Empowering NAB employees to make smarter decisions
Arq has been working in close partnership with NAB for many years delivering a variety of projects, utilising a number of industry-leading technologies. Recently we worked with the NAB Digital Innovation Team to deliver a cloud-hosted, self-service reporting platform enabling the internal commercialisation of data. NABs first cloud-hosted dataset hosted by AWS and approved by APRA.
The Digital Insights project came about when NAB identified the opportunity to create a central reporting hub to analyse and create value from data which is being collected from various disparate locations and customer touchpoints across the Bank. The new solution would be scalable and automated, with new datasets updated and ingested regularly meaning data scientists and analysts could transition away from repetitive and time-intensive data collation and operational activities to higher-value predictive and insight work.
NAB turned to Arq because they recognised our depth of knowledge in data, visualisation and the AWS stack, coupled with our working knowledge and understanding of NABs people and processes. Anyone who works in the finance sector understands just how complicated this project is, given APRA requirements; and it was a major accomplishment to receive APRA approval against keeping data in the cloud; being the first set of cloud-hosted data for NAB.
Using technologies including AWS EC2 infrastructure, RedShift and Python and Apache Spark, the platform aggregates data from Teradata, Oracle and 3rd party APIs including Adobe Analytics. There was the additional level of complexity to complying with PCI and PII obligations; but the team delivered on this requirement producing the new centralised reporting platform. Being a safe pair of hands around systems integration and delivery, leading a blended team of NAB staff and contractors, offering thought-leadership around best-practise and technology and tooling selection and bringing expertise in innovation we delivered to the vision.
This platform allows stakeholders across the bank to report on key data allowing them to measure the success of their business units and to assess Digital Adoption across their customers, a key metric for NABs transformation, allowing stakeholders to pivot as necessary towards success.
“So rather than spending all of our people’s time on crunching the data to get it ready to use. We’re now finding we’re spending less time on data and more time on understanding insights and driving better business decisions as a result of that.”
– Anthony Coviello
General Manager, Digital Commercialisation, NAB
“We look after all of digital and innovation within NAB. That compromises all of data for reporting, analytics and data science. The main challenges we saw were, we needed to build a new platform for our team to use. That’s why we went looking for partners like ARQ who could help us on this journey.”
– Adam Gould
Head Of Digital Analytics and Insights, NAB
For almost 160 years, NAB have been helping their customers with their money.
Today, NAB has more than 30,000 people serving 9,000,000 customers at more than 900 locations in Australia, New Zealand and around the world.
As Australia’s largest business bank, they work with small, medium and large businesses and are there from the beginning to support them through every stage of the business lifecycle.
NAB also fund some of the most important infrastructure in Australian communities – including schools, hospitals and roads, in a way that’s responsible, inclusive and innovative.