In this Inside the Digital Business With Dynatrace episode, theCUBE’s Rob Strechay sits down with Sergio Novelli, chief information officer at Agos, to explore how a late-to-cloud financial services provider is using observability and AI to boost customer experience and business performance. Novelli explains why cloud is a means, not an end, for delivering faster “time-to-yes” and “time-to-cash,” and how Dynatrace helped Agos consolidate tooling and cut log management costs by 50% while speeding time to resolution. By unifying telemetry with business context, Agos built integrated dashboards that surface both technical health and business KPIs – shared daily from the CEO on down – so IT and business leaders operate from the same playbook.
The conversation highlights measurable outcomes: a 12-point NPS improvement since 2021 and a leap in digitally signed loans from ~40% to 95% after step-by-step journey analysis (e.g., OTP delivery, message clarity, network/config tweaks). Novelli details how linking observability to operational KPIs (call center queues, document upload times, digital signature steps) reduced friction for customers and partners, and why AI-driven insights from Dynatrace will be key as Agos scales in the cloud – predicting trends, accelerating incident remediation and informing capacity planning. It’s a pragmatic blueprint for operationalizing AI and automation to tame complexity and align IT performance with business outcomes.
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Sergio Novelli, Agos
In this episode of “Inside the Digital Business with Dynatrace,” recorded live at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU 2025 in London, we kick off the series with Dynatrace Chief Technology Strategist Alois Reitbauer as he talks with theCUBE Research’s Rob Strechay. As part of this ongoing exploration into how businesses are transforming amid digital complexity, Alois unpacks why observability is no longer optional — it’s foundational.
From the rise of agentic AI systems and platform engineering to real-time compliance and the evolving role of developers, this conversation cuts to the core of what it takes to thrive in today’s dynamic digital landscape. Whether you're navigating the shift to AI-native apps or grappling with regulatory pressure such as DORA, this episode offers clear, candid insights from the frontlines of innovation.
Inside the Digital Business with Dynatrace is a series that explores how leaders are turning complexity into competitive advantage—enhancing resilience, agility and trust in a world defined by constant change.
In this Inside the Digital Business With Dynatrace episode, theCUBE’s Rob Strechay sits down with Sergio Novelli, chief information officer at Agos, to explore how a late-to-cloud financial services provider is using observability and AI to boost customer experience and business performance. Novelli explains why cloud is a means, not an end, for delivering faster “time-to-yes” and “time-to-cash,” and how Dynatrace helped Agos consolidate tooling and cut log management costs by 50% while speeding time to resolution. By unifying telemetry with business context,...Read more
exploreKeep Exploring
What is Agos and what services does it provide?add
What is the significance of transitioning to the cloud for a company's operations and customer experience?add
What is the perspective on cloud adoption and the use of Dynatrace in optimizing cloud resources for financial institutions, particularly in Europe?add
What improvements have been made to customer satisfaction and how are they connected to observability and IT performance metrics?add
What approach was taken in defining the digital transformation strategy?add
>> Hello and welcome to this episode of Inside the Digital Business With Dynatrace, we will examine the current challenges and opportunities for organizations as they optimize themselves as digital businesses. For this segment, I'm joined by Sergio Novelli, chief information officer for Agos. Welcome on board, Sergio.
Sergio Novelli
>> Hi Rob. Thanks for having me today with you.
Rob Strechay
>> I'm so excited. I think it's always great to hear from the users of the different products that are out there on the market and really get a better understanding. But before we kind of dive in, why don't you kind tell us a little bit about Agos, where you're located and the industries you participate in.
Sergio Novelli
>> As you can imagine from my name, I'm from Italy. Actually, Agos is a consumer finance company. We are part of Credit Agricola, which is one of the largest bank in Europe. But we specialize in personal finance, finalized loan and credit card. So everything that has to do with giving money to our customer and as my colleagues from marketing would say, "Making their dreams come true", basically.
Rob Strechay
>> Which is always a good thing. I think always helping the customer and being customer focused is really I think a key theme that we're going to kind of talk about today. Because I think, again, having been in the financial services industry a long time ago, I understand how that makes the flywheel go for your organization. But one of the things that has really been top of mind for you has been digital transformation. Why has digital transformation been so important for Agos's customers and your partners?
Sergio Novelli
>> So Rob, as you can imagine being from the financial world, it's important for us because we are a B2C company to be where our customer are and providing them the best experience possible. Also, because we are not alone in the market, and so if you are slow in providing services to your customer or your partner, it's easy for them to switch to someone else. It's not like the bank that could be difficult. So providing the best experience is paramount for us. And currently customer wants to be on digital channels, so buying stuff and being financed by Agos or getting a loan quotation and getting the money, going to a physical branch of Agos all starts from digital. And so digital transformation is important to be where the customer are and giving them the opportunity to make their dreams come through, again.
