29 September 2008

Based in Istanbul, DenizBank originated as a state-owned bank in 1938, recommencing operations as a private entity after Zorlu Holding acquired it from the Turkish Government’s Privatisation Administration in 1997. Since October 2006, DenizBank has been a part of European financial group Dexia Group. It has become one of the largest private banks in Turkey, offering a wide range of financial services to all segments of society under a single umbrella, Denizbank Financial Services Group.

“Providing customers who have different needs and expectations with the best service at the right time brings loyalty as well,” says Hakan Ates, CEO of DenizBank and president of DenizBank Financial Services Group. “Structuring the organisation and business processes in a customer-centric manner and spreading the agility to meet expectations through customer relations, technology and organisational levels is essential.”

DenizBank’s rapid growth, and the wide range of customers it had to serve via a variety of different channels, meant that it needed the support of agile, secure, scalable and cost-effective technology. The bank asked its daughter company, Intertech, to develop an integrated banking platform, including core banking applications, to fit its needs. “We decided to develop a new banking solution through a technology that would enable management and improvement of processes and support rapid product delivery from all distribution channels,” says Murat Çelik, deputy general manager for core banking technologies at Intertech.

After tests and analysis to measure performance, scalability, security and needs for integration with the bank’s other systems, Intertech decided that Microsoft technologies provided the best solution. The company developed inter-Next, a fully Web-based banking platform built on a service-oriented architecture (SOA), and a decision was made to implement the solution at DenizBank.

“We had developed four different banking applications running on different platforms; and this enabled us to compare different platforms in terms of their advantages and disadvantages,” says Çelik. “Microsoft Turkey supported us entirely during the analysis, decision-making and development process. We conducted system testing with Microsoft in Seattle, and noticed that the beta version of SQL Server could process as many transactions in eight hours as our core banking system could handle in a year; .NET enabled us to establish a three-layer SOA infrastructure, and we separated user interface and application layer, increased common object usage, and reduced development times. Moreover, our application layer created a joint infrastructure that can be used across all channels.”

Based on a customer process management (CPM) approach, inter-Next links enterprise marketing strategy to core banking processes and allows banks to drive business aligned with customer needs and expectations. A financial data warehouse consolidates data accumulated during daily operations, enabling knowledge to be driven from consolidated and centralised data to feed front-office applications for dynamic access to decision support models and turning operational staff into a fully-equipped sales force.

inter-Next’s process-oriented infrastructure and integrated decision support systems have enabled DenizBank to maximise its sales time and drive down its routine operational workload with process automation. “We have achieved six times greater sales rates using sales force automation solutions which are enriched with predictive analysis and embedded in inter-Next,” says Ates. “We feel much more safe when we’re planning our growth strategies.”

In 2004, DenizBank was named the fastest and most consistently growing bank in Southern Europe, and the fifth fastest-growing bank in Europe, by The Banker magazine. In 2005, The Banker ranked it as the eighth highest mover in terms of Tier-1 growth among the top 1,000 world banks. At the end of 2007, with 320 branches and over 7,000 employees, DenizBank was Turkey’s sixth biggest privately owned bank according to asset size.

Intertech now provides IT system operation and management services to all of the DenizBank Financial Services Group, and its solutions are running in the Arab-Turkish Bank, Eurobank Tekfen, DenizBank Turkey, DenizBank Vien AG and Dexia Moscow.

inter-Next has delivered several key benefits, including improved customer satisfaction through high-quality, standardised products and offers that are tailored to customers’ requirements and cash flows. The SOA-based architecture enables flexible product design, providing business agility and speeding up time to market.

The ability to structure, automate, perform and optimise business processes in a customer-oriented manner has enhanced operational efficiency, and agility has been extended to every level of the organisation with lower training costs. In addition, a financial data warehouse has been built to enhance data management and provide an integrated management environment, improving support for decision-making.

DenizBank is able to provide 24/7 financial services through all of its distribution channels, independent of business growth, because the solution and infrastructure can scale according to its needs. With no need for client deployment, a high integration capability and speedy implementation, the solution has a low total cost of ownership.

These capabilities enable customers to preserve and enhance brand value and differentiate themselves from their competitors by providing an integrated banking environment where they can perform, measure, analyse and restructure their services and act quickly on new business opportunities.

This article first appeared in the 2008 edition of the Finance on Windows Partner Guide.

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