One of South Africa’s largest digital banks rolls out Microsoft Teams across the group in weeks, just as the COVID-19 crisis makes business continuity a matter of survival.
840+ branches · 14,000 staff · 15M clients
The challenge
With more than 840 branches, 14,000 staff and 15 million active clients, Capitec is one of South Africa's top digital banks. Recognised as the world's third-strongest banking brand, it is passionate about simplifying banking for all South Africans. To keep its user-centric service unshakable even in uncertain times, Capitec needed a better way to collaborate internally, a group-wide platform that enabled rapid connectivity and ease of use for every member of staff.
"We needed a way to collaborate more efficiently, become more integrated, and generally more holistic across all our Microsoft 365 products," explains Stuart Chalmers, Infrastructure Manager of the Modern Workplace team at Capitec. To streamline collaboration, the bank decided to combine the power of Microsoft Teams with its existing Microsoft 365 environment.
The solution
BUI helped Capitec deploy Teams across the entire group in just two to three weeks. Three weeks after launch, the nation went into lockdown, and what began as a quest for easier communication became a critical mission to safeguard business continuity and the health of all staff.
"Within the first couple of weeks of its launch, we were already seeing between 60 and 70 percent adoption of Teams."
- Thys Janse van Rensburg, General Manager at BUI
"With the rise of COVID-19, the use of Teams just suddenly exploded, and we reached nearly 100 percent adoption by April," Chalmers adds. "Thanks to an intelligent IT Support Bot deployed in Teams, we were able to assist our employees in their shift to remote-working. Teams has given us an opportunity to deploy a reliable, secure and stable collaboration technology across our entire group in just two to three weeks."
The results
With nearly 140,000 Teams calls per month and 50,000 group meetings, Teams has allowed even the largest gatherings to proceed without a hitch, even as employees worked remotely. "It has been amazing to be able to have Teams meetings that allow us to collaborate with 80, sometimes even 200 people at a time," explains Matthew Smith, Manager of Content and PR at Capitec.
"At Capitec, our shared core values include simplicity and accessibility. We wanted our users to have a very simple experience with access to services, in one place. We also wanted the service accessible on mobile platforms. With Teams, we have that."