Rob Strechay
>> That makes total sense from that perspective, but you're also on a cloud transformation journey. What has motivated the shift towards cloud and how is this approach, how are you really approaching this transition?
Sergio Novelli
>> Okay. I would say that going to the cloud, for us, it's a mean and not an end. Meaning that we think that the difference in the future in this market, especially in Italy, will be made by providing a superior multichannel experience to our customer and also using AI and data to streamline as much as possible the experience in what we call a time-to-yes. So where I can tell you that you will get the money and time-to-cash, meaning when you get them. So we think that cloud will give us the opportunity, being in cloud will give us the opportunity to maximize in terms of technologies and capabilities. Again, like AI, the value that we can provide to our customer, leveraging on data. So the transformation towards the cloud as this goal, being more efficient, reduce our time to market with new product and services, providing a superior customer experience to our customer and partners.
Rob Strechay
>> Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think you hit on a topic there around efficiencies and I think many executives worry about balancing innovation with reliability during that cloud journey. Especially, one of the things that has been a significant cost is really around log management and how it's costly and complex. How are you ensuring services remain consistent and costs stay under control as you go through this journey and this transformation?
Sergio Novelli
>> So I think we are a bit late on the cloud game, and this is, I would say typical of the financial institution, especially in Europe. Anyway, we try to maximize as much as possible the fact of being a latecomer to the cloud world and we understood that cloud doesn't mean immediately saving us. And so from this perspective, we are rethinking our whole architecture in order to maximize in effect the benefits of the cloud coming from the cloud. And we believe from this point of view that using Dynatrace will give us an advantage in understanding how we use the resources of the cloud, how to optimize them. And so far the results are very good. And so we are very confident that with the approach that we adopted and leveraging on Dynatrace capabilities, we will be able to obtain the balance that, as you said, is not easy to obtain. I know for a fact that there are some company, even banks in Italy that are doing what we call repatriation. So moving stuff back on-prem because a simple move to the cloud with no clear plan or tools helping you could end up in having more cost than before.
Rob Strechay
>> Yeah, we've actually seen that with, especially around just the volume of data and things like that, and I think when we were catching up prior to this, you were able to really cut your log management costs by 50% and really speed up your time to resolution. What's also been the most significant impact for your teams that this change has really helped with and that Dynatrace is really adding to the mix here?
Sergio Novelli
>> Yes. Let me tell you that the log management reduction cost that we did actually was an idea that came from the Italian Dynatrace team. So they approached us and they told us, "Look, we know that you're using another product, several other products to do log management. Why don't you give us a chance to understand if we can with the same installation that we have, but just adding some modules actually collapsing all the log management in our solution."
We did that. We actually get huge saving because 50%, as you said was a huge saving for us. But I would say that we got even more than this. From one point, obviously simplification in our operation, having less tool and less log to manage and having everything collapsing in one place. But the most important part was that now we are able through the other tools of Dynatrace to build integrated dashboard that are providing not only technical information that were difficult to obtain before when the logs were, let me say spread across our system, but also to build some business metrics that were not available before. So actually the change is less cost simplification and a better, let me say, support in a bug resolution incident and also in providing business metrics that were not available before.
Rob Strechay
>> I think let's dig in there because I mean that business observability and connecting IT metrics to business outcomes is really important. I think that to me is one of the things that really excites me about this solution. How are you using or your team in Agos using observability to link the technical performance with things like loan approval times and customer satisfaction? How are you connecting the business KPIs to the technical?
Sergio Novelli
>> Being, as you said, someone with an experience in financial services and working on the technical side of operation, one of the biggest issues that we had with our internal customer was always the difference between the perceived technical quality and the actual technical quality. A lot of situation in which you receive email or complain saying, "Nothing works here", but on the other side you see at your technical metrics and it seems that the systems are all up. So what we did, thanks to Dynatrace, was to build some dashboard that are not just, let me say measuring the technical quality of our system. So we continue to monitor the system from a technical perspective, but we also build the dashboard that are providing business metrics. And every morning, every morning from the CEO to the first his reporting line, myself and my team, we receive a dashboard that is a mix of business and technical metrics. So I not only know the availability of my commerce system, but I know also the time that is needed for a customer to find that information on the web application, for someone in a branch to load the documentation for a loan, the time to do a digital signature. So this has reduced a lot, let me say the stress of having different point of view on the quality of service because now we are on the same page. The business, the metrics are being defined together by my team and the business are shared. The CEO is happy. And as I always say, the best measure of it is the fact is the number of WhatsApp messages that I receive on my phone so much, much less, let we say complaint from partner about the quality of service because now the metrics are there and are share by Dynatrace.
Rob Strechay
>> Yeah, I had the same feeling when I was in operations recently with a cloud provider where I wasn't getting SEV-1 or SEV-2 in like three in the morning over a overbilling or something like that. So I totally get that. How has this approach and the unified observability approach across IT operations and business teams really helped you, and how has it really changed your day-to-day at Agos and the work dynamic?
