IRD sticks to Prismac for upgrade

By ADAM GIFFORD

Melbourne-based Prismac Systems has won the contract to upgrade the software used by Inland Revenue to process 6.5 million cheques a year.

IRD processing manager Alan Foubister said the new system was expected to last seven years, and the deal was worth several million dollars.

Prismac has supplied remittance-processing software to the IRD since 1988. The existing system, installed in 1995, runs on the CTOS operating system used by some Unisys hardware.

The new IRPS Enterprise remittance proof software will run on Unisys servers and workstations running the Windows 2000 operating system. Mr Foubister said that although the new software had the same features as the old one, it would be faster, and cheaper to maintain.

At the three peak times, the system will be required to process more than 80,000 cheques a day.

"It's the same equipment banks might use.

"These machines prepare our daily banking electronically and send it to Westpac," he said.

The system is going into three processing centres, the first of which will go live in February.

Prismac's main business is providing customised image work flow and back-end transaction management for the banking industry.