CECA Banks on WebFOCUS
CECA, the Spanish Confederation of Savings Banks, uses the WebFOCUS BI platform to bring its members more innovative services.
Business Intelligence Enables Efficient Delivery of Services to Organization's Members
In 1928, following an initiative by the Vasco Navarra Savings Bank Federation, the Spanish Confederation of Savings Banks (CECA) was created to integrate the efforts of its members, and to act as a representative body in various forums. Today, CECA includes all 45 Spanish savings banks, and supports its members in two ways – as an association and as a provider of specialized services.
CECA is also one of Information Builders' most loyal customers. Through its longstanding partnership with Information Builders, CECA can continue to bring its members more innovative services.
The scope of CECA's responsibility has grown: the organization has become a credit entity without limitations, a position that allows the confederation to not only act as an association, but as a provider of specialized services to its members. This is precisely where its information center, headed by Mercedes León, comes into play.
Ensuring Extreme Productivity
If there is a quality that defines her department, it is its extreme productivity. The services developed by the information center always arise from internal innovation and not from specific requirements outlined by the banks. "We approach them, not the other way around," León explains.
This type of forward thinking would not be possible without the vast development that takes place within the organization. The power of Information Builders WebFOCUS business intelligence (BI) platform plays a pivotal role in that development.
CECA Gets Focused
After the emergence of the Internet and Web-based business intelligence, CECA considered several BI options before opting with WebFOCUS. "In those other environments, you are more confined to their structure, although that is more than enough in many cases." León states.
The arrival of WebFOCUS broadened the scope of services that CECA could provide to other financial entities. WebFOCUS is a comprehensive, fully integrated, enterprise-scale platform that delivers powerful and feature-rich, yet intuitive business intelligence across an entire organization, enabling timely, accurate reporting at the executive, analytical, and operational levels.
With WebFOCUS, member banks have access to information that was previously beyond their reach, and system operation has been significantly simplified. "Our usual line of work involves approaching the business units that provide services to the saving banks, and complementing those services with information and management systems," León says.
An Array of Services
Improved productivity has lead CECA to develop new services like Pulso, a platform that facilitates exchanges between different entities and offers information on monetary flows. This project is built on WebFOCUS technology and is overseen by CECA's marketing department. "Our work is based on watching the marketing departments within the various savings banks, and trying to complement them with services that might be useful, such as working inside of Pulso, analyzing behaviors, and more," explains León.
Another service recently launched relates to the internal management of human resources. To develop this service, León's department created an information system based on the SAP human resources module, making it easier for the different savings banks to access the application and associated data through the Web.
One of the beliefs underlying León's conception of the new services enabled by WebFOCUS is that business intelligence does not exclusively apply to upper management, but rather to anyone, at any level, who manages a business. This principle is evident in her practice of offering services to individual business units within each savings bank.
"Business intelligence really has no limits. You can use it for whatever you want."