Leading Greek financial services brand embraces a digital future in the cloud

Greek financial services leader Eurobank has chosen Microsoft as its main delivery partner for a major shift in how it interacts with customers, shares information and content internally, and uses real-time data. The transformation is being achieved by three linked strategic projects conducted in close partnership across the group. This includes a total refresh of its customer-facing website, a rebuild of the staff intranet and aggressive use of modern data analytics and Business Intelligence capabilities, says Eurobank. 

“Our journey started in 2015, when we both acknowledged that digital transformation would be a game-changer for our bank and that going digital was the only way to cater for our customers’ constantly evolving behaviors, needs and preferences,” states group Chief Operating Officer, Stavros Ioannou, who heads the strategy’s delivery. “We live in an era where technology is advancing rapidly, which means banks are forced to move faster in order to stay in the game,” he adds. “Understanding our customers and being able to make data-driven decisions in order to offer them personalized experiences anytime, anywhere is at the core of our strategy - and this cannot be achieved without being digital.” 

Real changes to the way we do things

“Data-driven decisions are core to our digital transformation,” adds bank CIO, Anestis Petridis, who is in day-to-day command of digital transformation at the firm and who is in charge of a shift to greater IT effectiveness and efficiency across the group. In technology terms, he says, IT at Eurobank is now based on a service-oriented approach, utilizing both SaaS and PaaS, as well as a build-to-order approach. Also aiding change at the bank is extensive use of SharePoint for content creation and collaboration, as well as Office 365 and Yammer for staff, aided by targeted products and service adoption.

Utilizing on-premise as well as cloud capabilities for customer profiling and segmentation, data and dashboard sharing led Eurobank to make Power BI its main tool for data visualization and self-service Business Intelligence, adds their colleague Konstantinos Tsiptsis, Head of Advanced Analytics & Campaign Management. Tsiptsis is using Power BI to perform what he calls ‘democratization’ of Business Intelligence in the bank - making powerful, real-time access to the latest information on bank performance available to all its knowledge workers. Early fruit of this labor includes a reduction of 100 previous business reports to 20, he says. “Now, Eurobank business meetings make real changes to the way we do things, as we can access the information we need in real-time - and make changes in response to that information in real-time, too.” 

“Our vision is to strengthen Eurobank’s profile as a customer-oriented organization that delivers unique and personalized experiences via an excellent, mobile-first digital offering - with a human touch,” concludes Ioannou.