The National Confederation of Cooperatives (Natcco) is banking on information technology (IT) solutions in growing the livelihood programs of the organization.
Natcco formally signed a partnership with Cebu-based Ng Khai Development Corp., a carrier of global information technology (IT) brands like Microsoft, in an effort to make technology within the reach of its members.
Natcco president Rey Gandionco said the cooperative is looking at IT solutions to fuel the activities and programs that promote livelihood and other business solutions among member-cooperatives.
"Microsoft gave us a good deal, an opportunity to make our system and services reliable for every cooperative member," Gandionco said.
Natcco is the biggest and strongest federation of cooperatives in the Philippines in terms of geographical reach, membership, financial capacity and services.
It now has 1.9 million individual members and 500 member-cooperatives.
One of Natcco's successful services in IT solutions is the eKoop-Banker Plus, a pioneering accounting and automated teller machine (ATM) system for cooperatives.
The service is an improvement of eKoopBanker, which was an in-house application acquired by Natcco in 2006.
The eKoopBanker Plus runs on Microsoft's Windows Server and SQL server2008 r2.
Under eKoopBanker Plus, member-cooperatives that avail themselves of the service will be able to provide their member depositors with basic ATM services such as withdrawals, deposits, transfers and e-loading for their cellphones, which will be debited from their accounts.
The system also provides read-time interconnectivity for cooperatives with multi-branch operations, and inter-cooperative transactions within the Natcco network.
It will also provide real-time financial reports, a value-added service of co-op leaders.
Natcco has already deployed 30 ATMs in the country.
Gandionco emphasized the importance of IT in financial services, saying it is a valuable investment that would help address the needs of every cooperative member to streamline processes and effectively manage the database and transactions of its growing network.
He also said that the integration of IT solutions in the organization would help them come up with more IT-driven businesses that would, in turn, help expand their market presence.
Natcco also conducts trainings for cooperative staff on current software applications that could boost cooperatives' marketing initiatives.
No comments:
Post a Comment