Global bank creates portal where “knowledge works for you”

Bank Hapoalim is Israel’s largest bank, with over 10,000 employees and many branches in Israel, Asia, Australia, Europe, Latin and North America. Founded in 1921, the bank had an especially fast rate of growth during a period of government ownership starting in 1983 as its operations expanded around the world. While its large workforce and global presence represented strength and immense intellectual capital, the scale of business and organizational complexity also posed challenges.

Effects of rapid growth call for new ways of working

The bank lacked a unified approach to knowledge management and a standard method for working across business units. Inefficiencies from use of disparate communication channels reduced the effectiveness of every employee and increased costs while also fostering duplicate efforts. There wasn’t a central place to get information or answers to questions.

Professionals such as investment advisors, compliance officers, branch office employees and business centers were particularly affected. Each had unique information needs specific to their roles but were hampered by limited access to experts and critical information.

Business objectives guide creation of a portal

To address these issues, Bank Hapoalim built a sophisticated portal based on IBM WebSphere® Portal, which now gives all employees better access to information and expertise. Key objectives guided development of a corporate portal for the whole organization, which includes within it a professional portal for those in certain roles and a unique top-layer Web application that serves as a consolidated work tool for some of these professionals.

Top objectives for the corporate portal were creation of a knowledge management and collaboration solution, and establishment of a unified corporate identity. For the professional portal, each role group defined its own objectives based on business needs. But a shared objective was being able to get the right information to the right people at the right time, empowering users to achieve strong job performance while also increasing their knowledge and skills.

Main communication channel reinforces corporate identity

Creation of the Bank Hapoalim portal was a multiyear effort that touched almost every business unit. Objectives have been realized and the portal has now been in use for four years. At its launch, it was one of the first major organizational portals in Israel, and since then it has remained a leading example based on its performance in national competitions.

The corporate portal has become the main communication channel for the bank and gateway to all its core applications. It is the bank’s knowledge management and collaboration solution and an effective virtual workspace that provides employees in all different roles with everything they need to do their jobs throughout the day. The portal workspace is completely user-centric, which has led to this tagline on the professional sites: “Where knowledge works for you.” It is the first thing launched to every employee when they log onto their computers in the morning.

Apart from the portal’s practical usefulness, its centrality in every employee’s work environment, together with its ubiquitous interface with the Bank Hapoalim logo, also helps to reinforce a consistent corporate identity.

The bank’s portal gets around five million entries a month and provides all employees with anytime/anywhere access to the corporate environment. Over 500 project team rooms allow users to contribute content and track their tasks, and online forums support communities aligned to the professional groups, providing easy access to experts and information.

Professionals have role-based workspaces

Using a framework for role-based, personalized views, the professional portal now includes 28 different professional sites. Every professional role has a tailored solution—essentially a portal of its own. These virtual workspaces support professionals with all the information, applications, access to expertise and other resources relevant to their work. Each role group takes ownership of its own portal (while enjoying an ongoing partnership with the organizational portal team), and the professionals themselves are the content authors.

Users seeking answers to questions can consult a knowledge base on key terms or pose questions online which automatically routes them to the relevant professional resource. This has been wildly successful. For example, within five months of the site for branch office bankers going live, over 18,000 requests were answered this way while “legacy-style” requests from the branches submitted via phone or mail went down by 30 percent. This clearly indicated that the majority of information seekers turned first to the self-service option via the portal—and found what they needed. This conclusion is also supported by the high number of page hits—reaching as many as 3.5 million a month. Results like this accrue daily from connecting people to those with greater expertise as questions arise, regardless of whether the parties know each other.

Portal contributions are transformative

With the portal helping to organize and provide access to information, the bank has radically reduced time lost in searching for information and related communications. Knowledge is now more accessible, and it is easier to get answers out to external customers, which directly affects customer satisfaction.

For example, in a meeting with customers, an investment banker polled his peers in the investment banking community for their opinions concerning customers’ questions, in real time. The customers were impressed that he could reach out in this simple manner to advise them, and they indicated that they viewed the bank as very accessible and innovative for leveraging the power of the community in this way.

Additionally, productivity has increased, and there have been reductions in costs and expenditures. These include massive savings on paper and its distribution, and other savings from better business outcomes due to faster access to knowledge and expertise, leading to faster decisions.

With its portal now well established, Bank Hapoalim is currently working on integrating IBM Lotus® Sametime® instant messaging software into the portal environment and is considering IBM Lotus Connections social networking software as a possible future addition.