Real-time business intelligence in Banks

The ability to access detailed levels of information in real-time and act on that information is crucial in the region's increasingly competitive banking environment. It is no longer necessary to put all activities on hold while overnight processing takes place. Similarly, regional banks shouldn't need to stand still while spending a significant amount of time trying to find the right information on customers and the bank's business before making decisions.

Today, senior financial services management around the Middle East, including CEOs, receive and work from consolidated information that must first be extracted from different applications and data sources. This poses two main problems: the consistency of data cannot be guaranteed; and the time it takes to consolidate that data means it is not always up to date.

Collection and compatibility
The answer is to bring all the customer and enterprise-wide business data together. For both regional and international banks doing business here, this data consolidation needs to be done across all operations in the Middle East. One challenge is to include in this rationalisation exercise all data from disparate systems that are often incompatible. With the right integration technology, however, this can be achieved.

The ideal situation for a bank is to have each customer stored only once (with back-up of course) and to have all that customer data available with just a single mouse click. From a central hub, customer data from all channels - internet banking, call centre and branches - should be instantly available. Even though this kind of availability is important, true customer centricity is not about human intervention, but rather the ability to automate processes based on centralised customer information.

This is true business intelligence. Senior managers now have all the information available from different systems to use this for activities such as revenue and cost analysis or forecasting. But more importantly, any other process within the bank can access and act on this information. Decision makers can run sales activities and marketing campaigns based on timely, accurate information. And processes become more accurate and efficient as centralised customer-centric information boosts straight-through processing.

Products vs customers
Despite the popularity, in theory, of banks becoming more customer-centric, too many banks operating in the Middle East today still have their data organised around products instead of customers. Yet many organizations have nonetheless committed to comprehensive sales, marketing, service and relationship management solutions without first putting in place the knowledge structure they need.

Banks in this situation will find that analysing at the portfolio level and applying averages usually bears little relation to customers' needs. Without an appropriate and coherent data platform, they don't have the capabilities needed to leverage knowledge for profit.

Ideally, regional banks want to identify segments of customers by their behaviour, and understand the resulting value. They need answers to questions such as 'Which products generate the most value, and through what channels?', 'What makes them profitable?', 'What is the best way to sell products?' and 'Which sales force is most effective?'. This is the kind of valuable, locally-produced information upon which banks can make accurate, successful strategic decisions.

Crucial questions
There are even more complex questions that can be asked and the answers can provide important insight to senior management. These include: 'What would happen to profitability and customer satisfaction if the bank stopped selling a particular product in branches?' and 'What is the optimal product mix to offer through which channel?'.

The technology that can answer these questions will increasingly become a strategic tool used frequently by top management. As more banks doing business in the Middle East implement the latest business intelligence tools available on the market, it will become common for a wide range of information about the business and its customers to be monitored in real time, just as stock prices are today. In many cases, weekly or even daily reporting will not be enough.

And in order to achieve this, the goal must be to ensure data consistency with one logical source of data that meets both analytical and operational requirements to produce a single version of truth. And once this truth is established, senior bank management will realise
that the value of information comes not from having it, but from using it.

The Middle East financial services sector is then likely to divide into two categories - those banks that can make decisions more quickly from a single instance of data, and those that cannot. It's highly likely that the former group will be more competitive, more profitable, and therefore, more successful in the long term.