Imagine saving about 500 working days, or 1 million euros in 5 years net of the costs, and reducing lead time by 90%. The stakeholders also recognize the qualitative effects, such as automating manual activities, strengthening and controlling core processes, and having more efficient and flexible descriptive analysis and service KPIs communicated to over 300 users monthly. Such are the results of the new Data Management system for Service Level monitoring and reporting for Credem Bank, one of the success stories highlighted at the Data Management Summit 2023 in Milan.

“Two years ago, we had a problem: a significant amount of information to manage, 60 input data streams related to the availability and performance of individual procedures, with probes that collect the data every 5 minutes on the ok or error status of various processes,” says Vincenzo Cappiello, Competence Leading Service Levels of Credem Bank. IT Expert Gianluca Arizzi explains further: “In 2022, we set out to strengthen our processes, and Irion is at the core of our data management system. The platform enabled us to implement in practice the merging of inbound data streams, automating and managing data quality, and setting parameters in the reporting system. In fact, we have a local parametrization repository, which is fundamental to making the system flexible and able to evolve.”

Integrating data streams and data assets

“We made use of one of Irion’s strengths, the possibility to integrate with other systems. Then all input and output data assets get displayed through a data virtualization layer,” Arizzi adds. Since last year, Credem Group has gone through a profound transformation in terms of the use of data: “We have built up on three pillars: data governance, data culture, and the development of innovative solutions. This year, we started off with a tactical solution, to create value for our stakeholders and receive feedback but also to understand the potential of the managed data in terms of data visualization and, therefore, data storytelling.” Service Level data, once validated, is ready for processing strategic KPIs published within the Dashboards that we share with our stakeholders.

Business rules and notifications

How was this solution for managing the entire data life cycle implemented? There were two project “worksites” (Service Levels and IT Planning) launched in parallel but with a shared architecture. Input data stream ingestion has been automated. Its first certification level is for technical rules and the second for business ones: “They allow us to estimate daily the compliance with the needs. It is fundamental for the user to be constantly informed to react quickly thanks to an email notification system.”

From spreadsheets to a scalable system

“We committed the equivalent of 520 working days a year to Service Level management and IT planning,” Cappiello explains. Given the results, Credem will soon replicate the approach by applying it to the management of technological spending: “Now the system is not only scalable, – the manager concludes, – the bank may reuse it, correlating the data entered. It is essential as it uses the value of data thanks to reading keys everyone shares.” Previously, the processes were fragmented, and the operational risk was high, as the data was inserted into spreadsheets: “Both the stakeholders and the top management were asking for a simpler management and better integration with our data assets.”