Improving the industry… product by product

With the movement towards a technology driven world gaining momentum, big data storage is becoming a significant consideration for companies. The effective administration and storage of this data offers many advantages to companies.

There is a growing movement towards storing your data on cloud computing forums, which has created a paperless industry whereby information is accessible at the click of a button and is updated in real time.

But there are very few systems which are designed for specific markets. This is of particular concern in the South African context as the upcoming Protection of Private Information (POPI) act states that at least one copy of any documentation needs to be stored within our borders before it is stored internationally.

A landmark service to local industry

Qmulus is a cloud based data management system tailored for the South African financial services and insurance industry, with backups made on servers based in South Africa. Designed by Automated Product Development, Qmulus allows users to synchronise documents to the Cloud with minimum effort and to store data in a format which is consistent with a company’s current record keeping practices. The system will automatically, once a document or record is synchronised to Qmulus, keep copies of every version of the document or record for traceability purposes.

“All intermediaries are subject to the rigorous prescriptions by the Financial Services Board regarding record keeping and the newly promulgated POPI Act dealing with data storage and processing. Qmulus is aimed at facilitating compliance with these requirements and will ensure that professionals’ records are not only properly kept, but are also backed up against loss of data which they store on site,” says Qmulus Marketing and Sales Executive, Anton Oberholzer.

Usability is a breeze

One of the key features of any technology based system is that it needs to be user friendly. Oberholzer says that this is guaranteed as the system has been designed to suit the unique needs of stakeholders who will have clients with completely different profiles and needs.

Qmulus is set up in such a way that the user has access to a web portal where he/she can view, add or alter records. The advantage of Qmulus, however, is that it does not operate permanently on the web portal. The major benefit of this is that the user will be able to continue operating as normal and Qmulus will automatically back that data up into the cloud, since the data is synced to Qmulus.

“For most practitioners, a barrier to using any cloud-based back-up system is clearly the issue of getting all the existing data into the cloud. Qmulus allows the user to decide what level of sophistication is appropriate to his/her needs, which makes the process as easy or as
difficult as you, the user, can handle,” says Oberholzer.

This translates at the least sophisticated level into taking a decision to upload all existing data in one unstructured lump. A more sophisticated, and recommended way to handle the data would be to create a client contact for each client and to synchronise each client’s data to
that specific client. The most sophisticated approach, and one which allows the practitioner to get the most benefit from Qmulus, is to synchronise the data per client, but also to sort it into the different data categories so that future retrieval is simplified.

Affordable pricing model

Unlike international products, Qmulus is offered on a monthly subscription basis where you will have access to the site with 10GB of storage space. Additional storage comes at an additional cost.

Oberholzer adds that all upgrades, maintenance fixes and updated versions are seamlessly delivered to the customer as part of the ongoing monthly subscription. There is no fee increase for any of these improvements.

This product will no doubt better the industry as we have seen poor paperwork and no record keeping playing a role in a number of determinations made by industry Ombudsmen.