A business intelligence (BI) strategy implemented by Standard Bank Business Banking, a division of one of the nation's "big four" banking institutions, could generate an estimated R1 billion in new business by March.
This is according to Guy Pearce, head of customer centricity for Business Banking at Standard Bank, who says that since the deployment of a focused BI strategy this year, about R300 million in new business has been generated. The initial design and strategy implementation began in December last year.
"New business generated is about R300 million, which could increase to about R500 million by the end of the year as a result of recent internal initiatives," he told ITWeb on the sidelines of the Oracle BI City event in Rosebank yesterday.
Pearce believes that by March, about R1 billion could be made, from what he describes as a "very low" base investment of a few million, and similarly small incremental investments.
Reaching this target, he added, depends on when and how information is used, and whether the timing is right from a customer perspective.
Challenges
"Standard Bank is a great example of how BI can really add value to an organisation," added Martin Vipond, director of information risk management at KPMG, during his presentation.
The bank's BI solution, the Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, was implemented with the assistance of Navigor.
Navigor's Chris Marais, a principal analytics consultant, said the most obvious challenges with the Standard Bank deployment were implementing new technology, tight timeframes, and translating some advanced banking calculations and rules into analytics.
Benefits
The areas of focus are currently in Standard Bank Business Banking's advanced and transactional product areas, and less so in the investment side, explained Pearce.
One of the primary reasons for the excellent return on BI investment is that less experienced account executives are able to get quality sales leads (relating to business customers) "on a plate", he said. "It helps the sales executives to identify which are the priority opportunities."
Pearce told delegates that in many large organisations, it was difficult to motivate budget to get a BI strategy off the ground.
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