21 June 2022, Manila, Philippines – Security Bank Corporation, a leading universal bank in the Philippines, has recently partnered with Microsoft to build innovative banking solutions, streamlining its sales operations to ensure faster and more efficient customer-centric banking experience.
Security Bank offers retail, commercial, corporate, MSME, and institutional clients a wide range of services. As a leading financial organization in the country, Security Bank ensures it continues to provide clients with exceptional value by eliminating operational inefficiencies and providing BetterBanking service.
“BetterBanking means investing in our customers and what matters to them. That’s why we do whatever it takes to understand and adapt to our customers’ needs. That customer-centricity is at the core of who we are,” said Eden Nicole de la Peña-Charpentier, Head of Transformation Team-Transaction Banking Group of Security Bank.
Security Bank conducted extensive analyses to identify challenges in their clients’ operations. Preparing, completing, and securing approval for sales proposals was one of the growth areas identified, as document handling was done manually, adversely impacting the sales team’s productivity.
Security Bank needed an efficient and collaborative system to improve productivity. Using Microsoft technology and support, it developed its Sales Proposal Builder (SPB) application and embedded it into their collaboration platform, Microsoft Teams. Security Bank has been utilizing Microsoft solutions such as SharePoint and Office 365 for collaboration and Microsoft Teams as their primary communication tool. Embedding SPB into Microsoft Teams made it seamless and easy for the sales team to leverage the new platform.
Today, Security Bank’s sales operation process, from preparing proposals to approvals, is fully digital and streamlined. Instead of manually editing documents, their sales team can now conveniently enter customer details, then choose from the catalog of all bank products, and simply click on what they want to include in the proposal.
Part of what makes the SPB application a flexible, scalable and cost-effective solution is that it is hosted on Microsoft Azure. The built-in service Logic apps in Microsoft Azure enable Security Bank to automate document generation and uploading of files to SharePoint. Security Bank has also benefitted from Azure’s Deployment Slots which allows them to easily update a solution without any upfront costs.
Security Bank’s innovation delivered immediate impact on its sales operations. With the SPB app, proposal preparation now takes only 15-30 minutes from a previous average of two hours, while the approval process from different internal groups now takes about 24 hours where previously it took two weeks.
“Industry and society continue to face the realities of the pandemic and digital technology will be key to resilience and transformation regardless of what comes our way. Our ambition is to foster foundational innovation that will create entire ecosystems. This is what our cloud uniquely enables and is intentionally built for,” said Beth Pangan, Microsoft Philippines Enterprise Commercial Director. “We’re thankful for this opportunity to work alongside Security Bank to not only transform and optimize their operations through technology, but to accelerate industry transformation in the Philippines.”
Security Bank Employees are also giving positive feedback on the platform, as ninety-five percent of them said it made their work significantly manageable, and they are looking for added features in the SPB. “Companies need to find a trusted partner for their digital transformation journey. For us, Microsoft has become a part of our daily work lives,” said de la Peña-Charpentier.
About Microsoft
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
About Security Bank Corporation
Security Bank is a private domestic universal bank in the Philippines with total assets of Php 700 billion as of December 31, 2021. The Bank has been operating for 70 years since it was established in 1951. Security Bank has a total of 316 branches and 663 ATMs to-date.