Bank Audi Success Story with SAP and Opal Wave

1. SAP Customer Success Story | Banking | Bank Audi
Bank Audi: Meeting the Challenges
of Growth with Planning and
Consolidation Software from SAP
Partner

2. SAP Customer Success Story | Banking | Bank Audi
Executive overview
Company
Vision
Why SAP
Implementation
Solution
Benefits
Future plans
2
When Bank Audi sal – Audi Saradar Group, a Lebanese financial services firm
operating in the Middle East, Europe, and North Africa, wanted to improve and
standardize its enterprise reporting, it turned to SAP. The SAP® Business Planning
and Consolidation application provides powerful, integrated functionality for use
across the company’s extensive multinational branch network, enabling growth,
efficiency, and connectivity.
Company
Bank Audi sal – Audi Saradar Group
Industry
Banking
Products and Services
Banking, brokerage, and insurance services and
products
Web Site
www.banqueaudi.com
SAP® Solutions
SAP® Business Planning and Consolidation application,
version for the Microsoft platform
Partner
Opal Wave Solutions Ltd. (www.opalwave.com)

3. Executive overview
Company
Vision
Why SAP
Implementation
Solution
Benefits
Future plans
3
SAP Customer Success Story | Banking | Bank Audi
A regional leader in financial
services and products
Regional financial institutions are engines of economic
growth and innovation and important members of
their communities. Headquartered in Beirut, Lebanon,
Bank Audi sal offers a range of financial products and
services including commercial, retail, and investment
banking; online brokerage; and insurance. Bank
Audi operates in the Middle East, Europe, and
North Africa, with an international network of over
150 branches. In Lebanon alone, the company has
80 offices and more than 160 ATMs supported by a
state-of-the-art IT infrastructure.
With consolidated assets of US$28.7 billion, Bank
Audi is a leader among Arab banks and is ranked
first in Lebanon in terms of total assets, shareholder
equity, deposits and loans, and profits. From its be-
ginnings in Lebanon, it first expanded to Switzerland
and France. Today it also has a presence in Jordan,
Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
Abu Dhabi, Gibraltar, and Monaco. Bank Audi takes
a balanced, multipronged approach in its financial
offerings and strategy, with a strong lending port-
folio; strict attention to margins, efficiency, and
risk; and a sharp focus on growth across the region.
157 branches
80 in Lebanon,
77 in other countries

4. Executive overview
Company
Vision
Why SAP
Implementation
Solution
Benefits
Future plans
4
SAP Customer Success Story | Banking | Bank Audi
Connecting the enterprise
and enabling growth
Expansion by acquisition has been a key driver
of Bank Audi’s growth and profitability, and its
organization is now made up of 55 different com-
panies. Through this expansion program, Bank
Audi acquired valuable assets and a diverse range
of skills and expertise.
Along with adding resources and talent, however,
the acquisitions and mergers also contributed to
organizational complexity. Companies that had been
acquired brought new software systems and data
sources to Bank Audi’s extended enterprise, lead-
ing to an increasingly disparate and disconnected
IT landscape and an array of nonstandard business
processes.“With each new acquisition, we also added
another banking and reporting system,” explains
Marc Fahl, head of group financial monitoring and
consolidation at Bank Audi.“We needed a solution
that would provide standard, integrated functionality
to the whole organization.” Compounding matters,
the extensive use of spreadsheets led to slow, error-
prone, and unreliable reporting.
To address these challenges and make continued
growth possible, Bank Audi needed to provide a
common banking solution for use across the enter-
prise. The company wanted a solution that would
empower business units, divisions, and subsidiaries
with sophisticated reporting and consolidation func-
tionality and improve decision making, efficiency,
and profitability.
“We needed a solution that would give us fast, accurate, and reliable
reporting and consolidation. At the same time, we needed a solution
that all the different groups in our company would be able to implement
and use with relative ease.”
Marc Fahl, Head of Group Financial Monitoring and Consolidation, Bank Audi sal – Audi Saradar Group

5. Executive overview
Company
Vision
Why SAP
Implementation
Solution
Benefits
Future plans
5
SAP Customer Success Story | Banking | Bank Audi
Familiar, sophisticated software
Bank Audi wanted an integrated enterprise applica-
tion that would give the companies and divisions
within its organization the ability to adopt common
banking and reporting functionality and processes.
Before it decided to go with SAP, Bank Audi evalu-
ated other solutions but found serious flaws in the
offerings. Some solutions required changes in core
banking processes that the company did not want
to make, while others had excessively long imple-
mentation periods.
With SAP, Bank Audi found a solution that could help
it integrate, connect, and empower its organization.
The company chose the SAP Business Planning and
Consolidation application, version for the Microsoft
platform, to improve and enable financial reporting
across the enterprise and support better, faster deci-
sion making. With its native Microsoft interface, the
application provides the functionality and formatting
commonly used in finance.
“What’s more,” says Fahl,“SAP has a reputation we
trust, and its software is familiar to our company and
to our partners and customers.”The planning and
consolidation application suits Bank Audi’s current
and expected future reporting needs and has the
flexibility to meet the challenges of its heterogeneous
organization.
“We went with SAP because the application is a good fit
for our company. It has the flexibility and the powerful
functionality we need.”
Marc Fahl, Head of Group Financial Monitoring and Consolidation,
Bank Audi sal – Audi Saradar Group

