Speaking to The Financial Express, Dr Basudeb Sen, chairman and managing director, IIBI, said: "The increased use of infotech in decision-making has become very crucial. In all these tieups, IIBI will be the hub and the companies will also get the experience of getting involved with infotech in a financial institution's operations."

Dr Sen said in the present competitive environment and liberalised scenario, the utility of IT lay in increasing operational efficiency and management effectiveness by the use of MIS and other analytical tools for quick and effective decision-making.

IIBI has already created a new department - Infrastructure Development and Information Technology Department - for the process. To implement its IT gameplan, IIBI intends to out source its IT and computer-related work from external service providers, applications and service providers, IT process and management consultants and the like. In the proposed model, IIBI will be in overall charge of the project and will collaborate in the areas of:

* Building a dynamic website for the sharing of capital market information and providing various services to online clients on both sides of the balance sheet.
* Integration of accounting at all offices through an online system.
* Capturing all financial information transaction data by central database through secure encrypted channels.
* e-enabling all functions and processes across the organisation * emigrating to all forms online.
* Cost-effective and instantaneous communication with e-mail and voice-mail solutions and unified messaging services.

Dr Sen said IIBI intends to leverage the power of the Internet for spearheading new ways of doing FI business with a focus on clients on both sides of the balance sheet. "IIBI is firmly committed to the cause of the community from which it raises resources and expects similar commitment from its clientele of issuers of financial instruments and contracts," he said.

As part of IIBI's strategic reorientation programme under implementation, a stronger foundation in terms of organisation, processes, systems infrastructure and competitive management orientation is being built up. The goal is to enable well-networked, result-oriented teams of IIBI to minimise "time to decide," "time to market" and "time to respond." This will enable, among other things, fully secure real-time online accounting and MIS with Web-enabled features.