Most data warehousing projects will bring huge investment. For example, the Nordbanken bank, a European lender, spent 100 million euros to build a data warehouse system for data unification across regions and business units.
However, in the face of the same business challenges, another European bank, UniCredit, has taken a radically different approach.
"Our philosophy is to look for space in other projects, and if any other project is released, we will take the opportunity to innovate," UniCredit chief financial officer Criscito Ambrisi said in an interview. ”
For example, a data Warehouse project can take advantage of the opportunity to upgrade the banking platform. Over the past 2-3 years, UniCredit has adjusted commercial banking platforms in Germany and Austria. Ambrisi says the team uses the project to build a part of the architecture.
"With the upgrade of the banking platform, we can build the Data warehouse system according to different regions and different components." We will not spend a lot of money on one-off projects, our approach is to rely on other projects to gradually complete the building of the Data Warehouse. "Ambrisi said.
It is understood that UniCredit is the eighth largest bank in Europe, with its business spanning 22 countries, with a total of 9,300 branch stations and 156,000 employees.
UniCredit, director of data governance Roberto Monachino, said the Data Warehouse project was able to find its own space when other projects were in place because it was closely related to the CFO's priorities. "It's a matter of governance," he said. From the CFO perspective, he first needs to govern the financial process. Then decide on the priority. Other IT projects need to meet our requirements because we have given them priority. It's important that I get involved in the business because I think the improvement in data management requires new technologies to support it. ”
Before building the Data Warehouse, UniCredit made the "golden rule" of profitability. This rule sets the generic name for all products, KPIs, and when to adopt KPIs.
Monachino said: "This is very important before the data management project is deployed, and without it, the data warehouse is technically a solution." ”
The project extracts data from the legacy system and then puts it into a centralized environment, the CFO Data Warehouse. Such consolidation enables cost savings while improving data consistency. The TB Data Warehouse stores details of 5 million contracts.
Based on the new Data Warehouse, the company also developed a successful pricing application for customers. Monachino said: "More than 600 users are in the simulation pricing." The account manager can use it to make a capital preservation plan for a particular customer and achieve the goal at the lowest price. ”
(Responsible editor: Fumingli)