Sergio Novelli
>> As I said, the difference now is that we are on the same page with our business colleagues. We have also provided to them a dashboard that are giving them operational KPIs. So we have, let me say business metrics in terms of customer experience. We have operational dashboard that are used by customer operation to verify the time to answer to a customer or the length of queues on the call center system. We have technical dashboard that are helping us in understanding the availability of the service. We think as a company that we are providing a much better experience, much more value to our customer, and this give us, let me say a real focus on customer centricity. So we can really say that the customer is at the center of everything that we do from a business perspective, from a business operation perspective and also from a technical point of view.
Rob Strechay
>> And I think it shows, I think when we were catching up beforehand, Agos's net promoter score, the NPS score has gone up by 12 points since 2021. How do you really connect your improved customer satisfaction back to observability and IT performance? Because I think, again, having measured NPS before, sometimes it's not as easy to understand the pull and the push with that. So how are you connecting NPS back to observability in IT performance?
Sergio Novelli
>> We measured the NPS on, let me say the overall experience with Agos, but also on specific touch points. We knew that we had an issue with what we call digital signature process. We had a lot of problem in terms of, as I say before, it doesn't work, but actually from a technical perspective, it seems that the system was up. What we did to Dynatrace was to really analyze each single step of the experience. We understood that it was a mix of problem. So in some cases was a problem with the OTP that the customer was receiving, so the SMS with the code that they had to insert. In some other cases, the messages were not clear. In some cases we had some issues, physical network, some issues with some configuration, some system that randomly gave us some errors. And honestly, nobody was aware of that, not the business and the technical side. So working together, and this was the first experiment that we did on building shared business metrics. We understood the how to, let me say, improve the customer, the digital signature. Considered that we had more or 40% of the loans that were digitally signed when we started this job, now we are at 95%. It means less paper, it means better customer experience because it just a few seconds and not 10, 15 minutes to print and sign everything. More satisfaction from our partners. It's something that we measure and they said, "Now we have... ", let me say, "... process that works and we can use with our customer." So let me say 12 points, yes, it's a measure, but honestly we saw a lot of business metrics that improved and also the satisfaction of our partner is the biggest, let me say, reward and also signal that everything is okay enough.
Rob Strechay
>> Yeah, no, I mean that's impressive. Up to 95%, that's a huge jump. And I think like you said, that must make your job as CIO a lot easier when you're trying to explain the value of your transformation and what you're doing to other business leaders within Agos.
Sergio Novelli
>> Yes. I think that the difference here is that when we defined our digital transformation strategy from the beginning, we started from the business need. And so my colleagues were telling me, "We need to be faster in deploying new product and services to the market. We need to bring on board more innovation in terms of customized experience from our customer. We need to reduce our time to, yes. We need to reduce our time to cash." So the digital transformation, everything that we've done so far, so adding more digital channel, giving to our internal colleagues, more freedom in operating by themselves on some of our system has been done, having in mind business goals. As a CIO, it's much, much easier for me explaining why I need to do a move to the cloud, why I am redesigning the customer experience, why I need to maybe use and extend the usage of Dynatrace across different system if everything is, let me say linked back to a business outcome, a business objective. So starting from the business objective, talking with my colleagues and defining from them the action is the way to go, and it's easier for me to justify the investment and everything that we're doing also in change of the organization processes and so on and so forth.
Rob Strechay
>> I love that. I think that to me is really how you get the value and you see the ROI out of these types of products. One last question I have for you. What really excites you most about your team's continued use of observability to kind of drive that better customer experience? What are you looking forward to with this partnership with Dynatrace in the future?
Sergio Novelli
>> Moving to the cloud, obviously, changes also the way in which we observe the quality of our services and the quality of what we provide to our customer. From one side, we know that Dynatrace will be able to help us in maintaining the same level of, let me say, monitoring that we have right now in terms of business outcome, business operational outcome, and technical outcome. On the other hand, I am very excited by everything that Dynatrace is doing around AI. I think that in terms of resolution for our incident and identification of trends, something that can go wrong and also how to solve the issues while we are in , for instance, when we are trying to fix incident, Dynatrace will make a difference.
I expect also, and I know that there are plans around that to extend the AI capabilities also to the business metrics. And this is very exciting, obviously, because in a cloud environment, if you are able to do analysis or forecast of usage and performance that you need, it means that you are able to plan better the resources that you have and you actually are able to leverage also the benefit in cost reduction.
Rob Strechay
>> That makes so much sense, and I'm so excited for you and your partnership with Dynatrace, and I want to thank you, Sergio, for coming on board.
Sergio Novelli
>> Thanks to you for having me and the opportunity to talk about what we do in Agos. Thank you.
Rob Strechay
>> Excellent. Now stay tuned for more episodes of Inside the Digital Business With Dynatrace on theCUBE, the leader in technology analysis and news. See you soon.
