Jazz
JazzCash transforms digital financial platform experience with Cisco AppDynamics
Key benefits
Streamlined, accelerated resolution time by 75% with fast root cause identification
Safeguarded revenues and brand reputation by eliminating service outages
Unleashed scalability to support platform with multi-million transactions per day
JazzCash is transforming the digital financial landscape in Pakistan with an innovative digital wallet that boosts financial inclusion and has a 53% market share. At the heart of JazzCash’s seamless service experience lies its Cisco AppDynamics observability strategy.
“With AppDynamics we can identify patterns, trends, and anomalies that may not be apparent when looking at individual data points."
Beenish Wajih
Head of the Network Operations Center (NOC),
Jazz
Challenge
Modernize the JazzCash mobile banking platform and provide a cutting-edge experience to customers who rely on the digital wallet for daily payments, transfers, and micro-loans.
Solution
Cisco AppDynamics enables Jazz to ingest and analyze data across the entire JazzCash stack and get actionable insights that help improve the customer experience and overall business performance.
Results
Jazz significantly reduced time spent on issue identification and reporting, virtually eliminating downtime and improving key business goals including operational efficiency, revenue generation and customer trust.
“AppDynamics offers an at-a-glance view of our performance metrics. In just a few months its use has grown to support 80% of our observability and monitoring activities.”
Asim Qazi
Head of Technology Operations,
JazzCash
Challenge
Bringing digital banking to millions of people
Financial inclusion is one of the greatest opportunities for countries such as Pakistan where up to 100 million adults, nearly half of the country’s inhabitants, do not have a bank account. Access to financial products has a significant impact on the economy and quality of life especially for female and older populations in rural areas. For many in this region, the quickest route to financial independence is through the mobile app, JazzCash, which is Pakistan’s largest digital wallet with 44 million subscribers, 15.4 million monthly active users and 53% market share in mobile money activity.
This mobile app, a combined offering from the Jazz mobile network and its subsidiary Mobilink Microfinance Bank, enables private customers to pay for goods and bills, transfer money and access short-term loans. JazzCash is also popular with both small business owners and large businesses, including home delivery service foodpanda, which uses the app to pay daily earnings to its riders. In addition, it is widely used by freelance businesses that use the app to accept payments from clients.
“We are integrated with all the major brands in Pakistan, from shopping outlets and food delivery services to hospitals and government ticketing systems,” says Asim Qazi, Head of Technology at JazzCash. “Whether I want to pay for a meal or for health insurance, JazzCash gives me convenient access to my account without needing to go to a branch or an ATM.”
All these elements contribute to the economy by giving a broader segment of people purchasing power and, in turn, providing businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs with the tools to reach new customers and grow revenues. “Pakistan is one of the most populous countries in the world and the overwhelming majority are denied credit and financial services,” says Muhammad Ali, Head of Network Operations at Jazz. “This makes JazzCash a life-changing product for the underprivileged by delivering the benefits of financial inclusion in a cost-effective and convenient manner.”
Growing fast, building trust
In addition to building innovative technology, JazzCash must also build trust with its customers. Any interruptions or delays to services can be highly damaging to the customer — and the JazzCash brand. “If you are a rickshaw driver taking out a small loan in the morning to pay for fuel and then paying it back in the evening, you can’t afford a break in service,” says Qazi.
While the business was growing fast, the team experienced unforeseen interruptions to JazzCash services that impacted the customer experience and revenues. “At peak times we can be handling more than a million transactions per hour. Even a temporary interruption can have significant consequences on customer experiences and our bottom line,” explains Beenish Wajih, Head of the Networks Operations Center (NOC) for Jazz.
“At Jazz, we are customer obsessed and steadfast in our commitment to continuous improvement. So, in addition to improving availability, we wanted to monitor the customer experience and introduce proactive reporting to minimize service disruption,” says Wajih.
Qazi and Wajih were convinced that the answer lay in the deployment of a more integrated, accurate application and infrastructure observability solution. “Running any operation, especially technology, requires wide ranging and detailed visibility of our entire stack,” says Qazi. “We needed a consistent platform that would enable different teams to collaborate on identifying and fixing the root cause of a problem quickly.”
“AppDynamics has significantly reduced the time spent on issue identification and reporting by providing actionable insights that enable backend teams to resolve issues fast.”
