Client Background
The client is a leading bank in Oman whose legacy core banking platform could no longer keep pace with its product plans, regulatory reporting demands and expectations for digital integration. The bank had resolved to replace its core system, but it needed a selection process that could stand up to executive and board scrutiny and was not driven by vendor narratives. It also wanted the future platform to be adopted largely out of the box, with limited customisation and a preference for a cloud subscription deployment model. Cedar was mandated to run the end-to-end supplier evaluation, from market scanning and requirements definition through structured demonstrations to a best-fit recommendation.
Cedar’s Approach
Cedar applied its FTV (Functional, Technical and Vendor) Evaluation methodology, complemented by commercial and contractual assessment and reference-site validation, and structured the work as a funnel that narrowed the market in stages against increasingly demanding criteria.
Architecture Review and Requirements Baseline – Cedar reviewed the current applications and architecture, identified capability gaps and developed a target functional blueprint. A baseline Business Requirements Specification built on industry standards was refined in capability workshops with the bank's core team, producing more than 750 functional and technical requirements across 11 modules, from retail and institutional banking to general ledger, treasury, compliance, risk and reporting.
Market Scan and RFI – Using the Cedar-IBSi Galaxy database alongside external analyst research, Cedar built a longlist of 38 universal and next-generation core banking suppliers, issued an RFI to 28 of them and assessed 19 responses against key capabilities and regional presence.
RFP and Quick Demonstrations – Six suppliers were shortlisted for the RFP. Cedar managed vendor questions, reviewed responses and organised quick demonstration sessions before narrowing the field to three suppliers for detailed evaluation.
Long Demonstrations and Consensus Scoring – Each finalist ran a week-long, scripted demonstration on its actual application, covering roughly 75 session hours in total with more than 20 bank users from ten departments. Scoring sheets completed by bank participants were consolidated using a weighted functional, technical and vendor model agreed with the bank, and Cedar tested each supplier's written claims against what was demonstrated through an honesty index.
Commercial, Contractual and Reference Review – Cedar normalised the bids into a like-for-like total cost of ownership framework, compared each supplier's position on 20 contractual terms, from warranty and penalties to termination and escrow, and arranged reference-site feedback with two banks per finalist.
Strategic Outcome and Way Forward
The evaluation gave the bank a transparent, consensus-based ranking of the three finalists, with each supplier's strengths, gaps, customisation exposure, implementation approach and contractual stance documented side by side. The platforms were close on functional coverage, so the recommendation turned on technical architecture, delivery model and commercial fit rather than on feature lists alone, and on areas where Cedar had identified room to negotiate.
As the way forward, Cedar advised the bank to form a negotiation committee drawn from legal, audit, operations, finance and IT, complete reference-site checks and move to contract and commercial negotiations with the leading suppliers before awarding the core banking mandate to the best-fit partner.