National Australia Bank invests in an efficient, cloud-managed future with Windows 11 Enterprise

Adopting new technology to support global expansion

National Australia Bank (NAB), Australia’s second-largest bank, is expanding rapidly to new geographies. While a growing footprint is good news for the business, rapid expansion creates unique challenges. “Our technology services need to work in 15 countries and, as we now encompass a global workforce, we need to be able to manage that workforce from one central environment,” says Greg Farmer, GM for Workplace Technology at National Australia Bank. 

The journey is one of modernization, upgrading the bank’s legacy technology services and infrastructure, while also maintaining security with regular patches and updates. And the bank wanted to adopt an evergreen, cloud-first approach to stay at the forefront of IT. NAB needed an enterprise platform that could reduce the complexity and cost of device management, increase security and compliance of endpoints, enable faster and smoother deployments and updates, and enhance the flexibility of its workforce.

Deploying Windows 11 Enterprise in 23 days

Wanting to move quickly to upgrade its security and endpoint management, NAB had already adopted Microsoft Edge browser as well as Microsoft Intune—with successful results. So when Windows 11 Enterprise was initially released in the fall of 2021, the bank adopted it right away. “Our goal around Windows 11 Enterprise was to deploy at speed,” Farmer says. “We pride ourselves on our ability to hit the market very quickly with our products and services. We deployed Windows 11 Enterprise within 23 days of it being released into the public realm.” NAB was well placed to adopt the new technology because of a prior commitment to becoming cloud managed, staying up to date with the latest patches, and completing preliminary app testing of previous versions. Today, with Windows 11 Enterprise, NAB continues to stay up to date and incorporates patches as soon as they are available. The new solution helped NAB achieve more flexibility for its workforce of more than 38,000 colleagues, plus about 50,000 corresponding physical and virtual endpoints.

NAB used Microsoft Intune to simplify endpoint management and monitor device compliance. “We manage over 60,000 endpoints with Intune,” says Farmer “We moved from Windows 11 Enterprise E3 to E5 three years ago and it’s provided significant uplift to the bank.” Andrew Zahradka, Head of Workplace Compute Technology at National Australia Bank, adds. “That has freed up our team to take on a wide range of new tasks that are better for us and add more business value overall.” And, after a series of acquisitions, NAB used Windows 11 Enterprise to bring new employees into the fold quickly. “Being cloud managed we don't have a requirement for corporate network,” says Zahradka. “New employees are able to be provided a device remotely and able to use that device login, connect to NAB systems and get up and running straight away.”

As for any financial institution, security was top of mind for NAB when selecting new technology. The combination of Windows 11 Enterprise and Microsoft Intune matched the bank’s requirements for a highly secure environment. “Security is the top priority at our banks,” says Farmer. “Our customers need to have trust in the services that we offer and believe that their data and money are safe and secure.” On this point, Windows 11 delivered. “Windows 11 gave us additional security features that helped us keep all of our data within our Microsoft ecosystem,” Farmer explains. 

Saving time and improving employee experiences 

One of the features of Windows 11 that received significant positive feedback was Windows Hello for Business. “Windows Hello is a great benefit in terms of time saved for our employees,” says Jess Gordon, Subdomain Lead for Retail in Technology at National Australia Bank. “If they do forget their password, instead of spending five minutes on the phone with the support desk, they can log in straight away using biometrics.” And Windows 11 addresses accessibility needs at the bank as well. “We have a lot of colleagues who use Live Captions when they're streaming video, and now they have additional accessibility support to make the most of them,” says Gordon.

Ease of use has translated to time savings for IT teams as well—fewer incidents mean employees can be more productive and proactive. “We have fewer problems, which means there are fewer people calling on our services, which enables us to manage technology more productively for all of our colleagues across the globe,” says Farmer. And a more intuitive experience helps all employees work more effectively. “For Windows 11 specifically, things have become faster and easier to find,” says Gordon. “What that means for the organization and for our NAB people is that they can spend more time with our customers, which is really what matters to them.”

Improving flexibility has had a big impact on employee experiences too. "Back before our IT modernization, we were very office-based,” says Farmer. “Our technology was built around in-office networks and the approach was quite rigid. It was a requirement to be very close to a physical office.” Today, NAB has boosted employee satisfaction scores, in large part due to its technology modernization efforts with Microsoft Intune and Windows 11 Enterprise. “The new desktop environment comes up with really high scores and is a significant contributor to employee satisfaction. We get a lot of kudos for it,” says Farmer.

Looking toward AI assistance with Copilot

With Windows 11 Enterprise firmly set up at NAB, the stage is set to respond to customer and employee needs faster, more securely and more efficiently. An early adopter of Copilot for Microsoft 365, NAB has used it for daily productivity and data analysis and insights.

In addition to productivity benefits from drafting emails and summarizing documents, one of the most promising areas where Copilot shows potential is around analyzing data—a time-consuming and exhaustive task for engineering teams at NAB. “One of the things I think will be the most profitable is that our engineering colleagues finally gets the ability and the access to review huge amounts of data," says Zahradka. With Microsoft Copilot for Security, NAB engineers can work through millions of security event logs and avoid the “analysis paralysis” that comes with sifting through such an overwhelming amount of data. “Having Microsoft Copilot for Security running over the top allows our engineers to ask really important questions and get answers, especially within Microsoft Intune and how we manage our endpoints.” Zahradka says. “We are looking forward to the Copilot services and features that are coming with all the different product sets. This represents a huge growth opportunity for us.”

Looking back on a successful deployment

The Windows 11 deployment has helped NAB realize its cloud-first ambitions, and it has provided a wide range of benefits. For Farmer, the simplicity of the new environment is one of Windows 11 Enterprise’s defining features. “The biggest return on investment for our Windows 11 Enterprise deployment has been around the simplicity of our environment,” he says. “We’ve got everyone on a standard platform, which helps us reduce our cost of management.”

Beyond direct cost and management benefits, the successful deployment is improving life for both employees and customers. “The decision to embrace Windows 11 Enterprise has provided flexibility for our colleagues, enabled us to attract more talent, and given us the capability to provide a really good colleague experience, which transposes to a great customer experience,” says Farmer.

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