Customer Knowledge Augmentation and Activation

Customer Knowledge Augmentation and Activation

Today we feature a sponsored post from Celfocus. Henrique Cravo also sits down with Greg Palmer on the Finovate Podcast to talk about intelligent use of data, the importance of tailored experiences, and overcoming barriers left by legacy systems. To get a deeper insight into the topic register for the webinar: Delivering Customer Knowledge Augmentation and Activation here >>

There aren’t many industries where organisations have so much data about customers for such a long period of time. For example, I have had the same bank for the last 25 years which, by the way, is the same as my father’s.

My bank has been my partner when I wanted to go to university or buy my first apartment. It knows how much I make and where I spend it, but I never truly felt they used that knowledge to either enrich my experience or deliver tailored offers. Why is that?

There is a wealth of value to explore in untapped customers’ financial behaviour and banks are in prime position to reap the benefits, but they need to adapt.

The transformation has already begun with banks introducing more channels, learning best practices from digital native banks and fintechs, and even creating new digital business models to test what works, aiming to later integrate those learnings into the core business.

Still, banks are drowning in data and have very little insight on how to transform it into actionable knowledge to better serve customers, personalise offers, and deliver a consistent customer experience.

Furthermore, through segmentation, banks can use their knowledge about current customers to define campaigns and other initiatives to fulfill one of their main objectives, attract new customers. Their continuous appetite for growth steams from delivering unique and innovative value propositions to current but also future customers which today can be, in many situations, hallenging.

From risk takers, tech-savvy, and hungry for innovation customers to techavoiders that value human touch, banks must accommodate different engagement approaches and insights to differentiate customer profiles. This happens not because they don’t have the data, but because they can’t mine it.

It’s clear that very soon ‘Customer intelligence’ will be the most important predictor of revenue growth and profitability. The use of behavioural analytics will be key to identify customer friction points and there will be a surge in building technological capabilities to get more insight on customers’ needs.

A New Engagement Model for the Digital Age

By nature, financial products are complex and both companies and individuals are deeply affected by their financial choices, so there’s a foreseeable need for contact, ensuring a correct understanding of what is at stake.

Bank tellers, financial advisers, and other resources are key in accommodating customers’ requests and providing value-added and timely information. They benefit first-hand from customer insights, which enable them to provide not only a better service, but also to increase the customer value by offering the best solutions.

In addition to assisted channels, there is the emergence of self-service applications aiming to allow customers to engage on their terms, when they want, going as far as allowing customers to configure product features, including pricing. If, in this case, the human factor is eliminated, the need for accuracy is even greater, otherwise, the sale may fail or the inquiry can go unanswered.

Customer expectations have changed mainly due to the experience from other digital native organisations, coming or not, from the financial sector. The easy interactions, the tailored offers, integration between physical and digital channels or the unmatched service, creates a gap between what many financial institutions can deliver and what customers are getting elsewhere.

Responding to the pressure to change, banks must find a balance between opening but guaranteeing trust continues to be paramount, at all levels. Up to this point, the perspectives presented argued for the need for banks to not only gain insights and knowledge from the data they already have, but also the challenge in adjusting to new customers’ demands and how they choose to engage.

However, the biggest challenge is how to orchestrate these two dimensions and provide customers with experiences that leverage the knowledge banks have delivered in a seamless way, using whatever channel customers choose from.

The holy grail of an enhanced experience in the banking sector is to have an holistic and end-to-end perspective of the customer experience.

Introducing Celfocus Customer Knowledge Augmentation and Activation

Celfocus Customer Knowledge Augmentation and Activation is a modular and integrated framework tailored to leverage banks’ customer knowledge and deliver tailored services.

This framework is anchored in 2 main modules. The first comprises the tools and technologies to augment customer knowledge by activating every single customer through automated AI and Cognitive data insights, and the second aims at delivering tailored experiences that trigger new targets, portfolios, and customer lock.

By encompassing the Customer Value Augmentation and Enhance Customer Experience modules, the solution provides banks’ full control of the customer journey from planning to execution, focusing on building the technology capabilities to get more intelligence about customers’ needs, and how to best serve them.

Download the full whitepaper from Celfocus, Customer Knowledge
Augmentation and Activation >>

Mastercard Leverages AR to Offer Virtual Tour of Card Rewards

Mastercard Leverages AR to Offer Virtual Tour of Card Rewards

Starting in Q2 of this year, Mastercard customers will be able to get a new, “augmented” understanding of the benefits and rewards available to them as cardholders. The augmented reality app, announced by Mastercard late last week, will offer cardholders a virtual tour of three different portals representing Mastercard’s three reward categories: Experiences, Everyday Value, and Peace of Mind.

