Slovakian banking leader Slovenská sporiteľňa empowers staff and clients with Microsoft 365

Serving more than two million clients, Slovakian banking leader Slovenská sporiteľňa prides itself on delivering quality products and personalized service. Recognizing the need to shift to more efficient, modern ways of working, the company had already begun its Microsoft Teams adoption campaign—part of a larger shift to Microsoft 365—when the COVID-19 pandemic broke.

“We had to get our users up to speed with Microsoft Teams quickly because the whole country was shutting down. We needed to ensure continuity of work,” shares Magdaléna Hudecová, Retail Sales Support Specialist at Slovenská sporiteľňa. At the time, the bank’s teams were still meeting physically and travelling often, which was unsustainable and ineffective. “With the board’s support, we put together a very simple but efficient Teams user guide that we distributed throughout the bank to speed up the shift to remote working.”

“Banks are usually highly traditional in their way of working,” highlights Marián Vrbičan, Change Management Specialist at Slovenská sporiteľňa. “We took Microsoft‘s advice to have an external partner help us make the cultural shift that comes with using Teams and the wider Microsoft 365 platform.”

On the advice of partner SoftwareONE, Slovenská sporiteľňa selected 150 ‘digital gurus’ across the bank to help lead the change. “We organized a few in-person upskilling sessions to ensure they had the knowledge that they would need to assist other employees adapt to a new way of working,” says Vrbičan.

"Slovenská sporiteľňa’s Microsoft 365 adoption project was one of the most interesting and comprehensive projects I have had the opportunity to participate in,” says Martin Semjan, consultant at SoftwareONE. “Despite the challenges caused by the outbreak of the pandemic, we managed to identify and implement new cooperation opportunities using modern tools, which significantly increased the efficiency of internal processes and working procedures. I especially appreciate the enthusiasm of the community of ‘digital gurus’ whose desire to learn was inspiring.” 

Significant savings

For many, the new tools offered an instant opportunity to work both faster and smarter. “Some of our branches even evolved their use of Microsoft Teams to the point where they're actually using it to manage their workload distribution,” Vrbičan shares. “For example, they use it to allocate desks to financial advisors working in the office, as well as for more general planning.”

Capabilities like these are saving the banking leader considerable sums. “Our educational leaders have been able to record learning sessions and make them available for viewing within Teams,” says Vrbičan. “That switch alone saved us nearly 100,000 euros in terms of travel and accommodation to meet in person for learning sessions. With the money we’ve saved, we were able to buy new hardware for our headquarters and bigger retail branches, to help them have an even better experience with virtual meetings.”

A meaningful journey of change

“Our mission is now to be the most efficient digital bank in the Slovak Republic,” shares Tajana Schullerová, Employee Journey Specialist at Slovenská sporiteľňa. “I speak often with our employees across different branches and the new solutions are really working well for everyone. Our employees are very happy—not only with Teams, but with other solutions like OneDrive and SharePoint. One of the biggest benefits has been having all our documents in one place that you can access from home or work. Plus, multiple people can work on the same document at the same time.”

For Slovenská sporiteľňa’s clients, the change has also been beneficial. “Many of our clients have been proud that their banker can advise them seamlessly via Microsoft Teams. They like that they can call from anywhere. They don't have to bother to go to the branch in person.”

“Teams made our work far easier at a time when it was impossible to work from our premises,” says Milan Hain, Member of the Board of Directors of Slovenská sporiteľňa. “Today, we are more digital in our everyday business communication. Teams chat is a great tool for solving things quickly, without lengthy e-mails. Not to mention benefits of internal education and training, that we now do much more online.”

Hain adds that Teams’ live event streaming has been of great use to the company. “We don't even use another tool for internal streaming anymore. It is also a great success that, thanks to Office 365 tools, we were able to launch video consulting with clients,” he sums up.

“We had really good cooperation between ourselves, Microsoft and SoftwareONE," Schullerová notes. “The fact that we involved people from across the business—including IT, education and HR—was the other key to our success.”

Looking ahead, the banking leader aims to continue with its highly successful Microsoft solution education programs. It is also considering extending SharePoint licenses to more employees, looking at Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing to help measure email and newsletter engagement and ways to introduce automation of daily tasks.