After discussions and brainstorming the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) has embarked on Operational Business Suite Project (OBS) to address challenges leading to organisational transformation.

The OBS would assist SSNIT to achieve enterprise transformation, operational excellence and for the stakeholders to experience superior customer service.

The OBS project is a tool to manage the core operational activities including the registration of a member, payment of contribution, compliance enforcement, benefits administration and relationship channel management.

Mr John Hagan Mensah, OBS Project Manager, announced this at the official launch of SSNIT Contact Centre in Accra to serve as a central point for handling all customer enquiries and complaints and also enable it reach out to the larger public.

He said the Contact Centre was the first phase of the OBS project, which aimed at making it possible for SSNIT to achieve enterprise transformation, operational excellence and for the stakeholders to experience superior customer service.

The project Manager said the phase two of the OBS project, which includes information kiosk and social media, would be implemented by November this year.

He said the Contact Centre would provide alternative channel for its members including employers and the public to make enquiries, lodge complains, compliments and provide feedback.

The Contact Centre, he said, was an integral component of the SSNIT OBS project and it is the outfit that owns and manages the members’ requests from lodgment to solution.

He said the centre would facilitate effective tracking of customers’ issues; coordinate in relaying information to the customers and use the feedback to enhance their operational processes and procedures to improve customer relation and service delivery.

Mr Mensah said the implementation of the Contact centre is another milestone towards enterprise transformation, operational excellence and superior service.

Key features of the OBS Project are biometric verification at all SSNIT sites to replace the current manual fingerprint verification available only at the records Department; the use of centralised database across all SSNIT offices, and submission of contribution report via SSNIT portal and payment at the Bank as against the current practice where the submission and payment is at the branch.

Other features are availability of multiple access channels such as the SSNIT portal, information Kiosk, face-face contact at the branch office for transaction processing and access to information; implementation of business intelligence solution to aid decision making; provision of contact centre to provide superior customer service.

The rest are implementation of form processing to reduce manual data capturing and errors; implementation of workflow solution and business activity monitoring systems to reduce transaction processing delays; implementation of a new system for the core operational processes, and digitization of the legacy business document and increase access to the scanned documents to assist their offices to respond to members’ enquiries.

The centre is based on a world class platform developed by Avaya and implemented by Perfect Business Systems, a Ghanaian ICT company.