It was a welcome development that Bank PHB recently repositioned itself by way of deploying Temenost24, a banking application and Oracle Database application to boost its services nationwide.

Chief Executive Officer, Bank PHB Plc, Mr. Francis Atuche, who disclosed this in Lagos, said that the deployment was being executed painstaking to ensure continuous better service to the customers.

According to him, central to this deployment, has been the development of its workforce, who are well trained and groomed in the orientation that the customer is the heart of Bank PHB business.

Atuche also said that the deployment was elucidated by growing network of branches which is now in excess of 180 nationwide.

He recalled that in September 2007, Bank PHB began the search for the kind of technology that would deliver on its mission and vision, culminating in the selection of the best technologies to support its business into the future.

"The appropriate technology fits were Temenost24 banking application from Temenos, a Swiss based company and listed on the SwissStock market and Oracle database running on IBM hardware," he said.

Mr. Atuche further said that the deployment would offer Bank PHB customers seamless, straight-through processing of as many transactions as possible to ensure that the bank delivers on flexibility and prompt response.

"Our expected transactions processing rate will be unprecedented in sub-Saharan Africa and will remain unmatched for a long time to come," he declared.

Although the bank commenced deployment on Monday, November 3, this year, with efforts focused on ensuring a seamless and hitch-free transition, which never was, as customers were practically taken aback to the old days for over a week after the deployment began.

Hence, its customers were not able to access their accounts even with the Automated Teller Machine (ATM) cards.

This, industry observers said that the inability to access customers account from the bank during the supposed transition was uncalled for because if well planned and streamlined, the deployment could still take place without customers feeling it in the first instance.

Therefore, it seems that the bank though on the right lane, did not do its homework well, because since the consolidation of the banking sector, this disruption seems to be the first because one of the banks has to deploy any software to better its service.

Probably, Bank PHB should have done better and manage the situation without necessarily disrupting its services.

The fear now is that if this kind of disrupt could occur at deployment, what happens when there is a breakdown due to system error or corruption.

May be a better homework needed to be done to avert this by understudying the kind of software solution on offer.