How Dubai Bank prospered through client-centric business intelligence powered by SQL Server.

1. Microsoft SQL Server
Customer Solution Case Study
Customer-Centric BI Enhances Bank’s
Capability for Better Business Insights and
Decision Making
Customer: Dubai Bank “BI constantly re-aligns its strategy with Bank’s
Website: https://www.dubaibank.ae/
Customer Size: 700+ enterprise strategy, thus leveraging the investments in
Country or Region: United Arab
Emirates
data and systems to provide easy-to-use information
Industry: Banking that improves decision making throughout the
Customer Profile organization.”
Established in 2002, Dubai Bank is a Afzal Ibrahim, BI Lead, Dubai Bank
Shari'a-compliant bank with 700+
employees. The bank offers a wide range The ability to capture and analyse information quickly gathered
of services and products to its private from numerous customer touch points and operational systems
and corporate clients. Its headquarters is
located in Dubai. is key for Dubai Bank. Having a business intelligence (BI) solution
provides easy-to-use information that improves decision making
Software and Services
 Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
throughout the bank. A flexible and structured information
− Microsoft SQL Server 2005 architecture that links customer and account information
− Microsoft SQL Server 2005
Integration Services (SSIS) provides a composite customer and portfolio view. Through BI,
 Microsoft Technologies the bank can detect patterns, relationships and trends.
− Microsoft SQL Server Reporting
Services 2005
Business Needs the regulatory reporting requirements
With more than 23 branches spread across mandated by the UAE Central Bank, given
the United Arab Emirates, Dubai Bank has this lack of standardized management
lacked the means to capture information information setup.
contained in its system. Most information
was spread across departments and Furthermore, it was no easy task obtaining
branches. this information. In many cases, when an
employee needed specific information, the
Crucial data such as credit card and only available source seemed to be their
For more information about other customer information was scattered over respective MIS department. This situation
Microsoft customer successes, please visit: many different systems. Additionally, the has also been cumbersome for
www.microsoft.com/casestudies bank have had difficulty complying with management as well, as they needed clear

2. insights on the state of business, which was also enable the bank to manage effectively always on strategy and alignment to
not possible without requesting time- ROI and risks as well as to identify existing business goals. This helped us focus on
consuming and complicated reporting from opportunities,” says Afzal Ibrahim. using data to support the business
their employees. Not to mention that the processes. This also ensured getting total
bank’s reporting mechanisms displayed “We also wanted a warehouse business buy-in and support throughout
many functional limitations. management system that would be highly the DW and BI journey, says Vijay Kunnath,
scalable and could integrate with many Head of Business Solution.
Afzal Ibrahim, BI lead at Dubai Bank, different platforms and databases,” he
explains: “We had three different systems adds. Better Business Decision Making
housing customer data, it was however The main goal has always been to provide
impossible to consolidate it from these “Finally, we also needed to use a data- the ability to access and process data from
sources into a single report. Consequently, a storage and a reporting tool that would different sources. Key functionalities such
user needed to generate a separate report enable us to consolidate our data, extract as cross-sell analytics, branch profitability,
from each system and somehow try to decision-making information using customer profitability, scorecards and
compile this information in a meaningful advanced analytics and finally make it performance management enables
display, and ultimately present data using available in a single portal to our users. management to make better informed
an Excel spreadsheet.” Naturally, the interface had to be highly decisions. It also provides a 360 view of
user-friendly.” customer, their interactions with various
Branches used to use folders containing touch points, thus enabling spend and
source files from which reports were being Since Dubai Bank leveraged many of behavior analysis, identifying potential
generated daily. These reports however, Microsoft’s technologies, it had been customers and creates cross-sell
could only display daily results instead of essential that the solution would be cost- opportunities.
flexibly rendering different longer reporting effective and integrates seamlessly with
periods. Additionally, employees had no existing infrastructure. Report Generation in Record Time
option of running advanced analytics on One of the pain points that the project
these folders to extract required “We looked at all possible options in the sought to address was the extraordinarily
information. Generating relevant figures market, and ultimately realized that the long time and amount of effort it took to
and statistics was, in fact, a very time- best approach is in integrating several generate reports.
consuming job caused much frustration Microsoft technologies with a third-party
among employees and mostly among solution. We had selected Microsoft SQL “It was not unusual for a bank employee to
managers. Server 2005, Microsoft Reporting Services spend several hours or even a day just to
2005, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 come up with a single report. Now, they
This long-lasting situation compelled upper Integration Services (SSIS) and IBM Cognos can generate a report with all the
management to find a solution. to help us reach our business target,” says necessary data in minutes,” says Afzal
Shilpa Mathew, BI Architect. Ibrahim.
Solution
The IT department, together with Dubai Benefits “Now, users can generate the report
Bank CFO as the project sponsor, started Just several months after its themselves either through a canned report
the search for an effective solution. implementation, the bank is reaping the or create a report using self-service BI
benefits of the solution. capabilities,” he adds.
“The project had several objectives. First of
all, there was a strong need to capture “What has helped our BI in delivering value One Portal for Data and Report
information quickly and accurately. This to business has been a proper framework Generation
would enable top management to make and governance that we put in place right Since information was scattered
strategically aligned decisions to the bank's in the beginning. We did not use data- throughout the bank and its branches, one
strategy leveraging such information. warehouse for just tactical and operational of the tasks that employees dreaded was
Furthermore, having such visibility would reporting, instead the emphasis was
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS
SUMMARY.
Document published June 2012

3. going through so many folders and files in 8 hours to 2 hours (SSIS) using Six Sigma Microsoft SQL Server 2005 to deal with
order to create a report. techniques. The capabilities and strength database management, Microsoft SSIS
of SSIS helped to translate the 2005 for data migration and integration,
“We realized that we needed to consolidate optimization approach of Six Sigma Microsoft Reporting Services 2005 for its
all our data from all possible sources and techniques,” says Shilpa Mathew, BI report processing and management
allow our users access to this information architect who, with a team of ETL capabilities and IBM Cognos for other
using only a single portal. That way, they architects led this initiative. features. This has proven to be an
could focus in doing their jobs and not excellent decision,” says Faizal Eledath, CIO
waste their time hunting for information. Efficient and Robust Self-Service BI of Dubai Bank.
Furthermore, our users find the portal easy Combining the features of three Microsoft
to use. Besides, we use MS technologies technologies together with IBM Cognos, “Business Intelligence initiative has
such as .Net and IIS to host this portal.” has given the bank a much more powerful significantly enhanced bank’s capability in
analysis solution. gaining customer insight and decision
Shorter ETL (Extract, Transform and making. The platform has empowered the
Load) Time “We wanted the best of all possible worlds, business to carry out deep analytics on
“One of the key achievements we’ve had and we wanted to leverage off the various aspects of the business without the
was to conduct an extensive optimization strength of each of these technologies. We intervention of IT,” he adds.
technique to bring down the ETL time from believed that we would achieve it by using
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS
SUMMARY.
Document published June 2012