The Benefit Company, founded in 1997 by 17 banks, manages Bahrain’s ATM and POS system. The operation links more than 180 ATMs and 7,000 POS devices throughout the kingdom and is an integral part of GCCNET – the Gulf-wide, cross-border ATM sharing arrangement. Bahrain is one of the richest Middle-East economies with a GDP of over $13Bn and the residents demand one of the world’s most advanced financial systems that take advantage of emerging technologies and innovative services.

As the Benefit Company’s operations have expanded to cope with the growing demand for on-line financial services, it is important that their on-line presence reflects their commitment to innovate and use the latest technology.

One Company & One Cohesive On-line Strategy

The Benefit Company turned to SORCE, one of the leading providers of portal solutions, to design and develop a cohesive on-line presence for the company covering the website, a partner extranet portal and an employee intranet portal. By using the services of a single specialist provider, Benefit Company aims to maintain a consistent brand to all audiences and customers, partners and employees and benefit from a centralised content management solution that publishes information where directed to maintain the topicality and relevance of the web, intranet and extranet portals. For example, news items that are initially published to the intranet can be automatically published to the extranet and web once approved for external publication.

The Benefit Company’s website gives the company’s customers up-to-date information on services and new developments and acts as the gateway to the partner portal. The partner extranet, accessed via a secure log on, provides partners with:

• An information sharing zone where partners can share documents and manage revisions;
• News and topical information about the Benefit Company
• Organisation charts and contact management
• Logging and tracking of support calls and outstanding issues
• Completion of standard forms
• Feedback mechanism and surveys for gathering partner feedback
• FAQs

With the addition of the Intranet portal, the Benefit Company can also provide management and employees with topical information about the business. Management now has secure access to real-time management reports on key performance indicators (KPIs) so that they can track the performance of the business in real-time. Employees can be provided with topical company information and are also empowered to manage sections of the intranet and can take advantage of social content such as bulletin boards (e.g., for sale items) to be managed as part of the company’s information strategy.

Real-time Information for Better Business Decisions

According to John Russell, Assistant General Manager at the Benefit Company, “Financial services are a global and highly competitive business. To keep customers and grow our business it is vital that we provide a high-quality solution and anticipate their need for new services. To achieve this we need to use all available information to the best advantage of the business. This is why we engaged with SORCE to provide a cohesive on-line solution to our business needs.”

The SORCE solution is more than leading-edge technology. Based on their extensive experience of providing portal solutions to a wide range of organisations in a variety of business sectors, SORCE has developed over 30 ready-made applications that are regularly used as part of portal solutions. These include document management, news publishing services, contact and inventory management and booking meeting facilities.

The SORCE portal application suite enables users, such as The Benefit Company, to focus on the relevance, accuracy and timeliness of their content knowing that the application will manage the publication and updating of the content with a consistent “look-and-feel” throughout the company’s on-line presence. John Nicklin, Sale