From the signature ceremony: (L-R) Sami Bayyuk, General Manager of DMX Group, and Nabil Kassar, Central Manager of Fransabank.

Fransabank SAL has selected DMX Group and Microsoft to implement a data warehouse, business intelligence and advanced data mining solution using Microsoft technology. This solution will serve all of its branches in Lebanon and internationally. The data warehouse will provide the bank with a secure, cost-effective and powerful tool to analyze the bank’s financial data and help it improve its ability to measure customer profitability and to facilitate many other important decision making criteria and marketing campaigns.

Mr. Nabil Kassar the Central Manager of Fransabank said: “Our Bank’s strategy is to strengthen our relations with our customers. We believe that this could only be satisfied through a distinctive customer service. In this context, we have chosen DMX Group and Microsoft to be our business partners in our datawarehouse project for the professionalism these companies have. The Microsoft solution, which DMX Group will deploy, will allow us to take all of the bank’s various databases and combine them into a single system, giving us much greater capability to access and analyze our business data. This shall further allow us to both target and perfectly satisfy the needs of our clients increasing our customer service portfolio. The banking industry is also highly competitive, and this solution will give us greater insight and analysis of our business processes, which in turn will allow us to improve those processes to offer better services and products, and help us to maintain a competitive edge.”

The solution, which will cover 55 Fransabank branches in the country, will be the first true data warehouse in a bank in the Eastern Mediterranean region running completely on Microsoft SQL server. The large-scale data warehouse will support Business Intelligence reporting, advanced data mining, and customer analysis, and will help the bank turn its data into a useful asset for growth.

Jaime Charaf, Executive Vice President of Operations, EMEA from DMX Group commented: “Fansabank’s decision to use DMX Group and Microsoft will allow them to build a truly world class decision support system that is both scaleable to the largest data warehouse in the world and yet remain the most cost effective solution. From our global experience in deploying data mining, data warehousing and BI solutions, we recognize that the essential ingredients in a successful BI and Data Mining solution is an experienced implementation team, a flexible solution that is tailored to each specific customer’s needs and a system that is sized for the specific customer. A “one size fits all solution” as delivered by other industry heavies is never optimal”.

“Fransabank chose DMX Group expertise and Microsoft technology because it had the high level of functionality that the bank required, and because the ease of use and ease of integration of the solution will allow the bank to deploy it quickly and easily to all of its branches, saving time and money”, said Kassar.

“We have conducted a thorough evaluation of various technologies and we find that DMX Group / Microsoft solution to be not only highly functional, but also quick to implement. Because of the large scale of the implementation, we will benefit from the lower cost of implementation and integration, driven by the ease of use of the SQL server; there is simply no price tag on the efficiency that this implementation will bring to the bank,” said Wissam Ali Hassan, Head of E-Banking and Datawarehouse Project Manager at Fransabank.

Charbel Fakhoury, General Manager for Microsoft Eastern Mediterranean said: "With the financial sector being one of the most dynamic industries in Lebanon, Microsoft is increasing its commitment to servicing this sector by continuing to offer the latest technologies, solutions, and knowledge to help the local financial industry realize its full potential through technology adoption. Microsoft will continue to bring world class partners, like DMX Group, with global implementation experience and highly successful track records to the Middle East and in particular the Lebanese Financial Vertical.”

Tony Gebrane, Corporate Account Manager for Microsoft Eastern Mediterranean said: “We value highly the trust that Fransabank is placing in Microsoft technologies and will continue working with the banking industry in Lebanon as well as in the region to ensure that their technology platform is flexible and scalable enough to support their growth requirements.”