How does your data fit together?

As Manager Concern Controller at Rabobank, John Lambrechts was assigned to implement chain management to improve the bank’s ability to quickly gain insights from information coming from its chains or groups and improve decision making. The Rabobank Group, a leading global financial services provider serving more than 10 million customers and headquartered in The Netherlands, wanted to optimize its operations by improving the financial and collaborative alignment across its chains.

We are much more flexible in our ability to provide information and direct our chain managers more effectively. Our people have become more engaged because they can quickly see the results of what they do.

John Lambrechts
Manager Concern Control


Lambrechts explains, “The first step we took to properly set this up, was to look at the data available and to determine how this could be viewed. We discovered that there was an enormous amount of data available from all groups of the bank’s organizational chain such as departments, business units and local branches. We needed one system to integrate and structure all the information efficiently and provide the ability to share results.”

New insights

Lambrechts found data visualization to be the perfect match.

“Data visualization lets us analyze large amounts of data. The diverse visual options lead us to ask new questions that we had not asked before,” said Lambrechts. “We are much more flexible in our ability to provide information and direct our chain managers more effectively. Our people have become more engaged because they can quickly see the results of what they do.”

Rabobank developed new cost and chain models with partner Finext and implemented SAS Visual Analytics. “The bank also created a new data scientist job function for banking chain specialists. These specialists can probe the data more extensively, evaluate cost backgrounds, and establish relationships and causes.”

Because of the resulting transparency, Rabobank can see exactly who does what within the chain and which areas must be tightened to optimize the profit of the chain. And although the solution is scalable to the number of users, the banking group is using it in a strictly controlled environment to standardize how information is provided to chain managers and organizational leaders.

Positive outcomes

“I am extremely proud of what we have achieved so far. We have seen an increase in our managers’ use of chain information,” says Lambrechts.

“Another important outcome has been the removal of boundaries between the chains and the motivation to develop new thought processes. In the past, for example, departments would look within to find cost savings. But this type of siloed action was sub-optimal and not always in the organization’s best interests. With the knowledge and access to all chain information, we are able to let go of old business models and replace them with more dynamic ones.”

Challenge

Improving how information is retrieved and shared from all groups within Rabobank’s organizational chains to optimize operations and make faster decisions.

Solution

SAS® Visual Analytics

Benefits

  • A centralized view of information about the bank’s organizational chains for improved financial and collaborative alignment.
  • A dynamic organization where the boundaries between departments and business components are removed and chain information is embraced by decision makers.


The results illustrated in this article are specific to the particular situations, business models, data input, and computing environments described herein. Each SAS customer’s experience is unique based on business and technical variables and all statements must be considered non-typical. Actual savings, results, and performance characteristics will vary depending on individual customer configurations and conditions. SAS does not guarantee or represent that every customer will achieve similar results. The only warranties for SAS products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements in the written agreement for such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Customers have shared their successes with SAS as part of an agreed-upon contractual exchange or project success summarization following a successful implementation of SAS software. Brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.