Each category inside Mastercard’s augmented reality environment has its own appearance: a home setting for Everyday Value, for example, and a spa for Peace of Mind. Within each portal is a virtual room with various benefits denoted with representative symbols and avatars (i.e, tapping on a golf club image generates a pop-up option to explore Mastercard’s Priceless Golf benefits).

Mastercard chief marketing and communications officer Raja Rajamannar put the app in the broader context of the company’s ongoing efforts to provide more engaging, interactive experiences. “At Mastercard, we’re using our technology and solutions to deliver multi-sensory experiences for consumers every day – whether they’re shopping, taking transit, or exploring the card benefits they care about,” Rajamannar said.

AR as a marketing solution for fintechs is a use case familiar to Finovate audiences. Alums ranging from ebankIT (and its parent company, ITSector) to Fiserv has demonstrated how they have leveraged AR to deliver compelling marketing content to customers.

Augmented reality in fintech will featured in a keynote address at FinovateEurope in Berlin next month. When Will AR & VR Become Meaningful Tools in Customer Engagement? will be held on Tuesday, February 11 on the Future Tech Industry Stage.

On Finovate.com

2020: A Breakout Year for Fintech in Emerging Markets? – From major investments in fintechs in Latin America and Africa to the challenger banking “space race” in Singapore, 2020 could turn out to be a breakout year for fintech in many growing economies around the world.

8 Banks You’ll Compete with If You Offer More Than 2% on Savings – Banks are facing an increased number of competitors these days. Not only are traditional banks vying for customer deposits, but fintechs and challenger banks want part of their funds, as well.

China Says 你好 to American Express – The People’s Bank of China (PBOC), China’s Central Bank, announced it has accepted an application from American Express (AmEx) that expressed the company’s intention to operate in China.

Future Banking: Creating an Incumbent Challenger – Finovate talks with Ronit Ghose, global head of banks research and co-head of the fintech theme group at Citi about the future of challenger banks and why some shouldn’t be calling themselves a “fintech” at all.

Treasury Management Innovator HighRadius Earns Unicorn Status – HighRadius, a company that offers AI-powered order-to-cash and treasury management solutions, announced today that it has raised $125 million in Series B funding. The investment boosts the Houston, Texas-based firm’s valuation to $1 billion, earning it the status as one of the first new fintech unicorns of 2020.

Sprint and Wirecard to Deliver the Internet of Payments – Telecommunications giant Sprint and German financial services provider Wirecard announced they are teaming up to deliver the Internet of Payments.

Influencers as Innovation: Fintechs Turn to the Famous in Bid to Boost Visibility – As Snoop Dogg celebrates his first anniversary as a high-profile Klarna shareholder and RDC announces that it has hired a network of social media influencers to help promote its new digital banking app, it’s clear that firms are all-in when it comes to using celebrity to showcase everything fintech.

banqUP, PSD2, and the Future of Open Banking in Europe – We reached out to banqUP CEO and founder Krzysztof Pulkiewicz to talk about the company’s latest accomplishments in open banking, as well as what the landscape for fintech innovation is like inside and outside the CEE region.

ING’s Katana Becomes a Standalone Fintech – Dutch financial services corporation ING announced today it is spinning off Katana into its own entity called Katana Labs. As a part of its move to independence, Katana has closed $3.9 million in funding, half of which ING contributed “to enable further growth and to pave the way for an independent future for Katana.”

Finovate Podcast Episode 21: Romeo Maione, Launchfire – New Year and a new episode of the Finovate Podcast! Romeo Maione, Director of Business Solutions, Lemonade by Launchfire, joins host Greg Palmer to discuss marketing through training, and why the U.S. could be falling behind on digital adoption.

Bankjoy and Zogo Finance Team Up to Onboard and Educate Gen Z CustomersBankjoy and Zogo Finance are betting that helping credit unions and community banks educate their members rather than “sell” to them is the key to better engagement for CUs and better financial health for consumers.

The Digital Identity Infrastructure and What it Has to do with Fintech – The last decade brought about a lot of discussion around digital identity. Dozens of security companies created new solutions to help banks authenticate their user’s identity and verify their personal information.

Proptech Advances in Latin America As Loft Raises $175 Million in New Investment – The $175 million in Series C funding raised by Latin American digital real estate platform Loft this week offers an insight into how proptech is providing new investment opportunities within the emerging markets of countries like Brazil and Mexico.

Nebula Merges with Open Lending, Forming a New Publicly Traded Company – Lending solutions provider Open Lending has agreed to merge with Nebula Acquisition Corporation, an acquisition company sponsored by True Wind Capital.

