Client Background
The client is a prominent bank in Oman that had reached the final stage of selecting a new core banking platform. Its incumbent core had become a constraint on the business: it could not support planned products or network expansion, the general ledger sat outside the core, there was no development toolkit or API and microservices support, recurring downtime affected customers, and regulatory reporting to the central bank was manual and slow. With two finalists remaining after technical evaluation, management needed to turn the evaluation into a decision the board could approve with confidence. Cedar was retained to support negotiations, compare the final commercial and contractual positions and prepare the board recommendation and the transition into the implementation programme.
Cedar’s Approach
Cedar anchored the decision stage in a seven-parameter recommendation framework covering platform proposition, solution coverage, functional, technical and vendor evaluation, commercials, contracts, references and implementation approach, so that the board could weigh the finalists on more than price or features alone.
Case for Change – Cedar consolidated the legacy platform's issues, from vendor support turnaround and missing in-core ledger capability to downtime, weak transaction-monitoring data and manual regulatory reporting, into a clear case that replacement, not remediation, was required.
Finalist Confirmation – Drawing on the completed evaluation and on reference-site feedback gathered from two banks per supplier, Cedar documented why a third contender was dropped, citing architecture, database lock-in, long-term customisation cost and partner delivery accountability, and narrowed negotiations to two suppliers.
Negotiation and Commercial Comparison – Cedar supported the bank through successive bid rounds, normalising every submission into a like-for-like five-year cost-of-ownership view that separated subscription, cloud hosting, implementation, customisation, training and managed-service components and tracked how scope changed between rounds.
Contractual Risk Review – Cedar assessed each finalist against 24 contractual terms, rated the outstanding disagreements, including limitation of liability, termination for convenience, taxes, penalties and source-code escrow for a subscription model, and proposed a negotiating position for each.
Board Recommendation and Mobilisation Plan – Cedar packaged the findings into a board paper with a sequenced path from budget approval and mandate award through contract and statement-of-work finalisation to project team formation and mobilisation.
Strategic Outcome and Way Forward
The bank's management tender committee took a clear, evidence-backed recommendation to the executive board, with both finalists shown to be credible global platforms and the preferred choice justified across all seven parameters rather than on a single metric. Negotiation support materially improved the commercial position of both finalists across bid rounds, and the contractual review gave the bank's legal team a prioritised list of terms to close before signature.
The agreed way forward covered board approval of the programme budget, award of the core banking mandate, completion of contractual formalities and the statement of work, and mobilisation of a joint project team to begin implementation of the new platform.