The IQ Business Group has provided COBOL development and maintenance services to clients in the US for over 10 years through a co-sourced, nearshore model based in South Africa. Their team of 6-24 COBOL developers have worked on projects including migrating clients from MVS to UNIX platforms and OmniPlan to OmniPlus, archiving legacy files, maintaining the PowerImage imaging system, and ongoing support, enhancements and customizations. IQ is able to leverage their expertise in COBOL, OmniPlus and other technologies to provide full SDLC support and reduce costs for clients while meeting high standards for quality and satisfaction.

1. COBOL Prospectus
Intelligence. Applied.Copyright © The IQ Business Group
COBOL Prospectus
Companies globally are struggling with the challenge of balancing the
increased demand for innovation, integration and maintenance of
multiple systems. This demand is putting immense pressure on
overstretched, resource-strapped technology departments, impacting on
deliverables and quality. In addition companies are struggling to balance
the concepts of service location.
Service Location refers to the sourcing of services (co, out or in-source) and the
geographical location (off, on or near-shore). Normally the terms off, on and near shore
are confusing but ultimately can best be described by the terms of “culture” and
“language”. The closer the culture and language are to which the users of the service
can relate the closer to on-shoring the service becomes. The IQ Business Group (“IQ”)
has successfully applied the co-source, near shore offering within our specialist COBOL
team for the past decade. This prospectus outlines the background to, skills of, and
projects conducted by this specialist team to clients in the United States of America.
BACKGROUND
IQ established its first co-sourced, near-shore contract with CitiStreet (now ING) in
November 2000. This first contract saw IQ providing a ‘Statements on Demand’ system.
Subsequent to this another agreement was signed in 2002 to provide ING with
application development services. This agreement was for IQ to provide resources
(COBOL developers) to assist the ING IT PMO team in moving ING clients from the
MVS to the UNIX platform and also from the SunGard OmniPlan product to the
OmniPlus product.
The strategic intent behind this agreement for ING was to acquire the services of an
offshore partner, to place them in a position to send work offshore, hence cutting costs
by using cheaper resources. In addition this provided them with a follow the sun
approach allowing the South African based resources to develop during the US’s
downtime and vice versa.
For IQ the strategic value of getting a foothold into the US market was the main drive
behind this agreement. In doing this IQ has successfully acquired much more lucrative
opportunities within the US market. IQ has also managed to obtain the ‘Preferred
provider’ status within ING.
In the last 10 years the team has fluctuated from as little a 6 resources to as many as
24 resources supporting the US outsourcing market.
TECHNICAL SKILLS
- COBOL
- C++
- RPG
- UNIX
- LINUX
- AS400
- OMNIPLUS
- OMNIPLAN
- ORACLE
- DB2
ROLES
- Development
- Business Analysis
- Testing
- Management
WHY IQ?
The IQ Business Group (IQ)
is a global company
headquartered in
Johannesburg, South Africa,
with offices in Australia, the
UK and the USA. A strong
background of delivering
consulting services, business
process outsourcing and
system maintenance
outsourcing, has made it a
truly global company with
customers on four continents.
CONTACT DETAILS:
Tel: +27 (0) 11 259 4000
Fax: +27 (0) 11 259 4111
Email: info@iqgroup.net
Web: www.iqgroup.net

