EBank – Export Development Bank of Egypt
Leading bank monitors infrastructure in real time, improves budget control, and eases compliance with OpenText™ IT Operations Management solutions
About EBank – Export Development Bank of Egypt
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Founded:1983
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Branches:44
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Employees:1,600+
Summary
Challenges
- Adapt to rapid industry changes while managing complex IT infrastructure.
- Automate manual, paper-based, and time-consuming processes.
- Enhance visibility and control of configuration items and assets.
Solution
- Streamlined application development.
- Managed IT budgets and human capital with automation.
- Automated password reset workflow and end-to-end asset tracking.
- Enabled regulation and security compliance.
Results
Ensured implementation and integration success
Automated invoice management supports ESG objectives
Introduced real-time IT infrastructure monitoring
Challenges
- Align IT with the business to enhance customer engagement and streamline service delivery
- Support non-IT departments to automate manual, paper-based, and time-consuming processes
- Replace an outdated support ticketing system which imposed limitations on innovation and growth
EBank Egypt embraces a challenging strategy centered around digital transformation and operational efficiency. By leveraging cutting-edge technologies, streamlining processes, and adopting a customer-centric approach, EBank Egypt aims to redefine traditional banking paradigms, ensuring a future-ready and agile financial institution.
To respond to the fast pace of change in the financial services industry, infrastructures become naturally more complex, requiring more advanced IT governance processes and asset monitoring. EBank realized that to enhance customer engagement and streamline service delivery, it needed to closely align IT with the business and its objectives. The team felt limited by inefficiencies due to an outdated support ticketing system. This lacked controls and reporting capabilities, and the customization that had happened over the years made it difficult to upgrade the system.
EBank’s IT Service Delivery Unit Head, Ibrahim Aly Helmy, explained, “To meet the evolving requirements of our organization, we recognized the need for a digital transformation across all our bank’s operational channels. A complete rethink of our service management strategy would allow us to streamline our processes to align and unify our IT and business operations. We also felt that with a fast-growing infrastructure we needed a better way to manage all our configuration items (CIs) and assets. We learned about OpenText™ SMAX which looked like the right solution for us, especially the way in which it could be deployed outside of our IT requirements and support other key EBank departments who were loaded with manual, paper-based, and time-consuming processes.”
The successful SMAX implementation gave us a transformative solution to regulatory requirements and positioned EBank for future growth. The collaboration with OpenText and Raya Integration has created enhanced operational efficiency and innovation in IT infrastructure management.
Solution
EBank worked with OpenText and its implementation partner, Raya Integration, to meet the evolving needs of its IT support and service teams, and non-IT departments. SMAX automation addressed inefficiencies, seamlessly integrating with existing tools and offering user-friendly customization.
Products deployed
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OpenText™ SMAX
Driven by a private generative AI chatbot—OpenText™ IT Operations Aviator—SMAX empowers users to resolve common support requests on their own
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OpenText™ Universal Discovery and CMDB
Increase your IT visibility and reduce your IT service disruptions with robust discovery, service dependency mapping, and proactive impact analysis
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OpenText™ Operations Orchestration
OpenText Operations Orchestration automates, integrates, and orchestrates any IT process, on cloud or off. Use low-code/no-code workflow authoring
Streamlining support and application development with containerization
SMAX is designed to deliver AI-driven smart IT service management (ITSM) to take productivity and service experience to new heights. The EBank team was attracted to SMAX’s smart self-service capabilities. With a modern user interface and an intuitive service catalogue, users are encouraged to find their own solutions or to create a smart ticket that is then auto-categorized and auto-routed to the relevant team. The native SMAX mobile application means that users can request support from anywhere. Processes, workflows, and tasks are automated with many out-of-the-box best practice integrations to existing tools within the EBank infrastructure. As a financial organization, compliance is key, and the team liked the SMAX ITIL-driven controls and enhancements.
The streamlined support and service process is managed by 80 service agents and serves nearly 1,700 users across the bank with 40 technical teams and 10 non-IT teams within the organization. The service catalog was populated with over 320 offerings to support a diverse user base. The service team processes on average 3,950 service or supports requests and 580 incidents monthly. The team also works on approximately 50 change requests each month. These are split between regular change requests, emergency, and pre-approved ones, each following a different automated SMAX workflow.
Helmy commented, “SMAX gave us an open platform that allowed us to work with some of our key departments on customizing workflows and applications to suit our business requirements. We were pleased to discover that SMAX’s containerization capabilities provided us with easy and codeless development functionality through its Studio feature. As a result, the workflow was developed in no time. We were also able to smoothly integrate it into our existing process. Containerization proved a key feature for us, as it enables seamless upgrades, self-healing capabilities, and we can scale up much more flexibly when needed.”
Automating password reset workflow and end-to-end asset tracking
EBank also leverages OpenText™ Operations Orchestration (OO) to automate, integrate, and orchestrate any IT process, as well as OpenText™ Universal Discovery and CMDB to discover, map, and manage CIs across the environment. Both solutions natively integrate with SMAX through standard APIs and connectors.
The first phase of the SMAX implementation focused on the introduction of automated support and service requests, incident and change management, and an easy-to-use service catalogue to encourage user self-service.
