Our customers in Russia are highly satisfied users of BARS because of the following key factors:

BARS delivers full implementation of Russian Accounting Standards allowing the near standard implementation of core banking systems from international core banking systems suppliers. This means that core banking systems can be chosen entirely on their strengths rather than considering how easy it will be to implement Russian standards.

Until BARS was created, banks that wished to implement world class international core banking systems were obliged to implement local “Russian” systems in parallel. This meant that two systems were implemented carrying out similar tasks. The effect of this was that the bank had to either:

• Duplicate input to the two systems “double input”.
• Build an expensive and complex bridge between the core banking and Russian systems to duplicate the data.

In addition to this, international banks with multiple branches were obliged to implement separate instances of the local system for each branch since there are no reputable local systems that are truly centralised. This significantly raises the cost of operating branches not to mention the time required for rollout.

With the creation of BARS, GCP has eliminated these problems by providing a centralised data warehouse, integrated with the core banking system. Implementation of new branches of the bank requires no changes to BARS, only to the reporting module, since the system is designed to collect data for multiple branches and automatically deals with three tier branch architecture including Regional Head Offices.

The integration is carried out by the combination of two factors:

1. The use of the GCP Accounting Engine.
2. Customisation of the ETL functionality to allow significant enrichment of data.

These two combined allow the data warehouse to hold all of the data needed to comply with the requirements of Russian Accounting Standards.

BARS and the systems to which it is connected, are self reconciling in order to control data & informational integrity.

In addition to this GCP has written, primarily using Crystal Reports, a full reporting suite for Central Bank of Russia returns. This suite includes reports produced in the traditional way as well as electronic data transfers as required by the Central Bank. It is constantly updated by GCP in response to changes in the appropriate regulations.

The data warehouse is intended to be generic. That is to say that all banks implementing BARS will have data held in essentially the same way in the warehouse. This makes it quicker and more efficient to support reporting changes centrally. However banks can differentiate themselves by creating custom built Business Objects “Universes” covering areas critical to them and depending on their business focus. GCP will also start to offer generic Universes shortly.