Nigeria: United Bank for Africa Plc (UBA Plc) of Nigeria selected Spatial Technologies Ltd (STL) – a mapping and GIS solution provider, to implement a map-based solution to support a multibillion naira branch expansion and optimisation project.
UBA realised that success of a financial institution depends on its approach to data management, customer relation management. By adding a geographic component called “location” to its database, UBA can gain enormous advantage in many ways.
The objectives of the project are to develop a systematic or scientific method of locating branches and ATMs for profitability and to provide a visual and scientific process to locating smaller sized branches, called “spoke,” around existing large branches, “hubs.”
The project also aims cost saving of over NGN 9 billion (approx USD 58 million) on branch expansion in Nigeria. This is a pilot project starting with Lagos and to spread later to other parts of Nigeria.
Under the contract, STL provided the digital street map data of Lagos. STL also mapped the locations of all existing UBA’s branches and ATMs including those of other banks that UBA recently acquired. In addition, STL mapped locations of all branches of UBA’s 5 most important competitors throughout Lagos State and Sango Ota, Ibafo, Mowe.
The contract also covered the mapping of several points of interest that are considered important considerations when choosing an optimum location for a new UBA branch.
STL geocoded over 1,000,000 UBA’s customers’ location based on their residential addresses into a GIS format. It enabled UBA to see for the first time the geographic spread of over one million customers within the project area on an interactive street map of Lagos. Another deliverable was the demographic data of Lagos categorised into local government areas projected from the Nigeria’s 2006 census data.
According to STL press release, this is the first GIS implementation at this scale by any financial institution in Nigeria. This project also marked the first successful attempt by any private company in Nigeria to geocode addresses.
Ireti Ajala, Chief Executive Officer of STL said, “By using GIS as a strategic tool, UBA would be able to make informed business and strategic decisions that would not have been possible using the traditional row-column tabular database approach. By this project, UBA had joined the league of such financial institutions as MasterCard, Bank of America, Barclays Bank, Bank of the West, Royal Bank of Canada, NatWest PLC, and a host of other banks across the world that use GIS in making and supporting informed business decisions.”
Source: PRLog
