IT Case Study | Bank Simpanan Nasional

National Savings Bank of Malaysia gives
credit to project management solution
“The Enhanced visibility of our IT projects has improved our
efficiency because we can now see where bottlenecks occur and deal
with them more quickly.”
—Alain Boey, Senior Vice President and Head of Transformation Management Office,
Bank Simpanan Nasional
HP customer
case study
IT team streamlines
change and problem
management
projects
Objective
Industry
Financial services/
banking
Issued a Request for Information (RFI) to selected
vendors, followed by Request for Proposal (RFP) to
shortlist. Proposals were then evaluated against
pre-defined criteria
Streamline the management and delivery of
internal IT projects
Approach
IT improvements
• Improves web and workflow-based functionality
of project management, resulting in better service
for end-users
• Delivers comprehensive reporting, keeping senior
management better informed
• Simplifies approval and tracking process, thanks
to the ability to attach documents, giving everyone
involved a full picture of each project
Business benefits
• Completes IT Projects 20 percent more quickly,
resulting in swifter responses to the demands of
the business
• Increases productivity across IT team by
20 percent, enabling better service to internal
customers, in turn benefiting public-facing
operations
• Improves response time by almost 30 percent,
which increases the efficiency and productivity of
the bank’s staff
• Complements bank’s initiatives to meet industry
best practice in service management and hence
boosting corporate reputation
Bank Simpanan Nasional (BSN) started life in 1902
as a Post Office savings bank and became Malaysia’s
national savings bank in 1974.
With 384 branches throughout the country and more
than ten million customers, BSN has approximately six
million savings accounts. Its mission is ‘to improve the
economic well-being and quality of life of the Malaysian
people by actively promoting savings, investment and
sound financial management.’ Delivering new products
and improved customer management is crucial to its
continued growth.
The bank employs 6,000 people, 4,000 of whom
require access to its IT systems. A team of 200 manage
the delivery of IT to its branches. Given its rate of
expansion and the complexity of the IT environment,
BSN found it increasingly challenging to manage and
monitor change management and problem resolution
within the IT function.
Customer
solution at
a glance
Software
HP IT Performance Suite –
Strategy, Planning,
and Governance
• HP Project and Portfolio
Management/Demand
Management module
HP Services
• Annually renewable
support
“We have many disparate systems and this makes
it difficult to get information from a single source,”
explains Alain Boey, Senior Vice President and
Head of Transformation Management Office, Bank
Simpanan Nasional.
“The previous system for monitoring IT performance
was coming to the end of its support period and we
were looking for a new solution. It needed to be more
flexible, workflow-based, web-enabled and allow us
to include attachments. As our work structure gets
leaner, the system also has to be able to support
assignment of tasks to groups, as well as individuals.
“We felt that a server-based solution was not practical,
given the ongoing cost of maintenance, and most
importantly, we wanted a system that would enable
us to adopt best practices in the way we manage our
IT projects.”
Need for better visibility
BSN wanted to bring the project planning phase and
processes in line with its strategic and tactical goals
and to create a ‘pipeline’ process for the launch of new
products. It needed real-time visibility to effectively
monitor IT change and problem management requests
and to implement proper audit trails to track approvals
and rejections. The goal was to use an integrated set
of models, tools and workflows to generate real-time
project status reporting and provide better guidance
for project managers.
2
A Request for Information (RFI) was issued to selected
vendors, followed by a Request for Proposal (RFP)
to those who made the shortlist. The bank formed a
committee to evaluate solutions against pre-defined
criteria which included interfacing and maintenance
issues, functionality and IT Service Management (ITSM)
best practice. The winning solution was the Demand
Management module of HP’s Project and Portfolio
Management (PPM) suite.
“We decided to go with HP because some of the other
vendors just could not meet our criteria. Others could
meet them but the cost exceeded what we budgeted for
and there were issues concerning maintenance,” says
Boey. “The HP PPM Demand Management solution is
web-enabled and workflow-based, so we can design
workflows that suit our needs. It is easy to use and
comes laden with IT Infrastructure Library v3 (ITIL v3)
and ITSM functionality which would enable us to bring
our processes up to best practice level.”
Deadline beaten by six weeks
HP specialists played an active role in implementing
the solution and training the staff, and their efficiency
enabled the ‘go live’ date to be achieved six weeks
ahead of schedule. A subsequent evaluation revealed
that the staff were happy with their training, the
functionality of the system, and particularly, HP’s
on-line support.
HP PPM Demand Management is a valuable asset to
the IT team as Boey explains: “The tool is flexible
and easy to use. We have developed our own
management document routing system based on the
workflow engine. It provides visibility to the stages
of the process thus enhancing the transparency and
governance of the entire reporting process. The ability
of the system to attach files along the process also
reduced the possibility of missing reports-in-transit.”
The ability to attach documents within the system
is seen as an important tool for efficient project
monitoring. These documents include the original
requests and quotations from vendors which are
essential for project approvals. Previously, approvals
were done using hard copies which made it difficult
to track progress and could be lost. The Demand
Management module’s web-enablement capabilities
mean everyone can see the full picture.
“This HP system has greatly enhanced our visibility
of projects as all documents are held digitally in the
system, so there is no danger of them being lost, “ says
Boey. “Requestors can see what stage their request
is at and which actions are pending. This enhanced
visibility means efficiency has improved because we
can easily see where the bottleneck is and can follow
up more quickly. The system also includes prompts so
if you do not respond to a certain action on time, it will
continue to prompt. Because this makes people more
aware of what they are supposed to do, it makes them
more efficient and has also improved productivity.”
Overall efficiency increased
“So far, we have seen a 20 percent increase in
efficiency, or the time taken to get things done, and
we expect further improvements. The productivity
of the IT team has also increased by 20 percent,”
continues Boey.
Strategy, Planning, and Governance
Security Intelligence and Risk Management
Application
Lifecycle
Management
IT Operations
Management
Information
Management
Extensibility, Orchestration, and Analytics
Services and Support
Due to the advanced notification and tracking
functionality, the IT team’s internal customers now
see increased efficiency in services. Response times
have improved by 30 percent and although figures are
not yet available, the team confidently predicts that
its time-to-market for new projects will significantly
improve. Demand Management also allows BSM to
manage different categories of IT service requests
and to provide field-level security which ensures that
specific fields within requests can only be viewed or
updated by authorized personnel.
“HP PPM is now being very widely used for request
changes and problem management. Because of this,
we’re able to see an improvement in efficiency, the time
taken to respond to a request and our productivity.
We have also seen a big difference in our management
document routing. Now it is all done in the system, so
there is much greater visibility.
“HP has been very helpful in this project and working
with them has been a very positive experience. They
also provided us with lots of feedback and this has
been valuable because HP comes laden with a lot of
best practice knowledge around ITSM. Also, the PPM
software has an inbuilt methodology which is based
on ITIL v3 concepts and that is something that the
Bank wants to adopt,” says Boey.
Looking to the future, the bank is planning to
implement the Time and Financial Management
module of HP PPM which will give even greater
control of its IT projects.
For more information
To read more about HP Software,
go to hp.com/go/software
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4AA3-5721ENW, Created August 2011; Updated September 2012, Rev. 2