Nedcor Retail Division of Nedbank implements R11m SAS BI, data warehouse solution

The Retail Division of Nedcor, one of SA's big four banks, has invested R11 million over three years in SAS Institute analytical business intelligence solutions that will give its Retail Division a truly client-centric view of all aspects of its business.

The solutions, which include a data warehouse, data mining, business modelling, balanced scorecard, and financial and portal applications, are expected to dramatically increase the speed to market of new data projects and create seamless interfaces between applications.

The bank's previous data warehouse solution was very costly, and time to market to deliver a project was about one year.

"This was primarily due to the antiquity of the tools, which simply could not deliver the turnaround we required," says Simon Marland, senior manager: Retail, at Nedcor.

"The warehouse is really the core of all our business intelligence projects, and the SAS solution - with its point and drag/copy and paste functionality - is really simple and quick to use. It enables us to bring all our products together and to create a truly client-centric view of them, which is 100% aligned to the bank's vision and stated strategy of focusing on customers - serving existing clients and acquiring new ones."

According to Marland, teamwork between the Retail Division of Nedcor and SAS resources, coupled with the complete buy-in of the Nedcor business users who would ultimately benefit from the project, enabled a new datamart to be created within just three months.

"This is believed to be a world record for a project of this nature. We converted our old, primarily relational database structure, built new architecture and mapping and then developed a cross-sell and a credit datamart.

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"SAS Data Mining, the business intelligence that sits on top of the warehouse, gives us the power to truly understand our customers and their behaviour," Marland continues.

"Many organisations have access to information about components of their clients. However, if they are missing credit or financial components, for example, they could be missing a critical part of the whole picture. We want a single, holistic view of each client so we can serve them better. This will also enable us to better identify target markets, pinpoint unprofitable clients, establish what our clients want from us going forward and test our hypotheses about customers."

In addition, the data mining project will also enable the bank to understand channel usage, how to migrate clients to alternative channels, and how customers react to pricing changes.

"Feedback loops help us track our decisions," says Marland. "Analysis, decision-tracking and feedback ensure we don't make the same mistakes twice, and enable us to quantify decisions in terms of rands and cents."

The bank also implemented SAS Financials, which is now being used by the financial officers within Nedcor Retail for reporting, consolidation and budgeting. The division had also been looking for an engine for its profitability model, and SAS Financials will be used for the complex process of measuring profitability.

The balanced scorecard or strategic performance management solution project is scoped, and will be completed by year-end to replace the Retail Division's manual scorecards. Once implemented, the Retail Division will gain an intuitive, strategic snapshot of the state of the business at any point in time.

"The entire SAS solution will go a long way to accomplishing strategy in retail," says Marland. "Scorecarding is all about responsibility, accountability and focus. We will be able to view the division as a whole, seeing at a glance where we are doing well, and where we need to focus. It is a total performance management system, and once we understand where the problems are, we can fix them."