Gazprombank Moves Customer Communications Management to a Russian Platform
Russia’s largest banks are increasingly moving to homegrown IT solutions, while customer marketing teams move away from Western vendors.
PJSC Gazprombank, together with systems integrator GlowByte Consulting, has completed the migration of its customer value management (CVM) environment from SAS Institute software to the Russian CM Ocean platform. The new architecture is already running in full production, generating up to 10 million offers a day and giving the bank greater technological independence and faster response times.
The need for a replacement became apparent as early as 2022. The previous stack, based on SAS MA and SAS RTDM from US-based SAS Institute Inc., had reached its growth limits. The customer data store had grown beyond 10 TB, while the number of daily mailings topped 1,000. The system was operating at the limit of its capacity, and complex processes inside it remained a “black box” for marketers. The bank needed a fundamental architectural shift and greater transparency into how those processes worked.
Real-Time Architecture and Smarter Responses
CM Ocean, developed by Data Sapience LLC, attracted the bank with its mature bulk-messaging module, support for real-time scenarios, and architecture designed for large-scale parallel query execution. The system supports cloud and hybrid deployments as well as installation within a customer's own infrastructure. At its core is an offer-oriented model. The Greenplum layer handles batch workloads, Kafka handles the event stream, and Prometheus and Grafana provide monitoring.
The deployment proceeded in stages without interrupting business operations. A baseline version went live in five months. About 60 percent of the bank's campaigns have now been migrated to the platform. The approach to automated responses has also changed: the new architecture allows a single event to trigger multiple scenarios. The system determines the priority on its own and selects the optimal channel.
Further development is moving in several directions. Campaign migration is continuing, real-time marketing is being rolled out across inbound channels, and the bank is taking responsibility for part of the platform's further development. Over the longer term, it is considering extending the new platform to customers in the small and midsize business segment.
Ecosystems Instead of Databases
Gazprombank's choice is consistent with broader global trends. Modern CRM systems (Customer Relationship Management) have long outgrown the format of conventional databases. Today, they are integrated platforms that manage the full customer-interaction lifecycle, from initial acquisition and personalized communications to retention and loyalty development.
In Russia, the CRM market grew to 44.1 billion rubles (about $528 million) in 2025, up 25 percent from a year earlier. Russian solutions accounted for more than 90 percent of the market, with Bitrix24 remaining the leader at about 48 percent. Developed by 1C-Bitrix, the platform combines CRM, a corporate portal, and collaboration tools. Its features include cloud and on-premises versions, an application marketplace, and an AI assistant. In the financial sector, the platform is used by PJSC Sovcombank, PJSC T-Bank, JSC Alfa-Bank, and JSC Rosselkhozbank. Bitrix24 is also widely used across the CIS, including major projects such as automating the contact centers of Avia Traffic in Uzbekistan, and has a notable presence in Latin America and Asia.
Choosing Among Mature Russian Platforms
The growing saturation of the market with universal CRM systems does not eliminate large companies' need for specialized tools. In financial services, where customer data volumes and analytical complexity are an order of magnitude greater, a separate class of customer value management (CVM) solutions is emerging alongside conventional CRM. These platforms are designed for heavy computational workloads and real-time scenarios.
In 2022, for example, PJSC Bank Otkritie deployed Rubbles Customer Insight from Rubbles LLC to personalize its mobile app. Around the same time, Finuslugi LLC launched CM Ocean for targeted marketing. By 2024, JSCB CentroCredit LLC had migrated to a low-code solution from BPMSoft LLC.
By now, Russian platforms have demonstrated their ability to handle large datasets and have become full-fledged alternatives to foreign analytical CRM and CVM systems. Vendors have significantly expanded the functionality of their products, and businesses are no longer choosing simply between Russian and foreign systems. Instead, they can choose among several mature solutions with different architectures and operating models. In 2026, the market offers options for a wide range of tasks, scales, and industries.
Next-Generation CRM
In the near future, CRM systems are expected to stop functioning as isolated tools and become a unified core for managing the customer experience, bringing together analytics, machine learning, and personalization. At the same time, AI agents are expected to take over routine tasks and make autonomous decisions within defined boundaries.
With their accumulated experience handling extreme workloads and deploying advanced technologies, Russian platforms could gain demand in the medium term across markets in the CIS, Asia, and the Middle East, which are also interested in technological independence.
