DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, February 01 2015 – The way Big Data is transforming modern retail banking will be a focus for discussion and debate during Dubai’s GCC BIG DATA & ANALYTICS SUMMIT in March 2015, which has just received the endorsement of IBM.

1. BANKING AND BIG DATA – “REVAMPING ALL ASPECTS
OF THE CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP”
GCC Big Data Summit in March will Examine Product
Transformation and Customer Care Analytics
BANKERS FROM USA, ABU DHABI TO DEBATE INTERNATIONAL
DATA-DRIVEN MARKETING AND RETAIL CHALLENGES
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IBM Confirms Participation as Summit’s Gold Sponsor
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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, February 01 2015 – The way Big Data is transforming modern
retail banking will be a focus for discussion and debate during Dubai’s GCC BIG DATA &
ANALYTICS SUMMIT in March 2015, which has just received the endorsement of IBM.
One particular theme of the event is that sophisticated use of Big Data now enables banks to
answer questions which were too expensive – or were in fact impossible – to answer before.
Yet Big Data is now enabling financial institutions to revamp all aspects of the customer/bank
relationship.
At the Summit, internationally-accredited specialists from the USA and Abu Dhabi will be talking
to the GCC’s top managers about proven use cases and techniques for large-scale improve-
ments in responding to bank customer needs. The GCC BIG DATA SUMMIT will highlight the
potential benefits of Big Data for the region’s financial, public and commercial sectors from
March 8-10, 2015 at Dubai’s Address Marina Hotel.
Under the title “The Big Data Journey – A Banking Perspective,”
Vice President of Data Quality & Business Intelligence for the
USA’s Great Western Bank, Ron Van Zanten, will address
delegates on how his team builds customer solutions that
transform their products through the use of Big Data tools.
Mr Van Zanten says: “Great Western Bank can now be more
responsive to customer’s needs while being be more proactive in
protecting a customer’s assets. It makes our current product
offering more effective – and in the future, our Big Data capability
will provide avenues for new products and more opportunities.”
He emphasizes: “We bankers can no longer ask customers questions, learn about their needs,
without Big Data analytics. I’ll be explaining how Big Data allows for the impossible marriage of

2. household information, geospatial information, customer activities, demographics, financial
information – and transforms that marriage to an actionable output.”
He added that there had never before been an infrastructure that allowed almost real-time
customer events (and not just with his own bank), to drive marketing offers, detect fraud, and
predict customer preferences.
Representing the UAE banking industry will be Ranjit Mukherjee, VP, Customer Analytics at Abu
Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB), who will speak on “Social Media Analytics, Customer Service &
Loyalty.”
In a panel presentation alongside Dr Jassim Haji, Director of Information Technology at Gulf Air
in Bahrain, Mr Mukherjee will discuss the use of data analytics to understand each customer’s
unique needs, opinion and behaviour as well as moving from product centric to customer
centric mining and metrics.
He comments: “It is now inevitable that leveraging on the power of Big Data will be the key
differentiator to market dominance.
“Business problems require a higher level of technological sophistication, not only to analyze
mountains of data and gather insights, but also to look into the future, predict business
outcomes, and use these predictions to drive actions.”
Mr Mukherjee adds: “At ADCB, such insights are being continuously pushed to front line
decision makers, to improve processes of everyday work. This has resulted in development of a
fact-based culture that values the opportunities evident in information over conjecture or
speculation.”
Overall, the Summit will focus on the extensive big data innovations now making an impact on
Middle Eastern government agencies, transport authorities, banks, telcos, oil & gas producers,
industries and retailers – plus large to small enterprises around the region.
Speakers will also include senior representatives of Halliburton, Etisalat, DU Telecoms, ADWEA,
ADNOC, Daman Health Insurance, Injazat Data Systems, Emirates Group, Etihad Airways and
the British Government Cabinet Office.
This week, IBM has announced that it will join the GCC BIG DATA SUMMIT as Gold Sponsor.
IBM’s active role worldwide in the promotion and support of Big Data Analytics has been widely
recognised in recent years.
“We welcome IBM’s keen interest in the Summit and its active participation,” said Kumar
Ramanujam, Director of Conferences at organisers TMC of Dubai.

3. Ends
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For further information, please contact:
Stefan Kemball
Director of Strategy, TMC
Tel: 04 276 5409 x 103
Email: stefan@tmc-me.com
Read all about the event programme, advisory board, delegate booking and sponsorship opportunities at
www.tmc-me.com or www.gccbigdata.com