MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS

PROJECT REPORT
ON
MUSLIM COMMERCIAL BANK
 PREPARED BY:
Mehreen Raza (419.06)
Quratulain Riaz (146.06)

SUBMITTED TO:
Ms. Nida Mumtaz

DATE OF SUBMISSION:
27-april-2009
 INTRODUCTION TO THE BANK
MCB formally known asMuslim Commercial Bank Limited was incorporated by
the Adamjee Group on July 9, 1947. The bank was established with a view to provide
banking facilities to the business community of the sub-continent. The bank was
nationalized in 1974 during the government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.This was the first bank
to privatized in 1991 and the bank was purchased by a consortium of distinguished
Pakistani corporate groups led by Nishat Group. As of June 2008, the Nishat Group owns a
majority stake in the bank. During the last fifteen years, the Bank has concentrated on
growth through improving service quality, investment in technology and people.

In 2005, the management of the bank changed its name from Muslim Commercial
Bank Limited to MCB Bank Limited (MCB). The reason was to explore international
markets for the bank as it was facing resistance, especially from Western Countries to avail
a license, which partly had something to do with the banks name. Later, MCB became the
fourth Pakistani company to be listed on the London Stock Exchange.

MCB is one of the leading banks of Pakistan with a deposit base of about Rs. 280
billion and total assets of around Rs.300 billion. Incorporated in 1947, MCB soon earned
the reputation of a solid and conservative financial institution managed by expatriate
executives. In 1974, MCB was nationalized along with all other private sector banks.

The Bank has a customer base of approximately 4 million and a nationwide

distribution network of 1,026 branches, including 8 Islamic banking branches, and over
300 ATMs, in a market with a population of 60 million.

During the last fifteen years, the Bank has concentrated on growth through
improving service quality, investment in technology and people, utilizing its extensive
branch network, developing a large and stable deposit base.

THE VISION AND MISSION STATEMENT

Vision statement:
Challenging and changing the way You bank

Mission statement:
MCB bank’s team, of committed professionals is dedicated to maintaining long-term
customer relationships through outstanding service and conveniance
 VALUES OF MCB

Trust
We are the trustees of public funds and serve with integrity & commitment. Ethical behavior
is of critical importance to us. We adopt full compliance with internal and external policies
and procedures, operating within the legal framework

Customer Focus
We continuously seek to exceed our customer’s expectations, forging and maintaining long
term relationships

Innovation
We strive to be the market leaders in innovative products and services offering customized
financial solutions with flawless execution

Teamwork
The diversity of our people is our strength. We inspire and challenge each other – working
together to achieve synergy

Achievement
Our people are our most valuable asset. We are committed to a result oriented culture. Our
goals are clear and merit is the only criterion for reward

Social Responsibility
As responsible citizens we contribute to the social welfare of the community we live in
THE FINANCIAL CONTROL DEPARTMENT

A financial control department makes sure that all financial transactions comply
with state laws, rules, and regulations. This Department is responsible for centrally
processing and recording the transactions. This department also ensures that enough funds
are available before the bank engages in a commitment. This department is also
responsible for generation the annual reports in compliance with the company’s ordinance
1984.

The Financial control department uses the Oracle GL as its information system that
our group has selected as a part of our assignment for the Management Information System
(MIS) course. Oracle GL is a product of the Oracle E-Business Suite which the
organization has acquired as its platform for managing its business transactions and
maintaining records. Oracle General Ledger works seamlessly with other Oracle E-
Business Suite products to drive better decision-making, sustainable financial discipline,
regulatory compliance, and optimized business processes.

These are what some elements of the Oracle General Ledger look like (sources:
http://www.virginia.edu/integratedsystem/howdoi/HTML/NAV3018U.htm )
THE PREVIOUS SYSTEM AND THE COMPANY’S
NEED FOR A NEW SYSTEM

The Financial Control Department before switching over to Oracle E-Business Suite’s
Oracle GL system used an in-house developed system called “Financial Control System”.
This was implemented so as to meet the business needs of the company at that time,
however as the company expanded and it’s branches increased at a phenomenal rate and it
started to offer new services, the Financial Control System could no longer meet the
complex needs of the department. Apart from this, there were the usual system break
downs which resulted in increased cost (time cost because it required some time to repair
the system and monetary cost because it required having separate personnel for training
new employees).A need was felt that a new system had to be brought in to the department
that would integrate smoothly with the organization and the departments information
management needs and at the same time also be reliable. Therefore, after a period of
searching and evaluating various information systems, the company bought a new
information system, the “Oracle Financial Suite” and one of the elements of this financial
suite was Oracle GL which was perfectly suited for the Financial Control Departments
requirements. This system was adopted by the organization because it allowed the
company to cope with its changing requirements and this software gave the company
several options that were not previously available in the previous system. This system also
enables the organization to better organize its operations than before. The biggest
advantage of this system over the previous one was that it is compatible with other
elements of the Oracle Financial Suite, hence the work done in other departments can be
smoothly integrated with Financial Control Departments tasks and vice versa.
 BENEFITS OF “ORACLE GL” TO THE
ORGANIZATION/DEPARTMENT/END USERS AND ITS
SALIENT FEATURES

