Employees at National Australia Bank celebrate productivity gains and simplified user experience with Microsoft Edge

The ask at a recent National Australia Bank (NAB) employee town hall was simple: “What pain points can we remove to help make life easier for our people?”

“Fix the browsers for our bankers,” came the plea from one employee.

Bankers, customer advisors, and other workers at NAB, Australia’s largest business bank, often needed to access as many as eight different applications as they processed customer queries, and employees couldn’t run all these apps on the same browser or browser version. This caused compatibility issues across the organization and led to frustration as they toggled between each one. “Over the years, we’ve had many application development and asset teams tether themselves to specific browsers and versions,” says Andrew Zahradka, Head of Workplace Compute Technology at National Australia Bank.

In an attempt to minimize confusion, employees created their own workaround—they circulated a guide outlining which browser to use with which app. Using multiple browsers also put a burden on NAB’s Workplace Technology team, which had to monitor the regular updates required across all these browsers.

The challenges didn’t end there: with multiple browsers in use at any one time, employees were often interrupted by banner messages. The experience frustrated employees who were often dealing with performance issues that required them to regularly clear their cookies and caches to ensure applications worked as they should. Managing security updates and patching also used up significant resources from the Workplace Technology team. “The biggest pain point we had with other browsers was keeping them up to date,” says John Disco, Technical Service Owner of Workplace Services at National Australia Bank.

“With the arrival of Microsoft Edge, we had a real opportunity to move forward and align to NAB’s strategic ‘evergreen IT’ operating model,” adds Zahradka. The Workplace Technology team was tasked with helping workers seamlessly move to a single browser. The timing couldn’t have been better. At the time, NAB was in the middle of an intensive cloud journey, investing in its cloud-first strategy to transform itself into a simpler, faster, more resilient business for colleagues and customers. The opportunity to transition to Microsoft Edge already aligned to NAB’s path toward browser-based access for applications.

Identifying Microsoft Edge as the browser of choice

NAB widely utilizes Microsoft products like Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Endpoint Manager (Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager and Microsoft Intune). After evaluating browser options, the technology team decided that Microsoft Edge was most compatible with its existing workplace application base.

Another selling factor was the ability to consolidate, using one browser across the organization so employees could use Microsoft Edge with Internet Explorer (IE) mode to enjoy the benefits of a modern browser while still accessing legacy business-critical applications.

Lastly, delivering Microsoft Edge via Configuration Manager removed a lot of complexity because NAB didn’t have to set up extra caching servers or change proxies. “We were able to plug it into Configuration Manager and deliver it like any other update,” says Disco. “That was big for us from an IT perspective.”

Moving to one standardized, do-it-all browser with Microsoft Edge

The first phase of the rollout was having the Workplace Technology team meet with the asset teams and application owners—and asking them to pilot Microsoft Edge.

“We have many applications deployed, including a whole raft of complex and interoperating banking and financial system software, and these applications are owned by distinct groups within the bank,” says Zahradka. “We went to hundreds of areas and worked with hundreds of people over 12 to 18 months to ensure functionality, effectiveness, and efficiency.”

While the initial process often involved troubleshooting and overcoming employee concerns, Microsoft Edge ultimately worked for everyone as intended. NAB piloted Microsoft Edge with a few thousand employees for several months, and the reaction was what the company hoped it would be. Not only were employees enthusiastic about the change, many of them also began emailing the team with lists of URLs, requesting help getting the apps they needed to work in Microsoft Edge with IE mode.

“People were so positive about the productivity benefits of accessing apps from a single browser,” says Cameron Edwards, Senior Technical Consultant at National Australia Bank. “Their feedback helped us get the other apps they needed reconfigured in IE mode. To a considerable extent, the users drove the deployment.”

After the pilot launch, the Workplace Technology team took a progressive approach. First, they encouraged employees to download Microsoft Edge on their own. The team also sent out communications to employees and discussed the migration on internal social media channels before pushing it out to the entire company. Employees also had the browser available on their desktops.

After around five months, when many employees had already begun using Microsoft Edge by choice, NAB set it as the default browser and mandated its use with the rule that no other browsers could be used on new devices. The Workplace Technology team is in the process of helping the final remaining users migrate off various legacy browsers. “We’ve got everyone going the same direction with the same protocol,” says Disco. “The simplicity is the biggest benefit for us.”

Boosting productivity and saving employees thousands of hours

Using multiple browsers, NAB’s customer banking advisors (tellers) couldn’t easily move from desk to desk when necessary. With Microsoft Edge, they can now sync their profiles across devices. Instead of being tied to only one device or branch, they can more easily pull up their profile information using web-based apps.

“Moving to Microsoft Edge boosted productivity by thousands of hours per day collectively across our 34,000 employees,” adds Greg Farmer, General Manager of Workplace Technology at National Australia Bank.

The employee productivity benefits help ensure that NAB’s customers no longer have to wait while bankers open multiple browsers. Streamlining down to one browser led to improved efficiency for customers, and ultimately a better experience for all. 

Looking forward

As NAB continues to invest in its cloud-first strategy and migrates applications to the cloud, the company is simultaneously modernizing those apps from the legacy infrastructure and pushing them to browser-based access. In the future, NAB plans to be completely browser-based, utilizing Microsoft Edge. 

What started with a simple employee plea has led to massive productivity, flexibility, and user experience gains, and the benefits continue to have a ripple effect across the entire company. 

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