Discover how Home Credit got out of Excel spreadsheets and improved their data quality, data management, and data processes.
Home Credit Group is an international provider of consumer finance with over 117,000 employees and operations across three continents and nine countries.
With 28 million active customers and central financial sector regulators, keeping a close eye, handling data safely, accurately, and swiftly is a top priority.
We chatted with Stepan Pittauer in the Home Credit finance department to find out how he spearheaded the initiative to leverage Keboola and PowerBI for Home Credit’s data processing framework.
As with many large organizations, data is often stored in Excel spreadsheets. Unfortunately, this kind of system often comes with some drawbacks:
“Before Keboola, reporting was done with Excel inputs or outputs from the Oracle environment,” Stepan explains, “they were typically one-man shows that required a skilled analyst and were very hard to maintain."
And complexity in data can quickly become difficult to keep track of, especially with all the regulatory requirements.
“I think the biggest challenge in finance is the complexity, along with regulatory reports. So, I wanted to add Keboola to our data stack because I was sure it would lead to real business results.”
After some discussion, Home Credit decided to give Keboola a chance.
“The key factor is that I was able to deliver something tangible quite fast. And the solution was very flexible in terms of change requests. You can always restore old versions if you need to.”
Shortly after getting the green light, Stepan led the design and delivery of the new data solution at Home Credit. Since then, Home Credit has been able to glean more accurate and more relevant insights from its data.
By introducing Keboola, Home Credit gained the ability to process multiple Excel sheets at once, no matter the quality of data. Instead of creating extractors for each sheet, they can now process them for all business units at the same time.
The most common use case when it comes to Excel files is data mining based on data range names. The usual obstacle that occurs is when additional columns break the extractor. But in Keboola, this issue can be easily addressed and the extraction can be orchestrated in just a few clicks.
Being a financial institution means privacy and security are of paramount importance to Home Credit. Keboola made sure to cater to these imperatives. There are three major use cases that Keboola has helped Home Credit to solve:
Stepan and his team are tasked with collecting figures from various business units regarding new volumes and budget fulfillment. This analysis is crucial for managing financial stability.
However, before Keboola, this complex process took much longer without the power of automation.
“These figures were previously only available the next month, so data for February was submitted in mid-March. Also, the process of consolidating this information was manual.”
With Keboola, the team has been able to accelerate this process significantly, which improves productivity and presents the opportunity for more real-time analysis insights.
“We’re able to collect new volume data on a daily basis, so we can report any local market changes as they’re happening.”
With Keboola up and running, Home Credit has eliminated tedious, manual tasks, saving time for its team. Better yet, the data analysis is available sooner, providing valuable insights for whoever needs it.
Getting everyone on the same page regarding data and business terms once required a lot of back-and-forth, taking up valuable time.
“Setting and maintaining a business glossary was an ongoing process. After data processing, it could happen that metrics might be missing definitions, or not be available at all.”
Now, Keboola gives Home Credit a unified, automated way to define data. Every metric has a specific name and can be analyzed efficiently.
"We prepare a simple list of data records, publish them into PowerBI, so anybody in the company can search them. It helps us speak the same language across different departments."
Keboola’s extensive suite of tools, such as extractors, orchestrations, and easy transformations, are at the heart of this evolution for Home Credit. With this platform at the center of business operations, a user can define a task and never worry about it again.
Having precise, dependable, and timely reporting is crucial for any company. And that's precisely what Keboola has provided Home Credit.
“I’m able to provide better quality data faster, which helps our management to make important decisions faster and with more impact.”
Using Keboola hasn’t been a minor change for Stepan and Home Credit, but a transformational shift in business operations. Home Credit's data processes have improved, along with their thinking.
Keboola has enhanced Home Credit's organizational DNA and the team's ability to focus on more meaningful work going forward.
