Information Technology Consultancy Services

Frankfurt School of Finance & Management is one of the leading providers of technology consultancy services. We help organisations of all sizes to achieve their digital transformation goals. We have a team of experienced IT consultants and developers who are experts in the latest technology trends. We work with clients to understand their needs and develop a customised solution meeting their requirements. We are committed to helping our clients in achieving their digital transformation goals.

• ALES is a web-based software system that helps financial institutions evaluate agricultural loans. ALES enables financial service providers to expand their agrarian lending in a low-risk, cost-effective, and faster way. This is achieved by automating the credit assessment process through an efficient and standardised scoring of agricultural loans.
• ADMS is a software system that collects and analyzes agricultural data. It can track hundreds of data types and calculates expense and yield. The output of ADMS is used to predict future prices, identify trends, and make better decisions about agricultural production. BothALES and ADMS are available as SaaS and on-premise solutions.

Our services include, but are not limited to:

• IT Strategy Consulting: Developing and implementing a comprehensive IT strategy that aligns with the client's business goals.
• Technology Consulting: Understanding the latest technology trends and how they can benefit the client's organisation.
• Digital Transformation: Transforming organisations through to the use of the latest digital technologies.
• End-to-end Application Services: Delivering end-to-end application services, from requirements gathering and analysis to development, testing, and deployment. Offering solutions as web-based and mobile applications with online and offline working capabilities.
• Software Products: Owning and offering a range of software products, including market-leading ALES (Agricultural Loan Evaluation System) and ADMS (Agricultural Data Management System) tools.

ALES is a comprehensive risk assessment model and loan calculator which determines credit risk by its scoring methodology. Through agricultural tech cards, ALES calculates the producer’s working capital need and the most likely yield/income generated from agricultural activities. It suggests loan limits in line with repayment capacity and the fundamental requirements of producers. Similarly, it provides recommendations on loan maturity. ALES also helps structure their payment schedule and better evaluate repayment capacity.

ALES can assess various loan requests on working capital, investment, and machinery. Moreover, it maintains equipment for multiple activities such as crop production, animal husbandry (meat or dairy production), aquaculture, poultry (meat or egg), and agriculture. It is, hence, ideal for farmers and agricultural enterprises involved in agricultural activities.

The main advantages of ALES can be listed as follows:

• Cost-efficient and standardized assessment of loan applications for various agricultural loan products
• Credit risk reduction
• Cost reduction for client analysis
• Tailor-made repayment plans
• Lower training and management
• Ability to promptly react to market changes
• Fewer conflicts between sales and underwriting department
• Lowercostsfor end users

Thanks to ALES, more than 300,000 rural MSMEs had access to finance in various countries worldwide, and more than 1 billion EUR in bank loans have been disbursed. Agriculture lending systems have been implemented in more than 15 partner financial institutions in countries such as Türkiye, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Zambia, Senegal, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine, and tech cards have been developed for more than 5,000 agricultural products. Financial institutions using ALES experienced considerably decreasing NPL rates and an increasing market share. As a new concept and methodology, ALES has been centralized for using several banks in Türkiye through the Credit Bureau of Türkiye in 2014.

Donor: Egyptian Credit Bureau - (I-score)

Beneficiary: Agricultural banks using this tool

Year: August 2021 – September 2023

ALES is a trademark fully-modular centralised web and mobile application developed by the FS TURCASIA IT team (www.ales-fs.com).

Within the project's scope, the ALES centralised web-based version was enhanced and localised for Egypt’s banking system for the Egyptian Credit Bureau I-Score. The system is renamed “ACERS”. Within the scope of implementation, two main modules were developed:

• Dedicated module for one Partner Financial Institution (PFI) with specifical algorithms, managing access with specific roles and credentials;
• Generic module for all PFIs in the Egyptian market.

Java 8, HTML5, CSS3, Oracle DB, Amazon AWS, and Atlassian Tools were used in the project as the primary technologies. The tool is implemented with a three-tier architecture.

In addition to the web-based application, all functional APIs of ACERS have been transformed to a RESTful API to enable financial institutions that are preferred to use their front-end solution. The main aim is to integrate the process and calculation functionalities quickly.

In total, 66 screens (16 administrations, 18 approvals, 12 processes, 3 reports, and 17 general-purpose screens) and 92 pop-up screens were developed throughout the project.

Donor: EBRD

Beneficiary: Arnur Credit

Year: 2019 - ongoing

In the project's scope, Frankfurt School developed a specific web-based and Android-based agricultural loan evaluation tool to support women in agriculture, branded as “ArnurAgro”, working in three languages simultaneously Russian, Kazakh, and English.

Java 8, HTML5, CSS3, MySQL DB, Amazon AWS, and Atlassian tools were used for the web-based tool. The system is integrated using RESTful API with the core banking system of Arnur Credit, as well as the Credit Bureau in Kazakhstan, for data exchange.

Donor: Direct

Beneficiary: Major private bank in Ethiopia

Year: September 2020 – March 2022

Within the frame of Strategy Development of a bank in Ethiopia, we:

• Provided advisory on the strategic plan and Human ResourcesInformation System (HRIS) implementation;
• Conducted detailed strategic analysis of the bank's existing IT processes and workflows;
• Held comprehensive strategy workshops with the top management of the bank;
• Building short, middle, and long-term strategies for the bank’s IT department;
• Developed a 5-year Digital Banking Strategy for the bank;
• Implemented and integrated a web-based HRIS for operational excellence, providing advisory on user interface design principles;
• Trained the bank's staff on the functionalities of the HRIS;
• Conducted a 3-days workshop during which we presented to the board of directors of the bank on the project outputs.

Donor: Triple Jump

Beneficiary: Agora Microfinance Zambia

Year: August 2018 – December 2018

Within the frame of Agora Microfinance Zambia’s (AMZ) IT/MIS Assessment, we:

• Detailed functional and technical analysis of AMZ’s existing core banking system;
• Assessed of technical and infrastructural capabilities of AMZ;
• Defined data conversion requirements for transformation;
• Defined risks and issues for transformation;
• Produced high-level functional and technical requirementsfor the most suitable product;
• Analysed CBS vendors available in the market;
• Detailed documentation of the diagnostic report, incorporating results, findings, and recommendations.

Donor: EIB

Beneficiary: Liberty Bank in Georgia

Year: August 2021 – February 2023

Within the frame of the Liberty Bank project, we:

• Conducted a market research of potential Non-Financial Service (NFS) Development for Micro&Small Enterprises products;
• Defined the scope of the selected NFS by high-level analysis activities;
• Executed functional analysis activities following the results of the high-level requirements(HLR) to specify detailed requirements;
• Mapped the process of the application with flowcharts and developing preliminary; wireframes to guide the implementation of NFS;
• Developed the NFS product and Training of Trainers(ToT) activities.