When Bahrain Credit Financing Company, under Bahrain Commercial Facilities Company (BCFC), needed to guarantee data Availability, improve operational efficiency and better deliver digital services to its customers, it selected Veeam Backup & Replication.
Bahrain Credit, part of the Bahrain Commercial Facilities Company, is on a mission to be the first choice for customers by providing excellent products, services and solutions. In recent years, this has meant having to prioritise the digitisation of its services to extend greater conveniences to its customers, while catering to Bahrain’s growing demographic of young, tech-savvy digital natives. As a financial institution, the company knew that to succeed in this initiative, it would have to guarantee the availability and integrity of its digital data and services.
The business solution
Bahrain Credit was facing a challenge common to thousands of companies worldwide, in industries from retail to entertainment: how to please a new generation of customers born into a world of digital conveniences and instantaneous service.
As a finance organisation, data has always been critical to Bahrain Credit, but the escalation in market expectations means every entry now plays a vital role, be it simple customer details or a new lead.
In pursuit of unprecedented brand loyalty, Bahrain Credit needed to align with the digital native expectation of multi-channel engagement.
“This new generation of customers doesn’t want to visit a branch with physical documents,” said Ali Al Marzooq,Head of Innovation and Business Technology, Bahrain Credit.
“With digital on-boarding, we wanted to simplify our processes and save our customers time and effort. We’re building omni-channel engagement for our customers through web portals, mobile apps and self-service kiosks, so their entire customer journey can be managed online.”
The Veeam solution
Bahrain Credit turned to Veeam after realising that its legacy backup solution was incompatible with its ambitions of catering to the demands of digital natives.
The company was determined for its replacement backup solution to address its Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO), both for external and internal compliance.
Veeam Backup & Replication now takes care of backup and recovery of several mission-critical virtual machines (VM), including the VM running Bahrain Credit’s core database. Al Marzooq also cited the ease of use and set up as a major reason for selecting Veeam.
By facilitating the group’s Digital Transformation, Veeam has radically enhanced efficiencies across multiple areas of Bahrain Credit’s business. Where previously, physical files would be moved from branch to branch, digital records are now instantly available from anywhere in the organisation, speeding up workflows.
As of last year, the group has digitised the vast majority of its customer records through its document management system (DMS) and currently over 90% of its data now exists in digital formats alone. As a result, this has all but eliminated physical copies of documents resulting in significant reductions in the company’s paper usage. Bahrain Credit will next turn its attention to replicating this success for its credit card debt collections department
Veeam’s solution has also yielded benefits for Bahrain Credit’s IT department, in the form of noteworthy time savings. This time has now been reclaimed to focus on actively driving the company’s on-going Digital Transformation through the introduction of innovative new services.
“Backup today can play a major role in saving the environment by reducing the amount of paper waste in our daily work,” Al Marzooq said.
In pursuit of the further enhancement of its high Availability capabilities, Bahrain Credit is now set to partner with Veeam in a cloud migration project designed to be the first step in an on-going Digital Transformation journey for the company. The programme will also integrate Veeam’s replication solution for Disaster Recovery and a system for the archiving of emails for off-boarded employees to promote greater service continuity for customers.
“Our initiative to go to the cloud has been, at least in part, spurred by the confidence we’ve gained from our successful Veeam implementation,” said Al Marzooq. “Cloud will give us high Availability at a lower total cost of ownership for all our systems. Our goal is to not have any physical servers by 2020 and we see Veeam as being a key partner in achieving this objective.”
“Veeam is a fundamental enabler of our on-going Digital Transformation, because by guaranteeing the Availability of our mission-critical data and services, they give us the ability to roll out new digital innovations for our customers with complete peace of mind.”
The results
Keeps business on track by guaranteeing Availability of critical data and services
Bahrain Credit attributes the ability to smoothly run its business and serve its customers to the Availability and integrity of its digital data and services – which is made possible by Veeam.
Saves time and fuels innovation
Thanks to Veeam, Bahrain Credit’s IT team now spends fewer hours per month on backups and running data restoration. Reclaiming this time has allowed them to focus on delivering exceptional omni-channel engagement for customers through web portals, mobile apps and self-service kiosks, so the entire customer journey can be managed online.
Increases operational efficiency and eliminates need for paper forms
Veeam has given Bahrain Credit the confidence to digitise its mission-critical records, allowing customer records to now be instantly available across all branches, speeding up workflows. This has cut the processing time for new service applications by 75% and has eliminated the need for paper forms between the loan processing and customer relationship departments.
Cloud migration
Bahrain Credit is now set to partner with Veeam in a cloud migration project designed to be the first step in an ongoing Digital Transformation journey for the company. The programme will also integrate Veeam’s replication solution for Disaster Recovery and a system for the archiving of emails for off-boarded employees to promote greater service continuity for customers.
“The cloud will enable us to meet our goal of not having any physical servers by 2020 and we see Veeam as being a key partner in achieving this objective,” said Al Marzooq.
“We pride ourselves in delivering effective, easy-to-use services to our clients. Our reliable and robust backup and recovery technology gives customers the confidence to proactively manage their data, drive digital services to market faster and deliver highest value and save them both time and money,” said Claude Schuck, Regional Manager, Middle East at Veeam.
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