Lauren Wortmann, MD of application services at NTT Data in Middle East and Africa.
NTT Data has signed a five-year contract extension with Absa to continue providing application management services for the bank’s SAP S/4HANA financial consolidation and reporting systems.
The deal covers the technology landscape Absa uses for group-wide financial control. According to the bank, it is part of a broader push to modernise finance systems and embed standardised processes across its African operations.
The renewed agreement sees NTT Data continue its work on Absa’s finance modernisation programme, which has involved consolidating ledgers and streamlining month-end close processes.
Lauren Wortmann, MD of application services at NTT Data in Middle East and Africa, said the focus would be on keeping operations reliable while pursuing improvements that deliver measurable business outcomes.
“Our focus is on reliable operations, continuous improvement and measurable business outcomes that will help Absa strengthen controls and unlock real-time insights from a resilient S/4HANA foundation,” Wortmann said.
John Annandale, managing executive for financial control functions and finance CIO at Absa, said the bank has moved its finance operations to a modern SAP S/4HANA foundation, integrated with best-of-breed spend management. He said the partnership ensures Absa has the specialist skills needed to support that platform.
“Our efforts to build a single source of financial truth for Absa across Africa are ongoing,” Annandale said.
“Renewing and extending our partnership with NTT Data ensures we have the specialist SAP capability and dependable operations to match the scale of our ambition, supporting stronger controls, faster close cycles and the data quality our business stakeholders expect.”
He added that the transformation is led from SA but has Africa-wide impact, positioning the bank to grow with resilience and transparency.
