Topaz is a financial project management system that provides many advantages over many other solutions in its flexibility and capabilities.
1. Problem Statement
• Financial institutions are the target audience of Topaz.
• In terms of Topaz, a financial transaction (or a Topaz project) is regarded as a deal with one or more customers within which the company aims to manage as a unit and make profit from.
• Financial institutions typically have difficulty with keeping a view of a financial transaction as well as an overall view across all transactions:
• Separate systems and procedures are used.
• Different administrative approaches per product area are employed,
• Staff turnover places a strong focus on retaining specific business knowledge and continuity.
• Local support for any international system is difficult in South Africa. Incasu is a local company that develops and support Topaz.
2. Features
2.1 Integrated Solution
A transaction management office has the burden of setting-up and using a number of IT solutions to fit into their management requirements of a diverse set of products.
2.1.1 User Access Control
A flexible application access control provides a means to fit well into a functional responsibility structure of the business area.
2.1.2 Project Approach
Each transaction is managed as a project during its live span. A full history of activities, correspondence, accounting entries, payments etc. is kept and can be recalled long after the transaction has expired. A global project (company-wide) is a special project used to interact with external systems.
2.1.3 Financial Set of Books
For each project a complete financial set of books can be kept. The entries on the local (project) set of books can also be echoed to the global (company-wide) set of books, allowing for a micro-view on local and a macro-view on global.
2.1.4 Documentation
Transactions will over time have several documents (client letters, calculations, e-mails etc.) attached to it. In Topaz these documents can be indexed against the product, client or transaction to allow for a well-kept inventory of documentation.
2.1.5 Contracts and Securities
A separate module manages the legal documentary requirements of a transaction. A flexible security register further enables the documenting of specific regulatory requirements.
2.1.6 Diary System
An extensive diary system is used to generate reminders across the spread of a project or the company. Once a reminder is triggered, the users involved are notified with a message of the event and a task is assigned to each. This enables the proper follow-through and transparency needed to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.
2.1.7 System Integration
No system lives in isolation. Topaz employs a unique middle ware product called Integrat, that is fully customizable for any additional background task. By using Integrat, Topaz can be set up to import or export information into or from Topaz to almost any external system (given that the external system allows for integration). This ensures that Topaz does not live in isolation and contributes to the bigger business environment.
2.2 Cross-Product Capabilities
A setup of accounting, modeling, operational processing (and more) can be done for any number of products that have fixed structures. Once a product has been defined, it can be re-used as a template across multiple projects.
2.3 Financial Modeling
A key feature is the ability to host a financial model per project that contains all of the asset movements for a transaction during its live span. This provides automated entries into a financial set of books without the need of an external model.
2.4 Standardization
Once a transaction has been packaged into Topaz, the operational management of the transaction becomes a standard set of actions, similar to those actions of many other transactions of different types. A user will find it easy to manage a number of transactions without the complexity of the underlying transaction structure.
2.5 IT-Friendly
Topaz is a client-server based solution. It installs easily on any MS Windows based workstation. It requires MS SQL Server 2005 (or later) on the server and has a middle ware component that manages the bulk of the back-end processing.
3. Advantages
3.1 Brings together different back-office environments into one area
The capability to manage many transactions of a diverse nature lends itself to bring together the operations of multiple back-office areas.
3.2 Packaging of Transaction
The skills required to take a transaction from inception and manage it to expiry is broken up into three distinct parts. The transaction is firstly packaged into Topaz (with a financial model, accounting structure, team members, contracts and securities, reminders of scheduled events etc.) using a well-skilled person that understands the contractual requirements and can plan the execution of the whole transaction within Topaz. Secondly the transaction is managed from month-to-month using standard back- office activities. At the termination of the transaction a few number of activities are required in Topaz to close-out the project.
3.3 Less risk in Staff Turnover
Because a transaction is packaged as a project, the specialist skills required on the transaction is only needed at a few time slots of its live span (inception, structure changes and expiry). This lessens the risk of having a continuity break on the management of the transaction.
4. Partnering
Incasu is partnering with Southpaw Solutions to provide a full implementation and support service to its clients. With this partnership, the Topaz client receives a fully implementation service that includes process engineering, management information reporting and project management.