Competency center drives return on BI investments at Nedbank

Nedbank Retail in South Africa set up a Business Intelligence Competency Center (BICC) to maximize the return on investment from a 52-terabyte data store and its business intelligence software. The BICC has helped accelerate project execution by up to a factor of five. 

BICC helps retain the best and brightest
Part of the Old Mutual Group, Nedbank offers a wide range of wholesale and retail banking services through three primary business clusters: Nedbank Corporate, Nedbank Capital and Nedbank Retail. 

Nedbank Retail is organized around key product lines (card, home loans, personal loans, banking/insurance and wealth, asset-based finance and transactional banking). In 2005, the division reported headline earnings of SAR 938 million (€106 million) and advances of SAR 86 billion (€9.4 billion). It currently has more than 3 million customers. 

In 2002, Nedbank Retail started integrating data with SAS to provide a 360-degree view of the customer based on information collected from its transactional systems. Since then, Nedbank has built one of the largest data stores in South Africa, with 52 terabytes of data, 30 data marts and a range of advanced applications serving 9,000 users. 

This represented a significant capital investment, and the challenge was to maximize the return on that investment. With the application of SAS business intelligence software, Nedbank has sought to leverage its information assets – for example, by cross-selling and up-selling more effectively to its customers. These successes have fed the demand for the rapid implementation of SAS in other areas of the business. 

People are key
However, it is one thing to have the technical infrastructure in place; it is quite another to have people with the right mix of technical, analytical and business skills to make the most of world-class business intelligence software. It became increasingly clear to Nedbank that it needed a BICC to ensure that the “people piece” of the puzzle fitted together with the knowledge processes, technology infrastructure and organizational culture. 

The BICC has now been in existence for three years, and currently employs 12 staff with specialist skills in data analysis, business analysis and management information systems. Some work in the central BICC organization, while others are out working on projects in the user departments. 

Simon Marland, Chief Information Officer at the Nedbank Retail division, strongly believes that business intelligence is about delivering value to the business. He explains the rationale behind the BICC: “The chief financial officer needs to measure return on investment and wants to see the direct financial benefits of information technology. Whereas management information systems (MIS) will tell the CFO how well the company has done in the past, the specific promise of business intelligence is that it will help the organization to perform better in the future. 

“However, it is people that turn capital investments into value. Our main motivation in setting up the BICC was knowledge management: getting a core group of people in one place so that we could be sure of retaining key learnings and methodologies. This is the key to getting full value from technology.” 

A federal support model
The BICC has enabled Nedbank to integrate all of its SAS applications, which itself brings major productivity gains, and to adhere to IT standards while putting business benefits first. “The BICC has enabled Nedbank to achieve quick but sustainable wins on projects large and small,” says Marland. 

The BICC forms part of an extensive federal IT support model alongside the other competency centers at Nedbank within the Shared Services division. It is the job of Shared Services to assist customer groups within Nedbank Retail – such as the private banking business unit, channel managers and product owners – with their projects. According to Marland, this approach enables project managers to quickly identify the individuals who can add value and move projects forward more rapidly. 

“The BICC delivers massive value. Speed to execution is increased by a factor of four to five times,” says Marland. “This isn’t always easy to measure until you benchmark against departments in the Old Mutual Group that do not yet have competency centers. Then you see that our productivity is much, much greater because we have filled the knowledge gap. 

“The challenge in establishing a BICC is to recruit people who offer the right skills, behavior, competencies and, above all, the right attitude!” says Marland. “In particular, you must look for the kind of people who like teaching others because skills transfer is a real benefit to a service-focused organization. Such people are rare and very precious. If we recruit someone who has the right skill set and attitudes, we try to move them into the BICC at the earliest opportunity! 

“SAS helped us a lot in building our assets – it has fantastic knowledge, not just about the technology, but more importantly, the world of banking. And its reach extends worldwide – SAS is one of the best examples of a global village!” says Marland. When the BICC was first set up, SAS and Nedbank worked on a gap analysis to establish what skills were lacking, and to create a program that would enable individuals to round out their skills. “This was the most challenging aspect of the BICC project, but it has paid off,” says Marland.

“Once you have found the right people, a competency center is the ideal place for them to work, as they get the opportunity to contribute to projects across the group and serve the requirements of 9,000 users. Often these projects cut across departmental boundaries, so this gives the individuals space to grow,” says Marland.

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