Czech bank, Česká spořitelna, reshapes customer experience with Azure-based solution

Česká spořitelna is the biggest Czech bank by number of clients, providing services to individuals, small and medium enterprises, and even towns and municipalities. The bank constantly strives to design products and services that best fulfill customer needs. “We wanted to do things differently,” says Jiri Charousek, Chief Technology Officer at Česká spořitelna. “We knew we had to update our existing resources in order to find a new approach to servicing our customers. We needed to break away from the huge lock that is on-premises infrastructure.”

Transforming customers into fans

Česká spořitelna knew that to turn its five million customers into fans, it needed to create personalized communications that would be relevant to each person. For that, it adopted Microsoft partner Quadient’s customer communications management solution, Inspire Flex.

“Through Quadient Inspire Flex, we manage our communications, send all our emails, SMS, and push notifications to our customers,” says Michal Řehák, IT Area Lead at Česká spořitelna. “Thanks to having this centralized platform, we can provide answers to customers’ queries a lot quicker, and improve the whole customer experience.” The solution also helps Česká spořitelna provide on-demand account statements and other customer documents in digital format.

Unlocking the power of the cloud

In the financial industry, peak communication times happen towards the start of each month and each year. To ensure high service availability so that the experience remains smooth at all times, the Quadient Inspire solution was moved to the Microsoft Azure cloud. The transition was handled by tech partner Mainstream, who used Azure DevOps to automate the distribution of cloud infrastructure.

Moving the solution to the cloud also unlocked its full capabilities and sped up the development of new features. “Because there’s no hardware costs needed, we have the flexibility to work on new ideas and build prototypes, and to evaluate those with internal users and then customers. This is where the biggest potential of the cloud lies for us,” says Řehák. Shifting to the cloud also enabled Česká spořitelna to adjust usage based on actual loads, saving on costs.

The bank also improved security management, thanks to having a centralized environment. “Natively supported features in Quadient’s Inspire, like Azure Active Directory, also helped to configure security to the bank’s required standards without a need for workarounds,” adds Bohumil Farsky, Country Manager at Quadient. “Now we can enable new security features really fast, all using one provider, one solution, everything in one place,” affirms Charousek.