ABN AMRO Breaks Down Barriers with Designer Cloud

Core Challenges

Data is at the epicenter of core ABN AMRO strategies, such as improving the customer experience or optimizing processes around compliance and regulations. But fulfilling data requirements for business users slowed progress—often, these users waited two days for data requirements. And that delay lengthened as ABN AMRO took on new and more complex data. Meanwhile, the outsourced data center (IBM) and legacy tooling (SAS/Informatica) that underpinned data architecture at ABN AMRO was costly, inflexible, and didn’t allow for agile analytics. ABN AMRO knew that it’s ambitious analytics goals  didn’t match its data technology.

How Designer Cloud Solved this Problem

ABN AMRO overhauled its data technology, migrating from an outsourced IBM data center to Microsoft Azure Cloud Platform. With this data modernization came a paradigm shift; no longer would data be managed by a small team but, vis-à-vis the Designer Cloud, it could be democratized across the organization. Instead of waiting days for data, business users now have instantaneous access to the data they need. And better yet, there is very little time spent digging through the data for answers—Designer Cloud allows users to get to the root of the value right away and share their work with colleagues, contractors, and stakeholders. On top of the new analytic value that ABN AMRO is generating, it has also cut significant costs by reducing legacy contracts.

ABN AMRO is one of the leading banks in the Netherlands. With a main focus on Northwest Europe, it provides loans, mortgages and other banking services and solutions to companies and individuals.

“At ABN AMRO, we’re focused on democratizing data to accelerate automated decision making. This requires an intuitive approach that allows business users and technical users to collaborate in building high-quality data products. The combination of Designer Cloud and Databricks enables this.”

Marcel Kramer, Head of Data Engineering
ABN AMRO Ventures