Bank al Etihad Reduces Data Processing Time by 80% Using Alteryx

Recently named the “Most Innovative Digital Bank” in Jordan and the Middle East, Bank al Etihad strives to live up to the award. The Jordan-based financial and banking services company operates a growing network of 53 branches across the Kingdom and wanted to automate the time-consuming process of data preparation and reporting to improve performance, efficiencies, and time to market.

Time-consuming data challenges

The business intelligence team at Bank al Etihad leverages a wide range of analytical outputs including daily, weekly and monthly KPI reports that help drive decision-making by management at the bank branches.

They faced numerous challenges using Excel spreadsheets and manual processes including time-consuming data cleansing and prep that took an average of two days per report. “We were facing many problems extracting the data because of the variety of data sources,” said Batool Madanat, Business Performance Analyst at Bank al Etihad. The team also had trouble fulfilling ad hoc requests due to the time it spent on manual ETL activities.

Streamlining a complex process

Bank al Etihad partnered with systems integrator Neogenesis to identify and implement a solution for data consolidation and data prep for bank reports and dashboards that are used by company management.

The team at Neogenesis recommended Alteryx, the analytics platform they use internally to replace Excel spreadsheets and automate reporting processes. “We talked to many vendors and researched a lot of technologies,” said Mahmoud AlQadi, Product Manager for Neogensis. “We found Alteryx to be most useful because of it’s simple interface and high processing power,” said AlQadi.

During a proof of concept phase, the BI team tested the automation process using a small set of reports to determine the best way to convert the data using Alteryx. “We work with our customer’s subject matter experts to recommend and prioritize use cases based on business needs,” said AlQadi.

The Neogenesis team then trained the BI teams to build workflows and create reports using multiple data sources including Excel, Oracle and SQL server. The integrator also guided the BI team with the strategy to best execute and finalize the technical architecture. All reports are now directed to Alteryx, where joins and advanced calculations are completed, output files sent to the correct databases and then tables created that connect to PowerBI.

Speed to insight and decisions with Alteryx

Using Alteryx, Bank al Etihad automated 75%  of process workflows in 6 months. By automating manual data processes, the Business Performance and Analysis team reduced processing time by 80% and improved decision-making with insights they couldn’t see before Alteryx.

By connecting tools to perform analytic processes in a workflow, Alteryx enabled the BI team at Bank al Etihad to realize the potential of what’s possible with analytics. The performance team can now plan more accurately, set more realistic deadlines, and be much better equipped to support their organization using Alteryx.