As password queries were a regular request item, the team created an automated workflow to guide users through resetting their own passwords, without needing support intervention.
Thanks to the SMAX integration with Universal Discovery and CMDB, the organization is working to establish SMAX as an asset and configuration management tool, with attributes added to CIs and converted to assets. By connecting this SMAX-based asset management framework to the IT budgeting system created, any asset can be tracked throughout its lifecycle: a full circle of transparency including budget, procurement, invoicing, and contract management.
Managing IT budgets and supporting human capital with automation
Non-IT departments, such as HR, Administration, Finance, and Corporate Communications, also benefit hugely from SMAX and its native integration capability. The EBank Service Management department implemented an innovative SMAX solution to a problem recognized by many other departments. It wanted to better control the IT financial process. This starts when a user requests a specific application or hardware.
In the manual process, offers would be requested from vendors, this would raise an internal memo that would be circulated around many stakeholders from IT, finance, and administration, for input and approval. Once a vendor had been agreed, a purchase order was raised, and any invoices received were balanced against this. With an IT budget of many millions of dollars generating hundreds of invoices it could take a couple of months before a purchase order reached the vendor. Plus, there was a very real risk of human error and lost documents along the way, causing even more delays.
Helmy commented, “Customizing a SMAX workflow to automate this process was easy, thanks to the codeless development function. We now manage all stakeholders’ approval through one workflow, with SMAX sending automated reminders if items get stuck. Each budget item has a SMAX record containing signed and scanned documentation, including memos, purchase orders, and invoices. This creates better tracking and full transparency for any of our IT projects, supporting reporting and vastly streamlining the process. Today, we can issue purchase orders within a week, using the SMAX-driven process.”
Enabling regulatory and security compliance
The vision is to use the newly implemented SMAX and OO automated workflows to apply and manage ISO 27001 security controls as best practice in information security. The bank’s compliance team is in the process of developing OO approval workflows to streamline security processes.
The OO workflows were used to optimize performance in EBank IT operations and apply more stringent security controls. The OpenText ITOM solutions support secure file transfer to ensure that sensitive information securely travels between different locations.
By strategically leveraging OpenText ITOM solutions as an open platform, EBank has creatively unlocked unprecedented efficiency and innovation. Users are now empowered to explore new avenues, encouraging collaboration, and fostering a dynamic ecosystem of innovation and adaptability.
Results
Introducing and integrating SMAX has supported EBank’s environmental sustainability objectives by virtually eliminating paper-intensive and manual processes. Meanwhile it reduced errors, enhanced accuracy, and provided real-time tracking.
Ensured implementation and integration success
EBank worked with OpenText and its implementation partner, Raya Integration, to meet the evolving needs of its IT support and service teams, as well as non-IT departments. Raya Integration, with its proven expertise, actively collaborated with the EBank team, ensuring a deep understanding of the bank’s challenges and aspirations. They worked together on a meticulous analysis of workflows and requirements, defining a tailored solution to address EBank’s unique operational challenges.
Raya Integration's experience in leveraging SMAX's containerization capabilities played a pivotal role in the success of the implementation. This expertise facilitated codeless development, accelerating workflow creation, and ensuring flexibility for future upgrades. The customization of SMAX workflows, including those for non-IT departments such as Finance, showcased Raya Integration’s commitment to aligning the solution with EBank’s overarching objectives.
Automated invoice management supports ESG objectives
The introduction of SMAX has made EBank a largely paperless organization, which supports the bank’s ESG objectives. All memos, purchase orders, and invoices related to the IT financial management process are now in digital format. Similarly, within HR any offers, contracts, transfer, or resignation documents are no longer used in paper format. “Introducing SMAX to our non-IT departments has been a resounding success,” said EBank’s Head of Governance, Amr Samir. “It reduced errors, enhanced accuracy, and provided real-time tracking capabilities for better financial control and HR management. We are planning similar automated workflow implementations with our administration affairs, human capital, and corporate communications departments. Once they are onboard, 95 percent of all EBank invoice processing will be managed through SMAX.”
Introduced real-time IT infrastructure monitoring
Streamlining the service and support process through SMAX contributed significantly to EBank’s organizational efficiency and operational excellence. Extending the SMAX platform to non-IT departments realized faster turnaround times and enhanced compliance.
Samir commented, “By strategically leveraging OpenText ITOM solutions as an open platform, EBank has creatively unlocked unprecedented efficiency and innovation. Users are now empowered to explore new avenues, encouraging collaboration, and fostering a dynamic ecosystem of innovation and adaptability”.
Helmy commented, “Our SMAX implementation has been very successful. We view it as an open platform that can easily integrate within our existing environment but can also be customized for particular workflows. The user-friendly interface and smart search capability make it easy for our users to find exactly what they need. With our SMAX-driven capabilities to monitor and manage IT infrastructure changes in real-time and minimize manual intervention, we feel ready to embrace new challenges and opportunities.”
Ebank’s Chief Technology & Information Officer, Ismail Farid concluded, “The successful SMAX implementation gave us a transformative solution to regulatory requirements and positioned EBank for future growth. The collaboration with OpenText and Raya Integration has created enhanced operational efficiency and innovation in IT infrastructure management."
