Case Study

Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Authority

The Client

DIFC is one of the world's fastest growing international financial centres. It aims to develop the same stature as New York, London and Hong Kong and primarily serves the vast region between Western Europe and East Asia. Approximately 1,000 financial and non-financial services companies are currently registered in the DIFC.

Our client, the DIFC Authority (DIFCA), is the body of the DIFC charged with developing overall strategy and providing direction and supervision to the Centre. Its responsibilities include attracting businesses to operate in the DIFC as well as the creation and enforcement of laws and regulations that govern financial and non-financial services activities.

Project Description

Vizor implemented Vizor Software for DIFCA over the period of April 2008 – May 2009. Prior to the implementation of Vizor Software, no data collection mechanisms existed within the DIFCA other than paper and Excel/Word based processes.

The scope of the project was therefore to create an online data collection and analysis system (called ‘DIFCSTAT’) that would:

• Act as the primary information communication channel between DIFCA and all entities operating in DIFC.
• Collect data from DIFC companies via online web forms on a secure web portal.
• Route submitted online web forms to the correct internal DIFCA department for processing and approval according to departmental-specific workflow.
• Provide a corporate profile for each DIFC company, the structure of the profile being dynamic depending on the legal structure of the company.
• On approval of submitted web form, populate and/or update the corporate profile automatically.
• Provide integrated statistical analysis and reporting against collected data.
• Go-Live with data collection and analysis solutions for the following DIFCA departments:
  • Registrar of Companies (ROC): Online commercial licence registration, annual license renewal, corporate change notifications (change director, shareholder, beneficial owner etc.), corporate profile search and analysis.
  • Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (DP): data protection registration, data protection renewal.
  • Office of the Chief Economist (OCE): financial statements, periodic economic activity survey, detailed statistical analysis of survey results, publication of economic report for federal government.
• Provide data modelling, form building and report building tools to the DIFCA team to enable them to launch further data collection and analysis activities without recourse to Vizor.

The DIFCSTAT system, developed by Vizor based upon the above requirements, is made up of three components:

• "DIFCSTAT Online": an implementation of Vizor Portal, used by DIFC companies to submit data online.
• "DIFCSTAT Administrator": an implementation of Vizor Supervision Centre, used by DIFCA to review, approve and analyse data submitted by DIFC companies.
• Vizor Builder.

The DIFCSTAT system highlights are as follows:

DIFCSTAT Online

• DIFC companies use DIFCSTAT Online to submit all ROC, DP and OCE data online via web forms, including complex multi-dimensional data.
• Data reporting requirements are automatically tailored according to individual company properties.
• DIFC companies are automatically notified via email when new data is due to be submitted.
• Complex validation rules and warnings are enforced prior to acceptance of data submission. On failure of rules, detailed error messages are provided.
• DIFC companies can print completed data submissions in formatted PDF for the purposed of hardcopy retention.
• All accepted submissions are locked, saved to a database and made available for viewing through the ‘submission history’ feature. DIFC companies can request resubmission where submitted data is found to be erroneous.
• Ability for DIFC companies to review and revise information held by the DIFC about the firm through ad-hoc notification forms.
• User access is controlled through granular role-based user permissions, enabling DIFC companies to create and manage their own users and sub-users.
• Look & feel of the application is customised to integrate with DIFC web livery.

DIFCSTAT Administrator

• On acceptance, submitted data is marked as ‘ready for review’ and the DIFCA Department responsible for reviewing that type of data is notified via email.
• DIFCA Departments use DIFCSTAT Administrator to review and approve or reject submitted data. Granular role-based user permissions control access to certain types of submitted data.
• Each type of submitted data has a unique approval workflow process that must be adhered to by the DIFCA Department, before formal approval can be allowed. If the process fails, the submission is rejected and automatically routed back to the DIFC company for revision on DIFCSTAT Online. On approval of data, it is made available for reporting purposes and, if required, the DIFC company’s corporate profile is automatically updated.
• Once data approval is complete, data can be automatically analysed, aggregated and summarised in various formats for publication.
• All data can be exported to MS Excel or PDF format.
• Data reporting scheduling, supervised company details, groups and users can be administered through DIFCSTAT Administrator.

Vizor Builder

• DIFCA use Vizor Builder to manage all DIFCSTAT metadata.
• Data models for surveys and forms can be designed and maintained using the Schema Builder.
• Online web forms that map to the data models can be designed and maintained using the Form Designer.
• Reports that comprehensively analyse, summarise and aggregate the data are designed and maintained using the Report Designer.
• Background tasks such as data transfers and notifications can be designed and maintained using the Workflow Designer.
• DIFCA can deploy changes to DIFCSTAT metadata using the Release Builder.

The Outcome

The DIFCSTAT system went live to all DIFC companies in May 2009. Six months following go-live the system received a 98% approval rating from DIFC companies. The client satisfaction survey which collected and aggregated this data was built by DIFCA using Vizor Builder and deployed to the DIFC companies on DIFCSTAT Online, all of which was achieved without requiring additional project budget or Vizor resource.

Along with implementing an extremely popular and flexible end-user system, the following benefits were realised by DIFCA through the implementation of DIFCSTAT:

• Better data quality, accessibility and security
• Improved data analysis capability
• Improved communications with DIFC companies
• Enhanced internal department communication and harmonisation
• Inceased departmental revenues
• Reduced data processing time / increased data timeliness
• Better organisational accountability and scalability

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