Bankia S A : transforms its work model and boosts collaboration between employees with Microsoft Teams

• Bankia reinforces its cultural transformation, offering all its professionals access to the same communication platform to be better connected and to preserve security of information.
• Banking professionals can optimise their activity and perform it anywhere, thanks to collaboration through Microsoft Teams, the use of Windows 10 devices and Microsoft 365 productivity tools.
• Currently, the bank has 22,000 people (bank employees and other service professionals and partner companies) using cloud mail and more than 15,600 professionals collaborating through Microsoft Teams.

Bankia, the fourth largest entity in the Spanish financial sector, is accelerating its digital transformation plan and is committed to Microsoft 365, a changeover to technology that allows it to be in line with its objectives and goals in an agile and effective manner. This change in corporate culture makes it possible to carry out their daily tasks without ties and boosts communication between employees, no matter where they operate.

In this context, Microsoft 365 acts as a cornerstone, providing a traditional e-mail service, access to business documentation and tools that enable new working paradigms, such as Microsoft Teams. And, with a network of 2,275 customer service branches throughout Spain, Bankia employees need solutions to optimise their processes and align their communication, as well as taking a step forward in an industry where the customers are what really matter. The transformation plan has seen the widespread updating of the bank's computers to Windows 10 and the installation of Microsoft 365 productivity tools. Thus, the device pool has been unified, facilitating management from the IT point of view and making a homogeneous work platform available to all workers.

From there, Bankia began to expand this new way of working in the departments with greater weight in participation in the bank's cross-cutting projects, eventually extending the use of Teams to a large number of areas. In this way, physical collaboration became digital under the bank's 'So easy' premise, obtaining greater dynamism and fluidity. Once the operations of its Central Services were changed over, the bank focused its efforts on applying Microsoft technology in its network of branches, in order to safeguard its employees on the front line with customers and provide better service. Currently, there are 22,000 users who use email in the cloud and more than 15,650 professionals who collaborate through Teams.

Security as the backbone

Currently, one of the challenges for companies, especially in critical sectors such as banking, is choosing technology providers that guarantee a cloud that is secure and prepared for regulatory compliance wherever they operate. In this regard, although Microsoft is not a niche security company, its approach in this field is holistic and always integrated as a horizontal service in its products and services.

'We are very satisfied with the agreement reached with Microsoft because it has allowed us to offer our professionals a set of very useful tools in their day-to-day operations. We take security as the fundamental basis of our operations and Microsoft's solutions give us confidence that facilitates the work of control and security of our activity', says Alejandro Ruiz-Oriol, Director of Bankia Workstation Infrastructure Management.

The adoption of Microsoft 365 and the company's cloud gives Bankia 360-degree protection, focused on four main aspects: identity management and authentication, proactive and advanced threat detection, data protection and unified monitoring. Thus, the platform used by Bankia benefits from the anticipation of an extensive global security network that analyses more than 8 billion daily signals with the help of Artificial Intelligence and a cloud that meets a wide range of international standards such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), ISO 27001, HIPAA, FedRAMP, SOC 1 and SOC 2, as well as country-specific standards, such as certification in accordance with the High Level of the National Security Scheme (ENS) in Spain.

An easy and efficient integration process

Internally, Bankia carried out three training initiatives to make the migration process as simple and practical as possible. On the one hand, the organisation held specific sessions with the bank's influential groups, so that they were the ones who led the new work culture and employees could gradually become aware of its usefulness. On the other hand, the bank had a Technical CAU (User Service Centre) to answer any questions from employees about the operation of the platform, which guaranteed them a smooth transition in their core business. And finally, videos were also prepared of specific use scenarios that addressed the main queries, avoiding removing all users from their jobs to learn how to use the new resources.

In this way, Bankia has simplified its processes by having a place where all the information is kept, avoiding searches for document versions or avalanches of unnecessary emails, thanks to the use of Teams. In other words, by using a single communication and collaboration platform, users prevent the occurrence of information leaks and non-secure sharing of sensitive customer data.

'The result of the project to implement Microsoft tools in our day-to-day operations improves communication between our employees, has an impact on customer service and highlights the bank's ability to adapt to new technologies and new ways of working, making it clear once again that 'we make it possible' at Bankia', concludes Ignacio Garcia, Director of Management and Support Processes at Bankia.