The Oracle GL provides to its end users a friendly interface and hence the end user does
not require specialized training to operate this system (The end users can know how to user
this system with minimum of training.)This system enables the department to generate
accounting reports according the accounting standards of Pakistan and according to the
specific requirements of the bank. The system makes it easy to customize reports the way
they are needed which helps the bank and the department adjust to any procedural or any
other changes that may need to be implemented. For example if there are any changes in
accounting laws or procedures that the bank may need to implement, the system easily
facilitates that. This system also has the capability to fulfill most of the requests of the end
users by default. The Oracle GL provides high Data Integrity by making sure that the data
that is saved will be available for future use and will not have any errors. Data retrieval or
data recovery is also made easy by the system and the end users of the system are saved
from spending too much time or effort in trying to recover data that may normally be hard
to find in other systems. It also reduces the occurrence of a system failure to almost ZERO
(according to the person we interviewed) as there hardly are any cases of system crashes or
any other issues with the system. It also has a Relational Database Management System
that stores data in the form of related tables.

Relational databases are powerful database management systems because they require few
assumptions about how data is related or how it will be extracted from the database. As a
result, the same database can be viewed in many different ways. (Sources:
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/R/RDBMS.html).
 INFORMATION PROVIDED BY THE SYSTEM

This system enables the department in making General Ledgers for the bank, completing
its transactions, maintaining accounts and balances of the bank and its customers and with
the help of that it helps the department to balance the accounts and generate Financial
Statements (the MCB generates the following financial statements with the help of this
system: Balance Sheet; Profit and Loss account; Cash Flow statement and Statement of
Changes in Equity). The system then saves and documents all these reports and financial
statements into its database for future use and referencing.

This information is not only useful for preparing reports and financial statements for the
bank but is also used in times such as making audit reports, company reports, etc.

END USERS OF THE SYSTEM AND THE

DEPARTMENT IT CATERS TO
Since Oracle GL is a financial software system designed to for an organization’s financial
needs and caters to an organization like MCB’s financial needs. Its end users will be people
related to finance. In this case, employees in MCB’s Financial Control Division are the
end users of the system. All the employees in this department have been properly trained to
use this system. The system itself has also been highly customized to suit all the needs of
the department and meet its requirements in an efficient and cost effective manner.
 TRAINING OF THE END USERS
- The training involved people from Oracle visiting the organization which was the MCB
head office. These sessions were held at MCB only due to the fact that they could
accommodate space for the sessions, and hence theses sessions were not held outside the
organization as is usually the case with other organizations.
- The training sessions resembled much like the classroom format. Attendants were given
classroom like training lessons regarding the system. They were given books and CDs for
studying at home too.
- Since the system is meant for only the finance department, only people with financial and
accounting expertise could attend these sessions. They were, however, accompanied by
technical consultants, functional implementers, and Database Administrators (IT
personnel).
- While these sessions were going on, the attendants were not assigned with any work.
Coming to the organization, they would directly go to these sessions and not to work.
- In this course, attendants learned the basics regarding the table functionality of the core
Oracle General Ledger. This course also taught the Applications Basics and centered on
how to use the basic Applications tools to find information, as well as describe concurrent
processing, flex fields, alerts, and Oracle Workflow Builder. Attendants learned how to
read and understand Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERDs), and Oracle Applications'
Applications Technology ERDs.
- This course will also address the standards for using these interfaces.
• Basic technical functionality of the core Financials applications
• Technical overview of Oracle General Ledger.
• Customers, and Assets
• Major business functions associated with the financial applications
• Flow of application information through major tables

- The objectives of the sessions were the following

• Describing the Oracle General Ledger
• Identifying the primary business functions that can be performed using each
Oracle Financials application
• Describing the Oracle Financials applications integration and data flow among
applications
• Over viewing the default account sources, multi-organization architecture, and
the use of Multiple Reporting Currencies

- Lastly, the attendants were made familiar with the following:

• Major business functions of Oracle General Ledger
• Oracle General Ledger entity relationship diagrams related to its major
functions
• Major tables by business function
- The attendants returned as soon as the training sessions ended, ready to carry out their
tasks with the new system.
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS OF THE INFORMATION
SYSTEM
Hardware – HP Blade Server

Software – Oracle e-Business Suite R12

Operating System – Linux Environment

Input – Financial data

Output – financial statements like ledgers, balance sheet etc.