6. Executive overview
Company
Vision
Why SAP
Implementation
Solution
Benefits
Future plans
6
SAP Customer Success Story | Banking | Bank Audi
Smooth and successful
implementation
For the first phase of the implementation, Bank Audi
rolled out the application to approximately 40 busi-
ness users in 13 countries. The project benefited
from support throughout the organization, from
operations to the executive level. People in all roles
were eager to participate, which facilitated user
adoption and knowledge transfer. With the help of
Opal Wave Solutions Ltd., an SAP partner, Bank Audi
completed the implementation, including testing and
training, on time and on budget in just five months.
The application has met all of Bank Audi’s function-
ality requirements and was implemented without
disrupting daily, business-critical activities. The
training of new users also went smoothly – people
were ready to use the application after only a day
and a half of instruction.“Our people are familiar
and comfortable with SAP software,” confirms Toufic
Moukarzel, senior officer in the financial monitoring
and consolidation group, who closely followed the
implementation.“The application and the interface
are very intuitive, so we can train people quickly.
Plus, we know we can deploy the application fast
to additional business users in the future.”
5 months
Time for implementa-
tion in 13 countries

7. Executive overview
Company
Vision
Why SAP
Implementation
Solution
Benefits
Future plans
7
SAP Customer Success Story | Banking | Bank Audi
Powerful reporting and superior
information availability
SAP Business Planning and Consolidation has greatly
enhanced Bank Audi’s monthly and annual enterprise
reporting abilities. Companies and divisions across
the organization can produce detailed annual break-
downs of major financial components in the currency
and language of their home country, and can quickly
convert reports to the Lebanese pound.
Along with this flexibility, the application is powerful
and scalable enough to keep up with high demand.
Each entity in Bank Audi’s organization produces
40 to 50 reports every month, including asset quality,
risk, and equity reports. Predefined templates speed
reporting and consolidation, reducing budget cycles
from months to weeks and shaving as much as five
days from monthly financial close processes. Auto-
mated data checking helps improve data quality, re-
sulting in more accurate, insightful, and trustworthy
reports.
SAP Business Planning and Consolidation enables
Bank Audi to cope with a host of data reporting regu-
lations and standards, including Lebanon Central
Bank requirements, International Financial Reporting
Standards requirements, and local regulations.
“With the application, we’re able to produce accurate
reports that instill confidence and that support better,
faster decision making throughout the business,”
explains Fahl.
5 days
Reduction in monthly
financial close time

8. Executive overview
Company
Vision
Why SAP
Implementation
Solution
Benefits
Future plans
8
SAP Customer Success Story | Banking | Bank Audi
Improving efficiency
and enabling expansion
SAP Business Planning and Consolidation enables
fast, consistent reporting across the enterprise. Now,
Bank Audi can adjust plans and forecasts, shorten
budget cycles, close the books faster, and facilitate
compliance with regulatory and financial standards.
Dependable and efficient, the application automates
financial calculations, supports sound decision mak-
ing with accurate data, and helps ensure that budget
deadlines are met.
“SAP has really helped us improve our reporting,”
says Fahl.“We have better, more available data and
faster, more reliable reports.”The application has
significantly improved and automated data collection
and control, eliminating manual efforts, reducing
errors, and improving speed and efficiency.“Auditing
is easier and closing is faster,” explains Fahl.“And a
majority of the data for our annual reporting can
now be collected and consolidated automatically.”
With the application, Bank Audi can manage dual
charts of accounts. This allows the company to
produce a range of reports, in different formats, to
satisfy the requirements of various regulatory bodies
and central banks. A centralized database unifies
disparate silos of data, helping ensure a single ver-
sion of the truth and reducing data redundancies
and errors.And the application’s flexibility means that
it can be extended to new divisions and companies as
Bank Audi continues to grow.
30%
Reduction in data
redundancy

9. Executive overview
Company
Vision
Why SAP
Implementation
Solution
Benefits
Future plans
9
Bank Audi
CMP17683(12/07)
Copyright/Trademark | Privacy | Impressum
Looking forward
with interest
With its powerful, flexible functionality, the SAP soft-
ware is a perfect fit for Bank Audi’s strategic vision.
The company expects to continue on its present
course and to fuel growth through mergers and
acquisitions. It plans to develop more detailed,
granular, and multidimensional reporting functional-
ity and to expand reporting to support a wider range
of regulations for central banks throughout the
Middle East.
To support its continued expansion, Bank Audi expects
to deploy functionality within SAP Business Planning
and Consolidation beyond consolidation and report-
ing. The company also plans to implement additional
SAP software to enable business intelligence, includ-
ing SAP BusinessObjects™ Dashboards software.
“We’re very pleased with what we’ve been able to
do with our SAP software,” confirms Fahl.
The content of this publication has been authorized for the sole pur-
pose of acknowledging the relationship between Bank Audi sal – Audi
Saradar Group and SAP at the date of its publication. The information
included herein is subject to change, and Bank Audi sal – Audi Saradar
Group shall in no case be held liable for its content.