2. COBOL Prospectus
Intelligence. Applied.Copyright © The IQ Business Group
PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS
PMO conversions
This was a phased 3 year project which was aimed at migrating the pension funds
administration systems from MVS to UNIX platforms and from Sungard’s OmniPlan to
OmniPlus products. Clients who needed to be included in this seamless migration
included the likes of Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Sears, Honeywell and the State of
Texas.
Converting a client entailed the following:
• Changing all the customized COBOL programs to use the OmniPlus transaction
layouts and logic.
• Creating UNIX scripts for all the existing JCL jobs on MVS, including all batch
cycles and creating the associated Maestro schedules.
• Unit testing, Integration testing, Bug Tracking and Fixing
• Data and file conversion from MVS to the different UNIX environments
Fileset Archival Project
A legal requirement within the pension fund administration industry exists with respect
to archival and retrieval of information in the US. The conversion from MVS to UNIX and
Omniplan to Omniplus for ING necessitated the conversion of all legacy data to the new
technology which entailed IQ conducting the following per client administered by ING:
• Conversion of archived files from the legacy platform and logic to UNIX and
OmniPlus.
• Conversion files earmarked for archival from the OmniPlan to the OmniPlus format
PowerImage Project
The Client acquired the source code of PowerImage (an imaging and workflow solution)
from SunGard and one of the IQ contracted teams are currently responsible for ongoing
maintenance, enhancements and upgrades to this system.
This product was developed in Visual C++ 6 for the Windows Platform and consists of
numerous GUI applications as well as Windows services. A web component with
mainly task and document search functionality exists as an ASP application.
RPG/AS400 Project
A team was responsible for successfully rewriting a system in RPG ILE on the AS400
platform as well as completing various enhancements to other client RPG systems.
Development, Integration, Maintenance and Documentation
From December 2004 the IQ team has provided clients with the necessary COBOL and
OmniPlus experienced resources required to develop, maintain and enhance numerous
client specific and generic modules. During this time the IQ team also managed a
number of COBOL developers based in India.
THE IQ TEAM:
- Is very skilled in Cobol
and Unix scripting
- Is highly skilled and
experienced with the
OmniPlus product
- Understands and has
successfully managed
the off-shore delivery
challenges between SA,
India and USA
- Demonstrates high
degree of flexibility in
work schedules to meet
the needs of the Client
(i.e., weekends, after
hours, holidays)
- Engagement model
displays a true spirit of
partnership and quality
delivery
- Is dedicated and
passionate about what
they do which resonates
within our Clients
THE IQ IP:
- Customised and generic
code associated with
Sungard’s OmniPlus
product.
- Client IP has been
expanded and stored
locally for team
reference/use
- IQ SA SDLC has been
adapted to comply with
Client’s SDLC
requirements
- IQ has established a
Testing competency built
around Clients product
- Training materials have
been created to reduce
new hire transition
periods
- IQ provides 24x 365 day
operational support. Key
tasks & activities include
monitoring, manual job
execution, reporting,
problem resolution &
escalation , backups

3. COBOL Prospectus
Intelligence. Applied.Copyright © The IQ Business Group
The COBOL developers in India were seen as an extension of the IQ development
teams and the project management and analysis was still conducted jointly between the
client and IQ and offshored the development between India and South Africa. The
modules that are focused on by the team include:
• Generic and Client specific payroll
• Generic products and sweep processing
• Enhanced Confirms
• Client specific development and customization
• Converting and setting up of new clients and their customized processes
Software Quality Assurance
On a request received from a client a testing competency was setup in March 2005 to
assist clients in highlighting issues and problems post unit test completion and before
user acceptance testing commenced.
The main focus of the testing team was quality control of client specific customized
code. The team was responsible for tracking and reporting on successful test coverage
and completion statistics and managing the feedback loop to development to ensure
that issues identified were corrected and retested.
The team used the technical and functional requirements to map the test cases to
ensure complete coverage. Rational was utilized as the preferred toolset to document,
track and report on test plan statuses.
Operational Support project
The IQ team also provided 24x365 operational support for AS400, Windows and Unix
systems initially started in October 2003 for a single client this has expanded to
accommodate additional clients both in the US and South Africa.
Current Operational support responsibilities:
• Monitoring, support on the following operational systems Windows, AS400 and
UNIX
• 3rd
Party vendor Management
• Issue escalation and remediation
• Application Monitoring, Support and issue resolution
Conclusion
IQ is able to provide a valuable development, support and maintenance service which
spanning the full SDLC for COBOL based systems to our clients. This model works well
both from a near shore and co/out-source perspective. IQ is innovative in the way
teams are deployed to take into account the unique context every client needs to
operate within. IQ places a significant emphasis on acquiring highly skilled and talented
individuals which work cohesively as teams to provide value to our client base. In
addition IQ has technical solutions deployed which ensure that speed to competence on
new systems and for new team members is significantly reduced. This ensures that
value is delivered to client from day one.
CLIENT RESULTS
- Improved Quality
- Improved end Client
Satisfaction
- Reduced Cost
- Increased Speed to
Market (“World Clock”)
- Scalable Resource Base
CLIENT TESTIMONIALS:
“We wanted to share the
accolade that was made by
Colleen Helker on the
success of the Kmart 401(k)
conversion into the Sears
Plan. I echo Colleen's
sentiment and am very proud.
In my 15 years in this
business this was as close to
a flawless conversion as you
are going to get! You have
made a significant
contribution to Sears' very
high client satisfaction level -
that message resonates
across the entire CitiStreet
organization!
Thank you!”
Michele D Lee
Sr. Relationship Director
'Congratulations to everyone,
we did a lot in 3 months time
and I know that lots of hard
work went into the project.
We have received a couple of
emails internally, but most
were from people who tried to
go in over the weekend and
didn't read the message that
the web would be available
on Monday. The project was
very successful and I am very
proud of everyone.'
Colleen Helker
Program Manager