The FINANCIAL — Alta Software is growing, expanding and continuously offering core banking programs that are used in banks for managing loans, deposits, transactions, money transfers, and accounting.
After 20 years of successful operations in Georgia Alta Software is proud to be the market leader, providing the core banking systems to 70 percent of banks operating in the country.
Now the company management believes it is time to conquer other markets and bring the high quality service of Alta Software to new markets.
“Expansion is our main priority. Over the years our team has accumulated knowledge that could be used in different areas. We do not want to be limited to one sector or one region. We can export our product in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), we can become international players and we will definitely become one,” said the Director of Alta Software Grigol Nikolaishvili.
“Of course we realise we will have a lot of obstacles and difficulties on this journey but we have managed to get through much tougher challenges, and will handle this one as well,” he added.
The mid-term strategy of Alta Software includes six main objectives:
1. Expand product offering to the banking sector & increase sales;
2. Grow market share in the microfinance sector;
3. Upgrade & promote multichannel solutions;
4. Become leading player in the region;
5. Increase brand awareness;
6. Improve customer experience & loyalty.
Alta Software was established 20 years ago in 1996 and started active actions on the core banking system market. Currently Alta Software is an absolute leader of Core Banking Systems (CBS) development in Georgia. 70 percent of banks operate with its CBS; 80 percent of banks use one or more of Alta Software services. There are only three banks in the country which are not using our services.
After entering the microfinance sector in 2007 the company has gained more than 25 percent of the market.
“In recent years the microfinance market became a strategic direction and we are planning to increase our market share dramatically offering them cloud solutions in combination with an on-shelf BI package.
Currently 35 percent of Georgian banks already use our BI services and we plan to double this number by the end of 2016,” Nikolaishvili said.
As for the financial figures, Alta Software enjoys a stable source of revenue, in 2014 revenue increased by 28.5 percent. Due to an “unnatural increase” in staff numbers profit decreased in 2014 by 13.9 percent. Total assets are GEL 1,980,000 which is “quite high for an IT company of our scope”. The main asset is the company’s head office building, which is in the company’s ownership.
Alta Software currently offers the following services:
Business Intelligence – Reporting to management and shareholders; financial analysis; reporting to NBG; actual results versus budget results; daily monitoring of a company’s performance; market analysis. The product name is Jarvis which is an abbreviation of “Just a rather very intelligent system.”
E-Banking – Internet banking; mobile banking. Your own branch at home, in your pocket.
Cloud – We started offering our clients SaaS (Software as a Service). Now they don’t have to make an initial investment in licenses or IT infrastructure, we offer all these services for minimal cost. Anybody can start a microfinance organization and not worry about IT or software at all. The product name is “Ciel” which means “Sky” in French.
Alta Software is the proud winner of the most influential business award – Golden Brand.
“It is the first time for Alta Software to win this honourable business award despite the fact that we have been operating on the software development market for about 20 years. We are extremely glad to be the winner of the nomination Software – Golden Brand 2015. We are operating on the B2B market where there are several values that are fundamental: high quality, low cost, non-stop innovation, tailor-fit customisation, customer care. Alta Software is dedicated to these values, we care about our clients, we develop our products, we develop the ways we provide these products and we develop ways we support these products,” Nikolaishvili said.
Q. Could you please summarise the start of 2016?
A. Our clients see very clearly the benefits our products can provide and try to catch up with new products. This year we will be oriented on transition from our old systems to new generation products that are more flexible, more powerful and more advanced in terms of technology.
We are also looking very actively at other opportunities on the market. We plan to widen our spectre and enter new markets in terms of business sectors as well as other countries with our core banking solution.
Of course in parallel we are designing new products and structure our internal processes in such a way that will make our clients feel more comfortable, more stable and decrease necessary efforts to use our software. This year will also be the year for increasing penetration on e-banking and business intelligence markets with our brand new solutions.
Q. Almost every leading bank in Georgia is your client. All your customers are competitors of each other. Isn’t it challenging for you to provide service to banks which are in strong competition with one another?
A. Of course there are some challenges. All the banks have different processes, different specifics and we have to make our software extremely flexible to fit their needs. All of them have very strict requirements regarding security and customer information confidentiality, different products, different accounting and reporting needs.
Yes, there are challenges, but the fact that we can handle all of these issues gave us the chance to be named the best software development company in the country.
Q. Which bank has the most developed software? Which bank most avidly follows the innovations you offer them?
A. All the banks that are using our software have a high standard of process automatisation and all the innovations that we launch with our new versions are available to them, but it is mostly the larger banks that are the ones who have the resources to invest in new ambitious projects because they have large numbers of customers and can cover the costs more easily.
But all of the banks are open for partnership and innovations, we all know that the banking sector is very well developed in Georgia and all the banks have very qualified management who realise the benefits of improvement, development and innovation.
Q. Which are the innovations that Alta Software has introduced?
A. Our core business is development and implementation of Core Banking Systems (CBS). The main purpose of CBS is to help banks design and manage all banking products like: loans, deposits, saving accounts, FX conversions, transfers, money transfers. The purpose is to automate as many processes as possible to minimize risks, cut costs and increase efficiency. As for new products, we launched a new multichannel platform (online and mobile banking solutions), we launched new business intelligence and reporting solutions (management information system plus National Bank of Georgia regulatory reporting), currently we are working to totally automate treasury operations starting from integrations with Bloomberg trading platforms ending with accounting and reporting.
Q. Who are your clients and how is the number of your clients increasing year-on-year?
A. As I have already mentioned, the majority of leading banks in Georgia are our clients. Besides them, we have 20 microfinance organisations.
Finca Bank became our client in 2015 and several microfinance organisations became our clients using our cloud solutions. SOCAR Georgia Gas became our client. We created a brand new billing system for the company from scratch.
2015 was quite a productive year, we hope all upcoming years will be no less productive and rewarding.
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