Microsoft just published on its official portal a customer story brief about The Saudi Investment Bank applications of Microsoft Power BI platform. In alignment with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, The Saudi Investment Bank (SAIB) has driven its digital journey and reinforced its position as a key player in digital transformation and delivering innovative financial products and services in Saudi Arabia’s banking industry by adding Microsoft Power BI to its ecosystem of Microsoft products. This significant momentum to SAIB’s digitalization is aimed at enriching customer experience and enhancing transparency within the organization. It comes within its persistent efforts to rationalize its operations, accelerate its digital journey, improve the way of handling data as well as enhancing its understanding of customer needs, and ultimately make better informed decisions in both finance and operations.

With the swift integration of Microsoft Power BI and through segmentation of data, customer behavior is also put into perspective, leading to improved efficiency. SAIB now can carry out a better analysis of its transactions, customers’ activities and their interactions with the Bank. This enables SAIB to react quickly and efficiently, providing customers with the right products and services at the right time, thus enhancing the customer experience.

The focus on customer experience with data-enriched journeys paid off for SAIB. Customer acquisition, for example, has been greatly enhanced by leveraging Microsoft Power BI capabilities. The Bank’s performance has improved by enabling products and services up-selling to the customer base as well as providing more actionable insights on consumer behavior.

“I envision a full SAIB digital transformation strategy anchored in state of the art data visualization, analytical and predictive behavior analysis and with Microsoft as a trusted partner on this journey,” states SAIB CEO, Mr. Faisal Al-Omran. He added, “We strive to play our role on the overall digital transformation of the country by adopting the latest and most advanced technologies. With the support and guidance of the Ministry of Finance and the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority, SAIB fully understands the importance of achieving the objectives of the Financial Sector Development Program to develop a diversified and effective financial sector to support the development of the national economy”.

President of Microsoft Arabia Eng. Thamer Alharbi said, “Microsoft Arabia is keen on bolstering its strategic partnerships with Saudi Arabia's leading banking institutions like SAIB through providing them with Microsoft's revolutionary solutions and cutting-edge technologies such Microsoft Power BI, which in turn will contribute to realizing the goals of the Kingdom's Vision 2030 and seizing the opportunities offered in the digital era by the Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

Microsoft Power BI came as a natural add-on. With Microsoft Power BI, information became customizable: not only are detailed data extracts provided for heavy users, but also retail and corporate groups can access the information they specifically need based on relevance or authority.

The key success factors of Microsoft Power BI were fast time to market, intuitive system adaptation, efficient total cost of ownership and, preferably, familiar technology. After thorough investigation and scrutiny, it prevailed miles ahead of its other competitors. SAIB management also favored a familiar solution rather than introduce a new player into the Bank’s technology stack.

Microsoft Power BI allowed dashboards’ accessibility 24/7, which facilitates further transparency at SAIB. A single unified dashboard with an especially intuitive user experience eased the adoption process. Authorized users can aggregate, segregate, and go into detail without much training at all. Through such customizable reports, it enabled SAIB to enrich its understanding of the data and boost its decision-making mechanism. With enhanced visibility over data, transparency within the organization increased. Users inside the Bank, including higher management, now have access to this tool that helps them make precise, better-informed decisions. It reflects on a financial-operational level in a very positive way.

It is noteworthy that the relationship between SAIB and Microsoft is a long-lasting strategic one. SAIB’s IT ecosystem already included Microsoft Dynamics enterprise resource management and customer relationship management modules.

https://customers.microsoft.com/en-us/story/780556-the-saudi-investment-...