Dr. Rofail invited to speak at the 3rd Conference on Banking

McLean, VA - May 15, 2005

"Financial Sector Reform and Challenges"
3rd Conference on Banking, Finance and Insurance in the Arab World

Santéon founder, Dr. Ash Rofail, was recently invited to speak in a Pan-Arab forum held in June 2005 in Downtown Cairo. Santéon's participation in this event by providing a key-note speaker solidifies Santéon's reputation for innovation and technology leadership. The economic summit for banking, finance and insurance in the Arab world objectives were to highlight its reform necessities and challenges. Dr. Rofail's incite provided useful and paramount information for theses industries, and reflected the very objectives and services Santéon has innovated for the region over the last half-decade. For the Arab World to compete on a global level and best service its own constituency, technology will hold the key. Santéon, led by Dr. Rofail, will be at the forefront of innovation. Egypt's International Economic Forum has targeted Santéon as a key go-to resource for answers and solutions facing its industries today.

Other key speakers at this event included Dr. Youssef Boutros Ghali, Minister of Finance, Arab Republic of Egypt; Dr. Mahmoud Mohieldin, Minister of Investment, Arab Republic of Egypt; H.E. Dr. Bassem Awadalla, Minister of Finance, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan; and Teymour Kooros, Vice President, Africa & Middle East, Global Government Banking, Wachovia Bank, USA.

Dr. Ash Rofail, founder of Santéon, Inc., together with

Hussein Al Kholy, Chairman, National Telecom Company, Egypt
Aly Moselhy, Chairman, National Post Organization, Egypt
Moderator: Mohamed Magued, Chairman & Managing Director, Egyptian Banks Co. for Technological Advancement, Egypt

Enlightened and provided a roadmap of avenues for the Middle East to secure its foothold in banking, finance and insurance. Held in Downtown Cairo, the heart of innovation in the Arab world, this forum breathed new life into an ancient industry.

For highlights of Dr. Rofail's key-note speech, see below.
Dr. Rofail's discussion hit many key points and challenges facing the industry today.

Dr. Rofail explained the core misalignment between Business Objectives and IT Objectives. When an industry such as banking and finance has been around for as many millennia, and the relatively new industry of technology (an infant compared with finance), a gap has grown between the objectives and processes each would take on its own to meet objectives. IT units are selling products and services and businesses are buying solutions and technology: But, neither has identified the core objectives that business units need.

Technology can have a myriad of exciting new tools and gadgets, but is it what the customer needs to most efficiently and properly perform its objectives? The gap most often occurs because of a lack of understanding of what one side needs and one side is offering. And, what avenues do either take to get there?

Furthermore, Dr. Rofail reflected on the fact that businesses have no shortage of choice systems and information technology in the banking sector; however, they all operate independently as stove pipes. Stove-pipe systems lead to stove-pipe organizations unable to deliver integrated services. Everything separated and intangible makes integration of information, procedure and personnel interaction difficult and a patchwork of inefficient methodology.

To remedy this, Dr. Rofail asserts that a shift within an organization must occur from addressing "technology" as an expense to addressing it as an "investment" leading to Information Technology Investment Management (ITIM). Technology is the tool by which an organization meets its goals.

His recommended approach to using technology properly and aligning it with business objectives is Business Process Management (BPM). Business Process Management is a discipline that guides organizations into a process-driven approach to Information Technology starting with Modeling and Simulating Business Processes to identify the optimum "to-be" state, followed by a strong workflow automation and integration and management by a comprehensive Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) technology for setting Key Performance Indicators (KPI) all in a secure and wide reaching deployment.

Dr. Rofail gave an example of how many organizations suffer from TMT (too much technology). Dr. Rofail referenced how a large organization focused on streamlining their logistics center and then realized that to be more lean and efficient, they needed to eliminate some of the technology applications that were causing significant bottle necks and delays.

To close, Dr. Rofail encouraged organizations to start looking into and quickly adopting a disciplined Business Process Management (BPM) approach to achieving business goals rather than blindly following competitors and buying brand name software.