Al Rajhi Bank in Saudi Arabia has embarked on a three-year project to transform its IT operations, in a bid to reduce costs and improve customer service.
The banking and investment corporation has begun a comprehensive project based on the IT infrastructure library (ITIL) standards.
ITIL provides a detailed set of guidelines for IT service management, which the bank will use to overhaul its own IT management systems.
Based on a roadmap and consultancy from Indian IT solutions provider Satyam, Al Rajhi Bank went live in April with a new helpdesk system: the first steps in the ITIL project it said will have direct savings impact for the bank and clear benefits to its customers.
The bank is using ITIL to spearhead a US$1 million face-lift of its IT management capabilities, an exercise to be fully completed by the end of 2007.
“Our goal this year was to enhance our processes, our quality, and to implement best practice in IT management. The question was how to do this,” said Saad Al-Mazroa, director of IT, Al Rajhi Bank.
“We found we had to bring some consultants in to enhance the processes and Satyam was chosen for many factors, not least its reputation,” he added.
Al Rajhi is introducing the ITIL processes for its internal systems management, which is based on CA’s Unicenter software suite. This is an infrastructure solution that provides a number of valuable management features.
This includes desktops, applications, middleware, databases, workloads, servers and networks.
However, Al-Mazroa said the bank is also talking to HP about a possible implementation of its OpenView software to cover certain applications that are not supported by Unicenter.
HP was unavailable for comment at the time of going to press.
ITIL is an integrated set of best-practice recommendations for IT service management, covering such areas as incident management, problem management, change management, release management and help- desk.
Introducing best practices, being certifiable and becoming more accountable were the key factors in Al Rajhi Bank ‘s decision to undergo its IT transformation initiative, according to Al-Mazroa.
He said that the impact of the project would be immense, but would only be fully felt when it reached the end of its 27-month roadmap with Satyam in 2007.
“There will be a major impact for the bank’s customers,” he said, pointing out that the bank would save money because it would mean less manual work,” Al-Mazroa said.
“To serve the customer you have to serve the user of the bank, who is sitting in the branch. If a customer has a problem, the teller can just open up the data system and log that,” he added.
“It allows us to improve our workflow and send it to the responsible person who can fix it immediately,” he continued.
Satyam is providing consultancy support for the project, working with Al Rajhi Bank to implement best practices and to define its internal processes.
“Primarily, this will make everything faster — and enable the workload to lessen,” said Ajith Menon, Satyam’s Middle East director.
“For Al Rajhi Bank, the benefits are very clear, according to Al-Mazroa. “We will save money,” he stated.
“First of all, we are looking at more quality of product. This will mean less manual work. So the saving will be measured, but it won’t come immediately after implementation. We will see it after successful implementation around the end of 2007.”
For Satyam, the project represents a considerable coup in the Middle East.
“It [Al Rajhi Bank] is probably one of the largest financial institutions in the region. We are very excited to be helping them with the enhancem ents of its internal systems,” he said.
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