You may have noticed some months ago that CGAP listed an initiative that they supported in Mongolia in collaboration with Xac bank (see some of the announcements here). The support and the excitement generated by the visibility of this initiative enticed a number of suppliers to tender for the deployment of mobile banking in this beautiful country. I am not sure how many companies tried to get the work as we declined because Mongolia was not one of our target countries at the stage.What was very interesting to me was when I recently saw an announcement of a new solution company, offering mobile banking solutions and using Xac bank as their first reference. This company is called: Noomadic. A little more research indicated that Noomadic is partially owned by Xac bank. Not only have the technology been deployed in Mongolia, but a new solution company has been created! While the deployment of this solution must be a great achievement, creating a solution company at the same time must be questioned. It is my believe that the development of a product and the deployment of a production system is totally two different propositions. Not only is the solution different, but also the organisation that supports a product compared to a production deployment.
Yet, this is not a new approach. The "well-now-that-we-have-deployed-the software-lets-see-if-we-can-sell-it-too" mentality is actually quite common in this industry. It is displayed regularly with not so good results in most cases. (I will not quote examples, but I am sure the reader can think of many themselves from countries like South Africa, the Philippines, US and many more). Why is it that companies think of selling the software when they should be worried about supporting a production deployment?