to ensure all the components are efficiently implemented and the business processes followed as per the initial requirements. The NSITF followed the Oracle Unified Method (OUM) for the installation, which provides an implementation approach that is rapid, broadly adaptive, and business focused to quickly achieve measurable business results. Using this approach, the NSITF decided on the following phases using a large variety of Oracle products spanning Financials, Customer Experience, Human Capital Management, Payroll, Business Intelligence and Analytics, Content Management, Database and Service Oriented Architecture.
• Phase 1-A: Collect contributions and automate benefits management processes.
• Phase 1-B: Automate human resource management, Health, Safety and Environment Dept. (HSE) and document management.
• Phase 2: Expansion phase – increasing service management. This phase saw the expansion of the installed applications across the fund and training users to efficiently use them.
• Phase 3: Back office for operational efficiency.
To ensure all NSITF employees are able to make the most of the new system, the fund has developed learning modules in conjunction with Oracle University, created specifically for the fund to enable its users have a personalized view of the system rather than a generic view. Core skills are focused around implementation, troubleshooting and support of the delivered solutions. The delivery method is hands-on instructor led and the curricula are created as an output from the delivered solutions and modules. All training materials have been specifically created for NSITF.
Oracle has played an important role by agreeing to be a member of the NSITF Innovative Advisory Board for the project. Senior management and executives of Oracle periodically pay NSITF leaders a courtesy visits to keep tabs on the Oracle partner implementing the project and also gauge the pulse of NSITF management on the overall direction of the project.
The infrastructure project is still underway and scheduled for completion in 2016, however, the NSITF leadership has already seen positive results. The business rules and processes that were incorporated into the software solution from the start have already changed the way things are done in NSITF. The technology deployed has been designed to world-class standards and achieved an ISO 27001:2013 certification for Information Security. This certification requires that audits be carried out periodically to see whether management commitments on standards are still being enforced in the organization and assures continuous improvement.
Umar Munir Abubakar, Managing Director and Chief Executive of the NSITF, explains, “The goal of the NSITF is to be the leading social security institution in Africa, setting the agenda for change, social policy, economic empowerment and poverty alleviation in Nigeria.”
“Oracle is well positioned to assist in national projects like the NSITF rollout because we offer the whole technology stack, including software and hardware, already integrated for quick and seamless installation,” says Country Managing Director of Oracle Nigeria, Mr. Adebayo Sanni.
