The client

National Bank of Poland (NBP), Poland’s central bank, serves as the backbone of the nation’s economic resilience. With key responsibilities such as shaping monetary policy, managing currency issuance, and ensuring the stability of financial systems, NBP plays a vital role in Poland’s financial landscape.

Among its strategic priorities is accurate inflation monitoring, a critical process that guides decisions influencing the economic well-being of millions and the nation’s overall prosperity.

One of the key departments driving this effort is the Economic Analysis and Research Department, responsible for conducting inflation forecasts.

The challenge

Inflation assessment is a cornerstone of NBP’s mission, providing essential insights that influence national economic policies and underpin financial stability.

The Department of Economic Analysis and Research (DABE) at NBP is responsible for creating inflation projections, forecasting economic trends under the assumption of fixed NBP interest rates.

However, the bank’s existing data collection system presented significant challenges. Obtaining information on prices was inefficient, and the retrieved data often lacked consistency, arriving in various formats that complicated analysis and hindered timely decision-making.

The solution

Recognizing the strategic importance of reliable inflation monitoring, BitPeak, as a part of Data Science service, transformed NBP’s data collection and analysis processes. We developed a system capable of delivering consistent, accessible, and well-structured data by integrating open data sources to track product prices that align with key items in the reference basket used for inflation forecasting.

Enhancing system responsible for inflation prediction through reliable monitoring solution at Narodowy Bank Polski

To enhance scalability and efficiency, we seamlessly migrated NBP’s operations from the SAS environment to Azure, providing a modern, cloud-based platform designed for high-performance analytics.

Our support extended beyond implementation, offering comprehensive maintenance to ensure the system’s uninterrupted performance and long-term reliability.

By addressing these challenges, BitPeak’s solution significantly strengthened NBP’s ability to produce accurate inflation and GDP forecasts, contributing to more informed economic policymaking.

To reach our goal, we used the following Microsoft Azure tech stack:

Azure Cloud Hosting: Provided scalable infrastructure to support stable data scraping operations
Azure Key Vault – Used for secrets management
Azure Data Lake Storage: Secured and managed large volumes of structured data in a standardized format for analysis
Azure Batch and Jobs: Automated data collection for tasks, ensuring updates occurred daily, Monday to Friday, without manual intervention
Azure Container Registry: Platform to Store Containerized version of code-based solution for daily scraping
Azure Monitor: Tracked data quality and scraper performance, offering real-time alerts to preempt and resolve any issues

Benefits

Strategy

The reliable, automated system provided accurate and real-time pricing data, enhancing NBP’s ability to monitor inflation trends. With access to historical data, the bank gained critical insights into long-term economic patterns, enabling it to better forecast and respond to market shifts.

Management

Analysts at NBP gained dependable daily access to consistent, aggregated price data, enabling real-time monitoring of inflation trends. This reliability allowed them to focus on analysis and forecasting, improving their ability to provide accurate insights for economic policy decisions.

Operations

By taking full responsibility for maintaining the system, BitPeak freed NBP’s staff from troubleshooting and operational tasks. This allowed the bank’s team to focus on higher-value activities, ensuring efficient resource allocation.