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Stakeholder alignment is the key to successful digital transformation projects
As someone who worked in a banking industry spearheading one of the first internet banking projects in the UK, for Lloyds bank, Simon knows how banks deal with digital transformation projects. Through his own consultancy firm, he now advises banks as an external consultant but the biggest issue remains to be tale as old as time. Different departments within the bank may seem to be wanting different outcomes but, as Simon puts it, it is not the outcome that is different. In the end, all of the departments want the same thing – prosperity for the bank and, ultimately, better customer experience.
They may want the same outcome but they take conflicting approaches in order to get there. Desires of Marketing may be technically impossible for the IT and unacceptable for the Operations. That is why it’s essential to align stakeholders from day one.
Trust Is The Greatest Challenge for Fintechs
Most incumbents have been around for a while, even for centuries, and that is why they have trust of their clients. That is something fintechs will always be lacking, even though they might offer close to perfect customer experience.
Incumbents may have large amounts of data but their problem lies in the fact that some of the data may be horribly inaccurate. In the 70s, banks such as Lloyds and Barclays would not ask women for their date of birth as it wasn’t considered polite. As direct marketing started to gain momentum and with the big wave of digital transformation projects, these incumbents ended up with inaccurate and, in some cases, unusable data. Fintechs do not have these issues because their data is fresh and processed in advanced systems.
Digital Transformation Should Never Disrupt the Customer
Compliance used to be the barrier for many digital transformation projects, until we got PSD2 and similar regulations that gave Compliance departments possibility to gather client data from multiple sources quickly and delete it, upon client’s request in an efficient manner.
Banks should assess whether they are simply following a trend or actually giving value to the customer when initiating digital transformation projects. One of UK banks had a strong contact center with agents that were always equipped with information to help solve any complaint. When they adopted mobile-first approach in favor of their mobile app, the quality of customer support dropped significantly and customers started to become frustrated.
Enjoyed the webinar? Do you have questions for Simon? You can reach him via Hayhurst Consultancy website.
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