A profitable investment: How Arab National Bank saved 64K+ hours in 19 months
ABOUT
Established in 1979, Arab National Bank (ANB) is a Saudi-listed joint stock company that ranks among the 10-15 largest banks in the Middle East. Headquartered in Riyadh, the bank is supported by regional offices in Jeddah and Khobar, as well as a branch in London.
Orion Valley is a technology provider that offers niche IT services for artificial intelligence (AI), Robotic Process Automation (RPA), machine learning (ML), deep learning, Digital Assistance, the Internet of Things, mobility, bring your own device, and more. Headquartered in San Francisco, it has six offices around the world.
THE CHALLENGE
The bank wanted to streamline processes, improve work quality, and decrease costs. RPA offered a way to meet all those objectives.
2.5M
Transactions completed with RPA
72
Main processes automated
64K+
Hours saved in 19 months
0
Downtime migrating
100+
Bots migrated to Automation 360
“With the collaboration between our partners and RPA team, we were able to successfully migrate more than 100 bots to the Automation 360 platform, and achieve an ROI that proved how essential RPA is to the bank.”
—Yousef A. Alabdulkareem, Head of Business Analysis & RPA, Arab National Bank 
THE SOLUTION
With the help of Automation Anywhere partner Orion Valley, ANB successfully implemented bots using Enterprise version 11 to automate processes within its central operations, loans and deposits, internal controls, compliance, HR, treasury, and customer care departments.
However, after seeing demos about the Automation 360™ platform with enhanced artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) features including AARI™, a digital assistant for every employee, and Discovery Bot™, a process discovery and documentation solution to accelerate automation, the bank realized early migration was vital for the future of its RPA program.
Initially, both Enterprise version 11 and Automation 360 ran in a dual environment. But within a week’s time, ANB chose to fully migrate all bots to the Automation 360 platform as they gained confidence moving forward.
Processes Automated
Documentation gathering for transactions due diligence
Blocking and unblocking accounts
Account reconciliation
Loan rescheduling
Loan rollovers
Cancellation of outstanding letters of credit and letters of guarantee
Automating customer notifications and actions
THE WHOLE STORY
The bank chose to start migrating more complex processes first to get a better understanding of possible challenges and fixes needed. Then, it applied an agile approach to achieve the maximum output for each sprint. Heavy testing was conducted for each bot before deploying into the Automation 360 production platform.
Using the migration resource center, step-by-step guides, and best practices, ANB was able to successfully migrate more than 100 bots with zero downtime, making the bank the first to migrate as part of the Automation Anywhere open migration program.
Among some of the processes migrated were two in compliance. To facilitate alert notification, some staff spent significant time in collecting documents from different applications. A bot was created to relieve them from document retrieval, allowing them to focus on decision making. This reduced execution time by 64%.
The bank is also required to process thousands of account actions on a daily basis. The high volumes resulted in an increasing backlog despite having a big, dedicated team to complete the work. A bot was created to to fully automate the process. Now, thousands of requests are completed in a timely manner every day.
Other automations include loan operations, trade operations, transaction reconciliation, and regulatory reporting. With RPA, a total of 72 main processes are now managed by bots, ensuring zero errors and full compliance with financial rules and regulations.
ANB is one of the leading banks in the Middle East successfully using automation to transform its business, improving customer satisfaction and reducing operational costs.
THE FUTURE
To further decrease costs, save time, and improve customer satisfaction, ANB plans to continue implementing and scaling RPA in its HR department as well as other areas of the business such as finance, retail operations, and information security. It is assessing AARI, Discovery Bot, and IQ Bot use cases.
“Thanks to the migration resource center, Arab National Bank was able to easily upgrade to Automation 360 quickly and seamlessly. The tools, step-by-step instructions, and best practices made it easy. They are excited to now be able to expand automation across their organization with AARI and Discovery Bot.”
—Mohammad Elshereef, Country Sales Manager, Orion Valley (RPA Partner)
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