(MENAFN Press) Dubai, UAE, 19 November 2012:
The 8th Annual OPEX 2012 - The Financial COO Event of the Year has been officially inaugurated today. The forum provides a platform where COOs, CIOs, banking operation personnels and operation specialists determine the importance of achieving operational excellence across all banking processes.
This forum was opened by the event chairman, Javed Abbasi, Founder and Managing Director of GISBA Group. Javed Abbasi will later be presenting on how COOs can leverage the best practises of ISO certified manage systems.
The keynote speech was delivered by Christopher Taylor, Chief Operating Officer - Abu Dhabi Finance PJSC, where he emphasised on the implication of changing operational excellence and technology by understanding a simple framework to help business leaders handle change. According to Taylor, " It is important to define what an "optimum" output level is for your company by linking it to pragmatic strategic planning. This is an exercise that is typically disconnected from reality and is a broad in depth topic on its own, but, once a realistic plan is in place it can materialise to optimum resource utilisation both from a headcount and capex angle."
Following the key note, the exclusive COO panel discussion commenced which outlined the future of banking operations.
The COO Panel was the most anticipated session of the first day of the forum and was moderated by Syed Haider Mehdi, President / Chief Executive Officer of Management Excellence.
The seven panellists featured in this discussion were COOs like Christopher Taylor of Abu Dhabi Finance PJSC, Amgad Younes of Barwa Bank, Abdullah N. Al Eisa of Jadwa Investment Company, Kamal Saade of NATIXIS, Adam Malouf of Saffar Capital, Yasir Murad of Credit Suisse and Hisham Hammoud, Past Chief Operating Officer of Dubai Bank.
The importance of shifting from a procedure based operating model to a process based operating model was explained by Abdullah N. Al Eisa, Chief Operating Ofcer of Jadwa Investment Company. In his presentation he further explain why process mapping approach is best suited for commercial banks and elaborated on the roadmap for successful process mapping through best practises and learnings, he also stressed upon process outsourcing.
Pierre Nader, Senior Director, Head of Process Excellence & TQM of du Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company PJSC focused his presentation, focused on integration of process improvement and innovation by managing necessary opposites where he highlighted the importance of bringing process continuous improvement and innovation.
During the second half of the day, a dedicated session on achieving operation excellence in handling customer service requests will be addressed by VERiPARK, represented by their general manager, Ozkan Erener. VERiPARK are the Premium Silver Sponsors for the conference. The presentation will focus on capturing customer service requests from various channels and then routing them to back office for fulfillment within the committed SLA.
The first day of the conference concluded with a panel discussion entitled, "Getting the right Processes and Systems
in place to achieve operational excellence in Islamic Banking", where prominent Islamic banking professionals from the operations and Shari'ah background shared insights on various accountabilities into delivering a Shari'ah compliant banking system. This panel was joined by Mian Mohammed Nazir, Senior Vice President and Head of Legal from Dar Al Sharia; Mohamed Roushdy, Chief Executive Ofcer of Bank Nizwa; Javed Abbasi, Founder and Managing Director of GISBA Group; and moderated by Moinuddin Malim, Chief Executive Ofcer at Mashreq Al Islami.
Tomorrow, day two of the conference, will begin with a presentation entitled, "Creating a Lean Culture across Customer Channels," by Stuart Pugh, Executive Vice President and Head of Operations: Group Business Services from Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank. The presentation will focus on developing strategic frameworks beyond short and medium term operational and productivity goals co-presented by two other representatives from ADCB - Siddiqa Abbas, Senior Vice President, Head of Consumer Banking Operations and Ahmed Said, Assistant Vice President Head of Payments.
Achieving operational excellence through automated reconciliation will be discussed by Roland Brandli, Sales Manager: Middle East & Africa of SmartStream Technologies, who are the Silver Sponsors of this conference. In his presentation he will elaborate on maximizing return on investment in the shortest time by building the business case for a centralized reconciliation factory.
The other sessions will include presentations from Banque Misr, Boubyan Bank, Mashreq, Bank Audi and many more.
The 8th Annual OPEX 2012 - The Financial COO Event of the Year is supported by CNBC Arabia as the Official Arabic Broadcasting Partner. The forum features case studies, panel discussions and presentations outlining financial fraud, continuous process improvement, delivering quality service to customers, cost cutting and business efficiency.
http://www.fleminggulf.com/conferenceview/OPEX-2012---The-Financial-COO-Event-of-the-Year/344