Beenish Wajih
Head of Technology Network Operations Center (NOC),
Jazz
Solution
Crystal clear information from microservices to customer journeys
When Wajih looked at options for a unified observability solution, Cisco AppDynamics stood out. “With AppDynamics we can ingest and analyze data across the entire stack and get actionable insights that help improve the user experience and the performance of the business,” she says. “We can see how the microservices are tracking, which microservices are blocking others, what use cases are experiencing high response time and the overall impact on platform capacity.”
Using custom dashboards in the Cisco AppDynamics business performance monitoring tool, Business iQ, JazzCash can prioritize what needs fixing, what to expand and what to optimize. “AppDynamics offers an at-a-glance view of our performance metrics. In just a few months its use has grown to support 80% of our observability and monitoring activities,” says Qazi.
Supporting business growth
The ability to correlate information means that Wajih and her team can quickly understand the relationships and dependencies between different components and events within the JazzCash stack. “With AppDynamics we can identify patterns, trends, and anomalies that may not be apparent when looking at individual data points,” she says. “So, we can immediately pinpoint an issue that is restricting performance rather than wading through different areas of our infrastructure.”
In addition to monitoring databases, networks, and applications, JazzCash uses AppDynamics to track end-user journeys. By sampling roughly one million customers, it can spot opportunities for new business cases and better customer experiences. This information is passed on to the marketing or customer care teams to help them develop new offers and promotions.
“Financial inclusion is more than just replicating existing services on a mobile device. We need to be innovating constantly to keep up with the needs of our audience. It’s inspiring to get their feedback and hear how they are using technology to boost the prospects of their families and businesses,” says Wajih.
“Pakistan is one of the most populous countries in the world and the overwhelming majority are denied credit and financial services. This makes JazzCash a life-changing product for the underprivileged by delivering the benefits of financial inclusion in a cost-effective and convenient manner.”
Muhammad Ali
Head of Network Operations,
Jazz
Benefits
One version of the truth, many business advantages
Unified visibility improves collaboration among the JazzCash teams working to deliver the best customer experience. “AppDynamics gives us one version of the truth that is shared by multiple teams. Everyone feels as if they are working towards the same goal,” says Wajih.
Another critical improvement is the stability of the JazzCash app. “In the time that we’ve been using AppDynamics, we haven’t had a single glitch,” says Qazi. “I’ve worked with a lot of observability systems over the years and when it comes to reliability and ease of use, AppDynamics is the best I have experienced.”
Above all, the data gathered by AppDynamics enables JazzCash to pinpoint and then fix problems much faster than before, virtually eliminating downtime “AppDynamics has significantly reduced the time spent on issue identification and reporting by providing actionable insights that enable backend teams to resolve issues fast,” says Wajih.
“At peak times we can be handling more than a million transactions per hour. Even a temporary interruption can have significant consequences on customer experiences and our bottom line.”
Beenish Wajih
Head of the Network Operations Center (NOC),
Jazz
Better for the unbanked population, better for the IT team
The deployment of Cisco AppDynamics also helps the Jazz IT department to transform itself into a business center. According to Shuja Hussain, Head of BSS / IT at Jazz, “AppDynamics opened the door to innovation, efficiency, and revenue generation. We’re delivering better business outcomes and identifying customer use cases that support our customer care and customer growth teams.” Wajih also sees the potential to deliver third-party observability services to other banks who want to protect the security and stability of their mobile banking systems.
Above all, it translates into a better customer experience for the unbanked population of Pakistan, especially women who benefit from the economic empowerment that goes with financial independence. “AppDynamics is integral to delivery of quality services for us” says Wajih. “It’s not just a lifeline for our business, it helps to deliver a financial lifeline to our end users.”
“AppDynamics opened the door to innovation, efficiency, and revenue generation. We’re delivering better business outcomes and identifying customer use cases that support our customer care and customer growth teams.”
Shuja Hussain
Head of BSS / IT,
Jazz
About Jazz
Jazz is Pakistan’s leading mobile operator and digital company and provides cutting-edge, integrated communications solutions, as well as the largest portfolio of digital value-added services. Jazz empowers millions of people with the tools necessary to progress in an increasingly digital economy. This includes more than 15.4 million people who use its JazzCash digital wallet to access financial services from their mobile devices. Jazz was also the first operator to launch SMS in the country and is now the first to focus exclusively on developing a digital policy for Pakistan.
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