Garanti Bank

Garanti BBVA Bank uses Tableau to effectively manage the digital transformation of 900 branches in just 18 months


Effective change management delivered

Self-service analytics enabled at all levels

Fast, intuitive big data analysis

Established in 1946, Garanti BBVA Bank is Turkey’s second largest private bank with consolidated assets of nearly TL 385 billion (USD 84.3 billion). As an integrated financial services group, it operates in every segment of the banking sector including corporate, commercial, SME, payment systems, retail, private and investment banking. In 2017, Garanti BBVA Bank undertook an ambitious project to transform all 900 of its branches from traditional banking locations to digitally focussed customer service centres in just 18 months. To manage this change effectively, Garanti BBVA Bank used Tableau to break down internal data silos and create a single source of truth throughout the organisation. As a result, employees at every level were able to access and visualise project data, view KPIs and self-serve their own analytics needs whenever required. Following the successful completion of the project, Tableau is now used throughout Garanti BBVA Bank for effective big data analysis, helping to determine customer needs and behaviour, as well as monitoring branch performance from both an individual and overall perspective.

By connecting Oracle, Microsoft SQL and a wide range of flat files and log files together through Tableau, we created a single source of truth for all employees, at every level of the organisation

Delivering effective change management across 900 branches

When Garanti BBVA Bank decided to undertake the ambitious project of digitally transforming its 900 banking branches in just 18 months, the team in charge knew having a reliable, central data source for all stakeholders to work from would be pivotal to success.

“Today, 92% of the non-cash financial transactions in our bank take place via digital channels and we wanted our in-branch experience to reflect that,” says Arzu Dilaver, Workforce Optimization and Service Quality Management Supervisor, Garanti BBVA Bank. “Doing so involved a complete overhaul of our branches in terms of both physical layout and customer service model, creating a seamless digital experience that replicates the services customers are already embracing online.”

“Change management is always challenging,” adds Engin Kanal, Workforce Optimization and Service Quality Management Consultant, Garanti BBVA Bank. “But with such a tight timeframe in which to complete this project, every aspect of the process needed to be as streamlined as possible.”

Before Tableau, there was no central data analytics and business intelligence function within our department. With various different BI tools and databases in use, data was fragmented across multiple local silos, making it very hard to see the complete picture; something that would be critical throughout the transformation project.

“We needed to bring everything together in one place,” says Engin. “Doing so would not only improve/inform decision making and help answer questions, it would also reduce conflict and allow all stakeholders, from senior executives to branch managers, to accurately monitor progress.”

Following an extensive review, Tableau was chosen as the primary analytics and reporting platform. In addition to unifying all disparate databases through a single, central location, its intuitive visual approach to analytics and rapid reporting capabilities made it ideal for Garanti BBVA Bank’s needs.

“By connecting Oracle, Microsoft SQL and a wide range of flat files and log files together through Tableau, we created a single source of truth for all employees, at every level of the organisation,” says Arzu. “As a result, everyone involved in the project could log into the tool at any time and be confident the reports they were looking at were both relevant and up-to date.”

Even colleagues with little to no SQL knowledge can quickly start to conduct their own analytics in Tableau, creating engaging reports and dashboards that focus on the project areas most important to them

Enabling self-service analytics at all levels of the organisation

Tableau’s ease of use also enabled employees from across the organisation to start self-serving many of their own analytics needs for the first time, rather than relying on the central analytics team to do it for them.

“In a project like this one, the information that branch managers need is very different to what C-level executives need,” says Engin. “While branch managers are naturally more interested in progress at their own location, senior executives want to see the whole project overview and quickly understand any issues that may have arisen.”

“Prior to Tableau, all of the updates and reports for these different groups would need to be created centrally, which was both time consuming and resource intensive,” adds Arzu. “Now, even colleagues with little to no SQL knowledge can quickly start to conduct their own analytics in Tableau, creating engaging reports and dashboards that focus on the project areas most important to them.”

Not only does this new approach save time for the central analytics team, it significantly speeds up time to insight for all parties involved because they no longer have to wait in line for reports to be created for them.

Furthermore, Tableau’s live connection to all key databases also means existing dashboards can be amended and updated much faster than previously possible.

“In the past, it could take several days to make relatively minor updates to reports, simply because the back-end processing took so long to complete,” says Engin. “With Tableau, it takes just a few hours, making time to insight even faster.”

Tableau lets us go deeper into the data than ever previously possible. As a result, we are able to fine tune the services we offer and use key insights to make decisions that will benefit both the bank and our millions of customers for many years to come

Effective big data analytics and visualisation improves customer service

Following the completion of the project, Tableau is now playing a key role in analysing and visualising the customer data collected each day across Garanti BBVA Bank’s 900 branches.

“After such a large-scale transformation, it’s vital for us to continually monitor customer behaviour in order to understand if they are happy with the new experience and are properly engaging with all the digital services being provided.”

Arzu cites the example of the new customer interfaces on in-branch computer terminals:

“Following recent updates, we wanted to know if customers understood the new terminal interface and menu correctly. To do this, we used Tableau to correlate the actions performed on the terminal against the original ticket the customer was issued then they came into the branch. For example, if a customer’s ticket said they wanted to make a cash transaction, we analysed whether they selected that option on the new interface and were able to successfully complete the transaction, or if the action was abandoned mid-way through.”

This level of detailed analysis has helped Garanti BBVA Bank to helping to accurately monitor customer satisfaction levels following the transformation and continually make improvements to the service, wherever needed.

“Tableau lets us go deeper into the data than ever previously possible,” concludes Engin. “As a result, we are able to fine tune the services we offer and use key insights to make decisions that will benefit both the bank and our millions of customers for many years to come.”