Reflections Info Systems

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the managing director of IT service reliability at Khan Bank, the largest retail bank in Mongolia.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Reflections Info Systems?

All IT-related systems have become more complex, and it’s difficult to recover when issues happen. As a result, we needed to implement an SRE (site reliability engineering) team to reduce recovery time. In May 2023, our bank introduced its own e-wallet system, and we needed an SRE team to maintain it. We tried to build the SRE team ourselves from May–December 2023, but we faced issues because Mongolia didn’t have SRE engineers, and we didn’t have a role model. As a result, we reached out to Reflections Info Systems.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Reflections Info Systems helped us acquire the skill set, training, and knowledge for the SRE team. We developed the e-wallet system internally, and their team helped us with its reliability. Before working with them, we didn’t have an SRE team. We had application engineers, system engineers, database engineers, and network engineers. However, the SRE team would be responsible for the end-to-end management of the e-wallet system. If an issue happened, the SRE engineer could handle it and recover the system as quickly as possible.

During the project, Syam, one of their engineers, came to our bank and worked on-site for a month. He collected all the necessary information and interacted closely with our SRE team. Additionally, we had several meetings with him and got his thoughts. They've also shared their experience and comments from other running projects.

Two years ago, they also worked with our IT architecture and data department for three months. After that, they provided several recommendations, including implementing SD-Wan for remote branches. We spent a huge amount of money on operational costs for network connection because we had more than 500 branches across Mongolia, and 324 of them were located in small towns.

What is the team composition?

We had five team members in the SRE team, including one senior member and four engineers.

How did you come to work with Reflections Info Systems?

They had already worked with us in the past, and they had SRE engineers. I reached out to them and asked them to get involved in this project.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $25,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We reached out to them in December 2023, and it took Reflections Info Systems three months to build the team. However, we're still using that team.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Reflections Info Systems’ work helped us reduce our operational costs. Once we implemented the recommendations for our remote branches, our network-related operational costs were reduced by three times. 

How did Reflections Info Systems perform from a project management standpoint?

The Reflections Info Systems team worked professionally. I didn’t get involved in the everyday activities of the project. I had weekly meetings with them, and everything fit the timeline. When issues happened, they raised them as soon as possible, and we worked to resolve them quickly. For project management, we followed a waterfall methodology. Our bank typically uses the Agile methodology, but the waterfall methodology was more suitable for this project.

Are there any employees from the service provider's team that you would like to give a shout-out to in this review?

I would like to give a shout-out to Bayarmagnai, our senior SRE engineer.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Mongolia is a small country, and we don’t have such expertise in the IT area. Still, Reflections Info Systems was able support a broad range of IT-related services. They worked with the IT architecture and data department and the IT production and service management department.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t see any areas of improvement. I’m happy about my work with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I definitely recommend working with them. Once they’re involved in a project, they work professionally and are highly responsible.