Banco Pichincha integrates Microsoft Power Platform as part of the transformation of its business culture

Banco Pichincha Peru is part of Grupo Pichincha, one of the strongest financial associations in Ecuador with a presence in more than five countries in the Americas and Europe. Their commitment is to drive sustainable growth for their customers through products that help them realize their achievements and a better future, under the motto “Inspire and Reward Trust.” 

The Peruvian bank was already working with Microsoft. In 2013, following an initiative from Operations and IT Services Management to have Workspace Solutions, Office 365 E1 licenses were purchased for 35% of its employees, incrementally increasing to 100% E3 licenses by 2018. It was a crucial year to start optimization, increase functionality and efficiency from the use of the suite, says Anthony Casas, Head of Services and SMO of Banco Pichincha Peru, who led the comprehensive technical deployment of Office 365 in 2018.  

In 2019, Banco Pichincha identified the need to create an area aimed at developing collaborative apps that would facilitate recurring work from different sectors. “We needed to automate manual, everyday tasks,” recalls Pedro Alvarez, Enterprise Architect at Banco Pichincha Peru, regarding the origin of the Digital Solutions team. “Many business units and support required such capabilities in the organization,” says Carlos Torres Zevallos, Process Transformation and Digitization Manager at Banco Pichincha Peru.  

The creation of the Digital Solutions Center of Excellence required a secure framework to start working. “We were incorporating guidelines to prevent security and governance gaps,” Torres points out. The Process Transformation and Digitization Management created committees and documents to ensure the adoption of the technology following all security practices in an organic, orderly manner and with the correct validations. 

Power Apps as an ally for the transformation of business processes 

Banco Pichincha needed a tool to create flexible apps that would fit their needs and, above all, not require a long deployment time.  

Digital Solutions chose Power Apps to fulfill its purpose. “This service allowed us to quickly meet the needs we had with one-off solutions,” says Pedro Alvarez, Enterprise Architect at Banco Pichincha Peru. “And this with the security of Azure Active Directory,” he adds, referring to Microsoft’s cloud-based identity and access management service. Power Apps is a low-code tool that allows users to develop business applications without the need for development or programming knowledge.  

“To educate employees on the use of the tool, we conducted a series of training sessions and co-creation workshops with Microsoft,” says Alvarez. “In addition, what the license offers was taken advantage of to carry out training sessions and continuing education for specialized personnel,” he adds. 

Today, Banco Pichincha has 50 apps in operation: “Half of the applications were created without IT support. Business areas—without prior technical knowledge—developed these apps independently,” says the Enterprise Architect, adding that “all applications were like a blank canvas.” This means that to develop the different solutions, it was not necessary to write code in a traditional programming language such as C#. Instead, the application was designed almost like a PowerPoint slide. 

Many of the apps designed by Banco Pichincha users are complemented by Power Automate, a tool capable of generating automated processes where cloud flows, desktop flows, or business process flows can be created. Once the app is up and running, Banco Pichincha collects data via SharePoint for structured and relational data and OneDrive for files. Power Apps can be accessed from any device as long as the bank partner has the necessary permissions to it.  

“My Portal”: Bringing people management services to employees

Human Resources recorded a high number of operational burdens in resolving employee inquiries about benefits, courses, and vacations, among others. “One person had to answer the same information for all employees three or four times a day,” says Renzo Tarazona, HR Agile Leader of Banco Pichincha Peru. 

“My Portal” is an application that brings people management services to all employees. There is information about the bank’s benefits, financial service functionalities can be accessed to request cards, personal loans or pre-approved credits, and there is even a COVID symptom sheet where the employee completes the symptoms and a doctor follows up. However, the chart does not end when the patient is discharged; from the app, one can request an emotional support appointment with a team of psychologists for him or any member of his family.  

Currently, 85% of Banco Pichincha employees use “My Portal” and the application will continue to evolve through the adoption of new functionality. “Power Apps gave us the freedom to create better solutions for everyone working within the bank,” concludes Renzo.

New segment, new application 

Another of the needs that Banco Pichincha faced was to serve a segment that had not yet been considered: the SME sector. To meet this strategic objective, technological alternatives were analyzed that could accompany the process, which began the development of a credit tool called “CrediApp,” created on Power Apps. 

The implementation of this application used by SME Advisors, Group Heads, Analysts, and Heads of Risk lasted approximately three months, and which today has prospecting tools, credits to evaluate, disbursements, business agenda, and assessment history. 

“It’s a tool used not only in the office, but also in the field, and that’s a great plus for us that have to go visit customers. Aside from the fact that it doesn’t take long to upload and we can enter the customer’s data very easily,” says Erlinda Espinoza, SME Advisor. 

With Power Apps, “from prospecting to disbursement, 22% of the SME consultant’s own activities were freed up, allowing one to generate two additional operations per month,” says Cynthia Rafael, Squad Lead of Process Transformation. “CrediApp supports the credit process of new SME banking." 

Power Apps as a pandemic solution 

“As a result of the pandemic, there was a large volume of mortgage product operations that needed to be rescheduled,” says Claver Gonzales, Risk Analyst at Banco Pichincha Peru. “Because it is a process that covers different areas of the bank, it was essential to have a solution that consolidates the information from different databases.” 

The Rescheduling application developed in Power Apps allows you to view the entire rescheduling flow from the time the customer registers their request on the web. With Power Automate, from the request submission, the process automatically filters and gives an immediate response to the CRM team for its communication to the customer. The risk team can in turn follow up on the case. The information is consolidated into SharePoint databases, which contain the information necessary to provide a fast and sustainable response to the customer. 

“Being internal and management-focused, response time has been reduced in the face of customer complaints,” Gonzales notes, adding that, “the opportunity is clear, because as employees a more agile response is given and customer satisfaction increases.” 

A change in culture 

With the implementation of nearly 50 different Power Apps, the Peruvian bank achieved a 285% return on its IT investment, reducing the average working hours spent on routine tasks by more than 2,000 hours and increasing user satisfaction. 

Pedro Alvarez, Enterprise Architect at Banco Pichincha Peru, says that for the future they plan to, “continue with the same architecture, but changing the capabilities in the storage part to be much more secure and have the information in suitable repositories.” To do this, they plan to use Dataverse and Azure Blob Storage, which provide the security guidelines needed to keep sensitive information protected. 

Banco Pichincha has managed to transform its culture and will continue to strengthen it with the democratization of technology, “all within guidelines, with freedoms, and parameters, and with Microsoft solutions,” Alvarez concludes.