Al Barid Bank
            

Established in June 2010, Al Barid Bank is a subsidiary of Barid Al-Maghrib. Through its unique positioning as a socially responsible bank, and its commercial strategy based on customer centricity, Al Barid Bank reaches Moroccans throughout the kingdom via a network of nearly 2,000 branches and more than 1,000 ATMs covering urban, peri-urban and rural areas. Deeply anchored in the Moroccan economy and considered part of Morocco’s heritage, Al Barid Bank, together with its subsidiary Barid Cash, now has more than ten million customers and over 3,500 employees.

Digital, a vector of financial inclusion advocated by Al Barid Bank

A resolutely young institution, Al Barid Bank preserves its heritage while being committed to executing on a modern strategy. Innovation lies at the heart of the organization’s ability to adapt quickly and efficiently to technological, regulatory, and economic changes. And from the very first years of its existence, Al Barid Bank has advocated for digital as a vector of financial inclusion. “An approach that drives us to constantly upgrade our IT system,” explains El Mostafa Ezzougari, CIO Al Barid Bank.

After implementing the technological solutions necessary for management of its commercial and support services, Al Barid Bank turned its attentions to equipping itself with an innovative IT architecture that would reduce its time to market and offer high value-added services.

Clearly defined specifications and objectives

As part of this project, Al Barid Bank set itself various objectives. First, the bank wanted to create a Business Process Management (BPM) solution to provide a solid foundation for orchestrating all its technical services, establishing workflow and task management systems, and digitalizing the bank's documents and processes. This foundation also had to ensure secure exposure of APIs and web services, as well as governing and monetizing its services. Al Barid Bank also wanted to implement an Electronic Document Management (EDM) solution to store and digitalize the bank's various customer and internal documents. Al Barid Bank therefore launched a call for tenders for an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), a BPM solution and an EDM solution. After selecting Software AG's webMethods Integration Platform, the bank went on, a year later, to also choose Software AG's BPMS tool and API management solutions. This decision came after extensive research involving a market study, market solution benchmarking, and comprehensive discussions with the vendor.

webMethods from Software AG, the foundation for Al Barid Bank’s IT system

The bank started by establishing a modern IT architecture (webMethods Integration Platform) before digitalizing its processes. “We integrated the transformation of nine business processes, including those related to account transfers, inheritance, complaints, management of adjustments, entry into remote relationships, 100% digital account opening, and processing of proposals, etc.,” says El Mostafa Ezzougari. “Today, our platform is the permanent foundation for our IT architecture, from which we carry out all our developments, whether in the context of our digital roadmap or the transformation of the bank's processes. In addition, as we update or migrate our historical applications, we integrate them into this platform. We have also developed our own workstation based on the Software AG tools.”

E-Mothep, a strong integration partner

To carry out this project, Al Barid Bank partnered with the Moroccan integrator E-Mothep who was selected during the call for tenders. “E-Mothep handled the whole integration of Software AG solutions, their installation and implementation, as well as the training of users within our bank,” continues El Mostafa Ezzougari. “Our partner also transferred skills to the bank's in-house team in charge of the digitalization processes.” The partnership between the bank and E-Mothep continues to blossom: “Our integrator takes care of maintenance of the Software AG platform as well as the processes we have developed on it.”

Tangible benefits

Now completed, this project has enabled Al Barid Bank to retire some of the processes mapped out on the old system that had breaks in the chain. “Now, the bank has automated real-time process excellence which enables us to know and follow the status of a request at any time,” El Mostafa Ezzougari adds. “The platform also facilitates interactions between the branch, the regions, and the central entities. It allows us to reduce the handling time for processes and requests. It also contributes to improving the quality of services delivered to our customers.”

Using its new platform, Al Barid Bank also opens its services up to digital channels: its customers can now make all their requests, such as money transfer, account opening or complaints directly from their mobile phone. “We were the first bank in Morocco to implement mobile card payment between private individuals or between customers and merchants in 2018. And this service was developed in particular on the basis of Software AG's webMethods Integration Platform,” says El Mostafa Ezzougari.

Al Barid Bank strengthens its position as an inclusive bank

Building on these benefits, Al Barid Bank has turned its attentions to developing innovative projects using the Software AG webMethods API Management platform. “We are thinking about new API-enabled services that we can develop on our platform, such as offering credits for private individuals and companies. This is a service that was previously outsourced to external providers,” El Mostafa Ezzougari explains. “We also have a ‘digital factory’ project in progress—this is our roadmap on which processes are to be digitalized.”

As Al Barid Bank seeks to open itself up to the future, Software AG's solutions are positioned to play a key part in this. The bank, for example, is currently investing in a suite of projects set up by the Moroccan Administration, which will strengthen its status as an inclusive bank. “With a strong foundation and new platform in place, we will, for example, be able to digitalize the mass banking processes to the benefit of multiple organizations;” says El Mostafa Ezzougari.