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March 24, 2023

Nedbank brings 28,600 employees closer together with Microsoft Teams

Nedbank, a South African bank spread across three continents, strives to become a great digital place to work at. “Our vision is to enable our staff to work from anywhere, anytime, on any device,” says Asokan Moodley, Executive Head of End User and Communication Experience at Nedbank. To integrate staff conference calls into daily work, Nedbank deployed Microsoft Teams Phone and Teams Rooms throughout its organization. This brought more efficiency and collaboration while saving time and cost, leading to faster service and increased customer satisfaction.

Nedbank

With a 28,600-person workforce scattered across Africa, the United Kingdom, and India, Nedbank envisions a truly connected team across the globe. “How do we increase the value of working with us? How can we shift to a collaborative culture? Questions like these inspired us to bring together a global team that were used to working in silos,” says Asokan Moodley, Executive Head of End User and Communication Experience at Nedbank. 

Hence, Nedbank turned to Microsoft Teams Phone. Now, its employees can jump onto a call at the click of a button anywhere, anytime. This has fostered collaboration and efficiency and minimized technology maintenance costs without compromising security. 

A great digital place to work

With Nedbank’s digital transformation, 60% of its staff could continue working from home even after the COVID-19 pandemic. “Our staff became happier and more productive and took initiatives to overcome the challenges in their own working environment,” says Moodley. “This flexible working culture has not only inspired people to learn, but also attracted young talent who seek modern workplaces.” 

Efficient employees also bring excellence to customer service. “With Teams Phone, we can see who’s available.  When we’re trying to answer a customer’s question through our Contact Centre, we no longer have to make customers wait, we can get an expert who’s available on Teams Phone to help right away,” says Moodley. “In physical branches, we can also walk up to customers with mobile devices and solve their concerns on the spot—a big competitive advantage in our industry. With faster service, we have definitely seen an improvement in customer satisfaction.”

With colleagues a click away, Nedbank has fostered a closer working environment. “Our staff is interacting more often, with 456,000 meetings a month,” shares Moodley. “Our CEO’s last annual startup session hosted about 12,000 people whereas previously it was approximately 1600. Attendees could ask questions in the Teams Live Events chat that the speakers addressed. By allowing employees to directly engage with leadership, we foster a sense of belonging for everyone.”

“Our CEO’s last annual startup session hosted about 12,000 people whereas previously it was approximately 1600. Attendees could ask questions in the Teams Live Events chat that the speakers addressed. By allowing employees to directly engage with leadership, we foster a sense of belonging for everyone.”

Asokan Moodley, Executive Head of End User and Communication Experience, Nedbank

Reaching more with technology

Nedbank integrates calls into its daily workflow. ”We could enable our staff to call colleagues even on their local or GSM telephone numbers, transfer calls between devices, and use voicemails and transcripts,” says Moodley. 

But migrating 28,600 staff members to a new piece of technology was no easy task. “When we first started out, we were concerned with so many challenges, including security and adoption. I remember that it took us a long time to convince people of different levels in the organization to approve the transition,” shares Moodley. 

“People did not know what to do as we took away the hardware system that was in place since 1996,” recalls Mervyn Savary, the Infrastructure and Operations Executive at Nedbank who was responsible for the technical implementation. “But we had the perfect plan to gradually move away from traditional infrastructure. In 2019, when we implemented Microsoft 365 together with Teams Phone and Teams Rooms, we had the last piece of the puzzle.”

Nedbank first started by migrating the Office 365 Champion Community who were early adopters. The largest migration was cluster of 16,000 employees in Retail Banking, completed in 30 seconds. Nedbank recognized that the only way to see the benefits from Teams Phone was to ensure adoption.  The company also offered training sessions, support, and access to Microsoft Viva Insights, an employee experience platform to balance well-being and productivity. “We have 60% people working from home as we speak. And we’ve been asked at a few industry webinars about our offer to work from home—we could say that the hybrid work model is permanently going forward,” explains Savary.

Higher productivity, lower costs

In addition, Nedbank is in the process of implementing Teams Rooms to facilitate inclusiveness in conference calls, offering a shared space with tools like inclusive video layouts that ensure every employee can be heard whether in a meeting room or at home.

With more efficiency also came lower costs, all without compromising security. “We’re pioneers in remote working in South Africa. We have improved the quality of life with working from home but also allowed us to save cost of rental of physical spaces and employee related expenses” explains Savary. 

“Our technicians don’t spend time going to all 560 branches for technological maintenance. And with Our complex services running in the cloud, we don’t worry about upkeep,” adds Dinesh Sookdeo, Multi Discipline Technical Specialist at Nedbank. Also, by protecting our data with Teams Phone, we have taken security to the next level without compromising user experience.”

“Our technicians don’t spend time going to all 560 branches for technological maintenance. And with Our complex services running in the cloud, we don’t worry about upkeep”

Dinesh Sookdeo, Multi Discipline Technical Specialist, Nedbank

Our next drive is to enable staff to use the Microsoft Power Platform which is a no code/low code app to help people solve problems quickly together with integrating SharePoint is Nedbank’s next step. “When we started our journey, we wanted to change the way we work,” concludes Moodley. “Now that we have these solutions, we have endless possibilities to bring more efficiency to our organization.”

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