Capital Alliance Group implements cloud-based digital strategy
With operations supported by a range of Microsoft solutions, Capital Alliance Group (CAL) recently featured in a Microsoft client case study (published on their website) highlighting how customers at CAL benefit from a reliable and trusted service, while employees enjoy a highly collaborative and connected workplace with the support of Microsoft solutions and products.
Capital Alliance Group (CAL) is a full-service investment bank offering a broad spectrum of integrated investment and capital market solutions to all investor categories including family businesses and institutional clients.
Commencing operations in 2000, the bank specialises in originating, trading and investing in debt and equity securities.
CAL is also a primary dealer registered with the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, and has been named ‘Best Investment Banking Company Sri Lanka’, ‘Best Investment Banking Solutions Provider Sri Lanka’, ‘Best New Asset Management Company Sri Lanka’ and the ‘Fastest Growing Unit Trust Manager Sri Lanka’ at the Global Banking and Finance Review Awards 2015.
In recent years, CAL has focused on using technology to help build more efficient capital markets, whilst maintaining a high degree of operational stability.
To do this, and realise its strategic goals, CAL has become one of Sri Lanka’s first and most innovative cloud-centric investment banks supported by Microsoft Azure, Office 365, Dynamics 365 and Power BI.
“Microsoft is one of the main partners in our digital transformation journey,” says CAL Chief Information Officer Tharindra Kulasinghe. “Crossplatform tools like Power BI, Dynamics 365 and Office 365 offer around-the-clock availability and seamless productivity gains.”
A key transformation pillar at CAL is the importance of a reliable digital working environment for employees. The bank purchased Office 365 licenses from globally recognised partner Microsoft partner H One for its head office in 2017. By the end of 2018, the bank had rolled out Office 365 across the entire organisation.
“Office 365 ensures that we always have the most up-todate modern productivity tools from Microsoft,” explains Kulasinghe. “Using Office 365, we share daily operational notices, milestones and other event updates with the company. With Outlook, Skype for Business, Onedrive and Microsoft Teams, our employees can now collaborate no matter where they are or what device they are on 24/7.”
Security is another key strategic pillar at CAL. The bank collaborated with Jinasena Infotech to integrate Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security and Azure Backup, including solutions for customer information classification, protection, real-time analytics, and identity management through Dynamics 365 and Power BI.
“Power BI allows us to create our own analytical reports and derive insights from existing ones. The integration between Dynamics 365 for managing client data and Power BI gives us the capability to personalise workspaces, while allowing us to access the Power BI reports directly from Dynamics 365,” notes Kulasinghe.
With Power BI as an option for analytical reporting in Dynamics 365, employees at CAL experience great visual presentation of data in different mediums like graphs, pie charts. Users also have the ability to tweak the reports as needed and can easily analyse financial trends.
Thanks to cloud-based technologies, communication and collaboration are simpler and more powerful - not only for CAL but for other financial services all around the world.
“Microsoft’s tools have greatly increased our collaboration capability and capacity for data-driven intelligence. We have greatly reduced our capital expenditures on physical technology, allowing us to improve the return on investments and explore other avenues for growth and success,” Kulasinghe explains.