“We launched the Jenius app in 2016, our first all-digital channel,” says Duddy Christian Hayanto, Head of Data Engineering, Bank BTPN. “We have more than two million users today. They can enjoy an entirely branchless banking experience.”
The bank recognises there is plenty of growth for Jenius. Indonesia, a country with a population of 260 million, has a huge youth demographic. More than 40% of the population is under 25. For many, their first experience of a bank will be through a smartphone and internet growth rates run at double digits.
The success of Jenius created a welcome headache for Hayanto. With more touchpoints, and wide access, the bank was capturing a huge amount of new data. BTPN wanted to be able to act on, or react to, this data. “The problem was our data was held in the core banking system, which meant it wasn’t being processed until the end of the day. We had no insight into real-time activity.”
“If the customer had an issue, we had no visibility of what it might be. If there was a sale opportunity, we’d miss it,” Hayanto explains.
Real-time data ingestion with immediate alerts
Bank BTPN’s Enterprise Data Hub is built with Qlik Replicate, part of Qlik’s data integration platform. Rather than having to wait until the end of each business day to access data, Qlik Replicate simplifies the massive, daily data ingestion into big data platforms from thousands of sources, including Oracle, SQL, DB2, MySQL, Sybase and PostgreSQL.
“Qlik Replicate enables real-time ingestion of data from our AS/400 environment, but the real advantage is we can then gain instant visibility to all the data in one dashboard for real-time action,” says Hayanto. “We do real-time ingestion through Apache Kafka. Because everything is completely real time, monitoring is necessary to ensure this process runs smoothly without any errors and Qlik Replicate has an alert feature so we can find out if an incident occurs. That’s a real plus point. All streamlined, no delays.”
The use of change data capture (CDC) enables true real-time analytics with less overheads. The approach automatically generates target schemas based on source metadata. If there is a problem, BTPN can check the logs, and it can restart from the exact moment rather than starting from scratch.
“Real-time ingestion means we get incremental data changes in less than a minute,” explains Hayanto.
Relieving strain on the core banking system
The creation of the Enterprise Data Hub relieves any strain on the core banking system, leaving it free to focus on serving transactions. This reduces the risk of business downtime, protecting corporate reputation.
In direct terms, the primary beneficiary of Qlik Replicate is BTPN’s CRM application. The availability of near real-time data enables the bank to create a detailed picture of every customer – in the moment.
“If there is a problem with onboarding a new customer, we can see it immediately,” says Hayanto. “Previously we’d have been blind.”
The speed of access to data transforms user productivity. The time taken to retrieve data for a query is under a second which means BTPN agents can directly engage with a customer, confident they have a real-time view of the customer’s activity.
Data: the fuel to drive business growth
The engagement with Qlik means BTPN is in control of its data. Data is no longer seen as something to be stored and managed, but an asset to be exploited. The link to Apache Kafka means any data update is visible and directed to the appropriate team in real time. Users can access the hub remotely. Data is always-on.
The power of the Enterprise Data Hub is now being brought in to support new services: To support the currency exchange feature for Jenius foreign currency products, BTPN enables real time synchronisation for any exchange rate changes and the data hub is also used for customer onboarding, to help check against duplications.
“This is having a real-world impact on banking services,” says Hayanto. “Real-time data gives the bank an immediate and detailed picture of every customer. At a macro level this helps spot trends and potential issues. At an individual level this enables the bank to deliver relevant products and services.”