Processing – Batch processing

Storage – both Hot-sites and Cold-sites (to be discussed later in the report)
 SECURITY OF THE SYSTEM
Security covers
- User authenticity:
As mentioned earlier, the system is restricted for use by the financial personnel, therefore
only people from the Financial Control department. Also, since its use is only finance
specific, others departments have nothing to do with it.
Having said that, there are passwords for the end users; hence passwords ensure security
and control.

- Physical access:
Physical access is made limited by locked server rooms, sign-in sheets, etc.

- Function security:
• Developers Register Functions
o Developers can require parts of their Oracle Forms code to look up a
unique function name, and then take some action based on whether the
function is available in the current responsibility.
o Developers register functions. They can also register parameters that pass
values to a function. For example, a form may support data entry only when
a function parameter is passed to it.
o Typically, developers define a menu including all the functions available in
an application (i.e., all the forms and their securable sub functions). For
some applications, developers may define additional menus that restrict the
application's functionality by omitting specific forms and sub functions.
o When developers define menus of functions, they typically group the sub
functions of a form on a sub function menu they associate with the form.

• System Administrators Exclude Functions

o Each Oracle Applications product is delivered with one or more predefined
menu hierarchies. System Administrators can assign a predefined menu
hierarchy to a responsibility. To tailor a responsibility, System
Administrators exclude functions or menus of functions from that
responsibility using exclusion rules.
o If a System Administrators cannot create the desired menu by applying
exclusion rules to a predefined menu, they can define a new menu
hierarchy. In this case, they construct their menu hierarchy using forms and
their associated menus of sub functions. In other words, System
Administrators should leave the developer-defined associations between
forms and their menus in tact.
• Available Functions Depend on the Current Responsibility
 o When a user first selects or changes their responsibility, a list of functions
obtained from the responsibility's menu structure is cached in memory.
o Functions a System Administrator has excluded from the current
responsibility are marked as unavailable.
o Form functions in the function hierarchy (i.e., menu hierarchy) are
displayed in the Navigate window. Available sub functions are accessed by
working with the application's forms.

• Visibility of Excluded Functions

Some sub functions are associated with a graphical element, for example, a button,
and their exclusion may result in:
o the dimming of the button
o The absence of the button.

- Other sub functions may not correspond to a graphical element, and their exclusion
may not be obvious to an end user.
 BACKUPS
- MCB has both cold sites and hot sites for its new financial system – the Oracle General
Ledger.

- Since it’s not a multinational organization, it has its hot sites in Pakistan only.
- The cold sites are the various regional headquarters in the country.
- The hot site is the main headquarter in Karachi at the I.I. Chundrighar Road.
- Backups are scheduled on a daily bases in the off-peak hours (late nights).
- This time of the day has been selected due to the fact that during the day the systems
are overworked enough to be able to do in real time. Hence, batch processing suits this
organization’s culture.

- The data stored would include the financial data converted into statements and ledgers
etc.

PROBLEMS WITH THE SYSTEM

In our interview with the bank’s employees who worked on the system, it seemed they
were very satisfied with the system and considered that the Oracle GL was a perfect fit for
their department. The IT department too was very satisfied with the Oracle software and
told us that the number of complaints that they previously used to receive from their
employees when they were using their in-house software was very high. Ever since the
introduction of Oracle GL, those complaints have almost entirely disappeared because of
which the efficiency of the departments has also risen. So for the end users of the
organization, the software had no flaws other than that some employees thought that the
software could be further customized in a better way to suit their business better.
 RECOMMENDATIONS AND FUTURE PLANS
ABOUT THE IS

Although Oracle has provided MCB with a highly customized Information System to suit
its business needs, the Financial Control Division feels that Oracle GL has not been
customized enough to suit their needs according to their specific needs. Therefore one
recommendation that is notable and must be pointed out is that if the company purchases a
new version of Oracle GL, it should be further customized in a better way with the specific
needs of the Financial Control Division in mind.
System enhancements over time might also need to be carried out that could involve
upgrading the server, storage and database systems.
As for the future plans of the Company regarding the information system, it seems that the
company is satisfied with the system and willing to retain it. It will purchase new versions
of the Oracle E-Business Suite as soon as they are released.
In the future, MCB also has expansion plans and is expected to open branches and start
operations in some foreign countries also. When that happens, a great deal more will need
to be invested in the company’s information system and it would remain to be seen
whether the company would continue using the current information system or switch to
some other information system.
 CONCLUSION
The Oracle E-Business Suite is a top of the line application software used by businesses
around the world. Oracle is a software company renowned for providing its customers with
excellent software’s that provide fast, easy and efficient business information and support
systems which play a vital part in operational running of a business and coming up with
improved business solutions.
MCB aims to keep its business in line with the top banks and corporations of the country
and therefore, it has chosen Oracle E-Business Suite as the application software that
manages and supports its business applications. The Oracle GL has the important task of
maintaining General Ledger Balances of the bank from around the country and generating
reports and financial statements on a daily basis.