UniCredit: empowering employees with cloud technology and collaboration tools

European bank UniCredit is committed to empowering its employees with the use of technology. But for an organization employing 87,000 people across 13 countries, this is no easy task. For years, UniCredit had to handle a wide range of IT environments across the group, which made it challenging to engage with its workforce and unlock its full potential. This all changed in 2021, when the organization launched a company-wide digital transformation program aimed at migrating to the cloud and implementing shared collaboration tools with Microsoft’s help.

“This project is more than just workplace modernization: it’s about bringing people from all over Europe together and inspiring them to work with pride and passion.”

Gabriele Chiesa, Group Head of Technology Platform at UniCredit, is describing the impact of his bank’s digital transformation initiative on its multinational workforce.

“UniCredit is a bank with Italian roots and an international footprint,” says Chiesa. “We have people in Germany, Austria, Romania, and many more European countries.”

Empowering its people to collaborate is a key priority for UniCredit – one that recently led to the launch of an extensive IT migration program aimed at introducing a unified modern workforce platform to unite all employees.

The project brings the bank’s localized IT environments under a single cloud-based, agile and dynamic environment – ultimately fostering a sense of community and collaboration amongst its international workforce.

“We want our people to feel motivated, supported and innovative,” he says. “With Microsoft, we’ve built a platform that allows us to make this happen.”

Gabriele Chiesa, Group Head of Technology Platform, UniCredit

One bank, 13 countries, six focus areas

UniCredit Group is one of Europe’s leading financial institutions, currently active in 13 global markets.

A long-term Microsoft adopter, the organization has spent the past few years embracing collaboration solutions, such as O365, Microsoft Teams and Yammer, with a view to enabling consistently more agile and modern working.

But this hasn’t been without challenges. “When I joined UniCredit, in 2021, the rollout of Office 365 was already well underway across all our divisions,” Chiesa explains. “But it was clear that something was missing.

“People were using Teams and Yammer, OneDrive and SharePoint, but never to their full potential –user experience varied dramatically from region to region.”

This was particularly the case in some of UniCredit’s Central and Eastern Europe countries – where each bank was running on localized workplace solutions.

“The CE&EE division includes a huge variety of markets, customer challenges and regulations,” explains Tina Pogacic, Chief Digital and Information Officer at UniCredit CE&EE. “This was also reflected in the architectural and IT landscape setups in each country.”

This realization ignited an idea. “We understood that if we wanted all our employees to feel confident and inspired, we needed to provide them with the right tools,” she says.

“Thankfully, Microsoft was there to help us.”

“We understood that if we wanted all our employees to feel confident and inspired, we needed to provide them with the right tools. Thankfully, Microsoft was there to help us.”

Tina Pogacic, Chief Digital and Information Officer, UniCredit CE&EE

Inside the migration journey

When they first set out on their digital workplace program, Chiesa and Pogacic had a simple goal: to migrate six UniCredit CE&EE countries’ workplace solutions to the same cloud-based single platform (or tenant) as the rest of the Group.

In particular, the project focused on implementing Microsoft Exchange Online, OneDrive for Business, Yammer, SharePoint Online, Microsoft Teams, Azure Purview, Azure Active Directory and Intune.

“From the very beginning, we found differences in the way the local environments were run that were ingrained in processes, the banks’ interactions with their customers and their ways of working,” Pogacic explains.

“Having a partner like Microsoft to guide us was fundamental,” she adds. “Their solution-oriented attitude made a world of difference.”

Tina Pogacic, Chief Digital and Information Officer, UniCredit CE&EE

A cultural transformation inspired by skilling initiatives

Started at the beginning of 2022, the project has now reached completion in most countries – and is proving transformational.

“We migrated 15,000 users to our single workplace platform in less than six months,” says Pogacic.

Leveraging local skills has been crucial to the speed of the rollout, which has been supported by an upskilling and reskilling program launched alongside the main migration. “Key to supporting our transformation was ensuring that our users were developing the necessary skills and becoming certified on our new solution to help us in the immediate rollout as well as in the future,” she says.

Pogacic emphasizes the cultural transformation the initiative has triggered. “Employees have changed the way they conceive their day-to-day,” she says. “They’re much more confident using these new solutions – collaborating, sharing documents, having brainstorming and breakout sessions.

“That’s what this project is truly about: a cultural shift that simplifies things through digitalization.”

Looking ahead

A year since the start of their migration program, Pogacic and Chiesa are now planning ahead.

“We’ve built a platform that goes beyond communication, giving people a unique experience,” says Chiesa. “Everyone can contribute, provide feedback and share insights that can be used in other countries and that’s part of why adoption rates are so high.”

This success is inspiring innovations in other parts of the business too. “We want to use what we’ve learned to enhance communication, process interaction, marketing, customer experience and more,” he says.

“It’s no longer enough to provide an app with a bank account. You must change how customers experience our platforms, book appointments, talk with their personal banker,” he concludes.

“And the extraordinary success of this initiative, coupled with the passion and commitment of our people, will no doubt help us to achieve that and more.”