Case Study: Cross-group data marts open new frontiers for Hungarian bank

Cross-group data marts open new frontiers for Hungarian bank

March 28, 2019

Part of the OTP Group, OTP Bank is the leading retail bank in Hungary, growing rapidly across Central and Eastern Europe through targeted acquisitions. To gain deeper visibility into its new, vibrant business activities, the company has built internal data marts based on Microsoft SQL Server and SharePoint technology. Now analysts and managers can make educated decisions through truly data-driven insights.

Familiar interface, real data power

Headquartered in Budapest, OTP Group is a fast-growing bank with a strong retail focus. One of the most successful and diversified financial services players in Hungary, and in Central and Eastern Europe, OTP Group has 50 businesses, ranging from retail banking to savings and pensions.

The firm is always looking to acquire appropriate local businesses to further its customer-facing financial solutions. However, its rapid growth has led to some challenges in 2018. According to Márton Horváth, head of the department in OTP Group’s Controlling Service Center, “We had some silos of data because of these acquisitions that we wanted to better unify. OTP Group managers wanted to foster greater internal collaboration and find a solution to offer ways for its analysts to get deeper insight into our subsidiaries‘ activities.”

After a thorough market evaluation, Horváth and his team of analysts decided the ease of use and flexibility of Microsoft technology would achieve these goals. “We did not have a group-level data mart in place, though we had several local ones,” he says. “We chose the Microsoft solution because of its compelling pricing, user-friendly interfaces such as Excel, and its easy-to-learn development tools. With such a flexible interface backed by some really powerful data capability, SQL Server promised to deliver results for us quickly.”

Powerful tool

Since 2016, OTP Group has worked in SharePoint to build a brand-new data utility accessible to 2,500 colleagues across the group. “Users can now build an Excel front end very quickly to a powerful back end that offers a real business intelligence universe of functionality, so they can create exactly the OLAP cube they need to analyze their data,” notes Horváth.

In everyday terms, that translates into multiple business benefits, from over 50 percent savings on licensing and supporting costs to consolidation of reports and better decision making.

Extending the system

According to Horváth, the next step is to offer even more “self-service” data analysis power, with possible use of Power BI and Office 365 entering the mix.

“Use of SQL and SharePoint Server in OTP Group has increased access to important data, leading to better internal coordination inside the group and value-generating insights,” adds Horváth. “It is also radically reducing the time to produce key reports from two weeks to two days.”

Use of SQL and SharePoint Server has increased access to important data, leading to better internal coordination inside the group which is resulting in value-generating insights.

2018: Head of Department, Controlling Service Center

OTP Group

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