An Ultimus Customer Success Story
Background
Client: Sharjah Islamic Bank (SIB)
From its roots as a conventional bank, Sharjah Islamic Bank (SIB) became the first institution in the world to convert successfully to Islamic banking in 2002. Since then, SIB has provided Islamic commercial banking services to institutions, firms and individuals. To maintain their competitive advantage, process automation forms a focal part of the bank’s overall Corporate Management culture. Therefore, they decided to implement Ultimus as their core BPM platform. “We are delighted in our partnership with Ultimus who have been thoroughly committed not only during the implementation phase of the solution but more importantly due to their constant guidance over the actual realisation of tangible benefits for processes that are under way or have already been implemented,” said Ahmed Kalim, CIO of SIB.
Opportunities
SIB provides a broad range of retail, commercial, corporate, investment and international banking services to customers. Through branches and offices across the United Arab Emirates, the SIB team is committed to delivering unparalleled service. In order to enhance agility, flexibility, efficiency, process visibility, and to adopt a culture that fosters and rewards initiatives where employees are engaged in continuous improvement, SIB implemented the Ultimus BPM Suite to attain these goals.
The first step to more flexibility and efficiency was to automate various IT processes within SIB to achieve the very important alignment of business and IT. So the business is empowered and gains more visibility and control over its own processes.
Ultimus' Approach
The solution of the IT Services Request process is representative for the other IT-related processes at SIB that have been implemented on the basis of the Ultimus BPM Suite. These basic internal processes are very important as they are the way for all employees located at different branches to contact the central IT Department for assistance. As they are also highly dependent on internal business support, the bank’s Information Management & Technology Division received a specific thorough training from Ultimus which provided the team with the necessary qualifications and competencies of designing and developing their own processes across the bank, and of being able to provide permanent on-site support.
While the IT Services Request process involves any requests for hardware and system access requests for software or applications, there is a specific request for Internet and Email access, for password resets or for other system accesses. These processes can be initiated by anyone in the organization who requests assistance from the IT Department. After the user has initiated the process, the request moves to his/her supervisor for sign-off.
Once the request has been approved, an assigned person from the IT Department receives the request and performs the task. After the services have been performed, the user automatically receives a receipt which he/she has to acknowledge. As these IT service requests are now sent electronically via the Ultimus process, process transparency is guaranteed as the current process status can be tracked at any time. Delays are thereby eliminated as the response time is accelerated.
Other Processes Automated by Ultimus
Just like the request for regular IT services, SIB created a number of processes that manage access to the internet, to email or to any other systems that the user needs to work with. Another automated Ultimus process is a request to reset a password, which improves the efficiency due to faster response time and ensures the security of company and user data.
The future of Ultimus at SIB
SIB is already in the process of streamlining and automating key customer facing processes on the basis of the Ultimus BPM Suite. Their 24x7 Contact Call Centre for customer service requests will be run by Ultimus in order to facilitate the routing of customer inquiries and discrepancies to centralised support functions, and so to improve response times. Additionally, SIB intends to integrate Ultimus with other systems so that customer requests can be satisfied and managed by any of SIB’s service and relationship management staff. “We are proud to supplement our internal Quality and Business Process Re-engineering efforts with our partner, Ultimus, which through their diversified experience and global presence will certainly continue to add value to the Bank’s strategy,” said Hussain Ahmad Al Qemzi, CEO of SIB.
BPM is critical for financial services organizations. Financial services organizations that deploy Ultimus BPM can increase revenue, lower operating expenses and improve customer satisfaction. BPM accelerates the speed to market and helps the enterprise achieve a greater ROI in less time.