Alumni News

  • DAVO Technologies partners with restaurant management platform Toast.
  • Clearview Federal Credit Union partners with Insuritas to launch an insurance agency.
  • Forbes highlights Meniga’s comeback.
  • BNP Paribas Securities Services extends contract with Temenos.
  • Signicat appoints Johan Tjarnberg as new Chairman and Asger Hattel as new CEO.
  • Standard Chartered rolls out public portal for cross-border payments tracking.
  • JKOPAY taps InComm to make its QR code and barcode payments processor technology accepted at retailers across Japan.
  • Flywire announces expansion plans.
  • PayActiv appoints David Reidy as Chief Legal Officer.
  • Personal Capital ranked number 3 on list of Top 100 Registered Investment Advisors of 2019 by assets.
  • Fiserv Starts New Year with Pair of New Credit Union Partners.

Small Businesses and the Underserved: This Week in the Finovate Podcast

Small Businesses and the Underserved: This Week in the Finovate Podcast

This week’s Finovate Podcast episodes are both focused on small and medium sized businesses, and the opportunities that fintech is creating for bankers, innovators, and small business owners themselves.

Our first guest is Karen Mills, former Small Business Administrator for the Obama Administration, and author of the book Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream. Greg caught up with Karen to talk about how the Great Recession hurt small businesses in particular, and how fintech has been able to step in and help.

Our second episode features Jeremy Berger of Arival Bank, a Best of Show winning demoer from FinovateAsia 2018. Arival is a challenger bank reaching out to unbanked/underbanked small businesses all over the world. The company is expanding from Asia into the United States and Europe, and Greg spoke with Jeremy about the company’s fintech-first solution to the challenges facing SMB banking.

Next week Greg will be speaking with Wayne Miller of The Venture Center, a fintech accelerator with ties to FIS and the ICBA.

Subscribe, download, and listen today!

MoEngage’s Evolution into a Mobile Marketing Platform for Big Brands

MoEngage’s Evolution into a Mobile Marketing Platform for Big Brands

The following guest blog post is written and sponsored by MoEngage.

MoEngage, an Intelligent Customer Engagement Platform built for the mobile first world, has been featured in the 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Mobile Marketing Platform for the second time in a row. It is the youngest company to be featured in the report and has made the biggest leap in improvement in its position as compared to all the other vendors. You can read the complimentary copy of the report here

In its initial years, MoEngage’s platform saw rapid adoption from mobile-first startups and mid-market brands. As these brands grew, with some even becoming unicorns, MoEngage’s platform also improved to match the growing complexity and scale of their customers. Building on this momentum, MoEngage made significant investments in customer experience and product innovation. Today, MoEngage has evolved into a robust mobile marketing platform that has seen significant adoption by enterprises across Asia, the U.S., and Europe. In the last 12 months, the company has added several large enterprise clients such as Future Retail, Deutsche Telekom, Mashreq Bank, Travelodge, Samsung, and more. Enterprise clients contribute nearly 50% of MoEngage’s total revenues, while mobile first brands and unicorns contribute the rest.

“Our progression in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant and adoption by large enterprises is a testament to our investments in product innovation and customer success. Consumer brands in 35 countries trust MoEngage to power their cross-channel customer engagement campaigns to improve adoption, retention, loyalty, and customer LTV. This recognition reinforces our vision to be the most trusted customer engagement platform for the mobile-first world. We place customers at the heart of everything we do and our customer obsession is reflected by not just our renewal rates, but also by the reviews on Gartner Peer Insights websitessaid Raviteja Dodda, CEO and founder, MoEngage.

Designed for the mobile-first world, MoEngage provides one dashboard through which consumer brands can analyse user behavior, engage across channels and personalize every touchpoint. Processing over 45 billion user interactions and delivering over 25 billion messages to 400 million users every month, MoEngage is one of the fastest-growing companies in this space. To know more visit www.moengage.com


Gartner Magic Quadrant for Mobile Marketing Platforms, Mike McGuire, Charles Golvin, 15 July 2019 GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and is used here with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Stratifyd

FinovateFall Sneak Peek: Stratifyd

A look at the companies demoing live at FinovateMiddleEast on November 20 and 21, 2019 in Dubai. Register today and save your spot.

Stratifyd has developed an AI infrastructure to automate and analyze the voice of the consumer for financial enterprises using unsupervised and supervised technology.

Features

  • Offers the fastest time to insights
  • Utilizes predictive intelligence to provide deeper understanding of customer feedback
  • Leads with machine learning, removing human bias

Why it’s great
Stratifyd’s AI-powered platform ingests, analyzes, and visualizes omni-channel data through unsupervised machine learning and natural language understanding to deliver real time customer analytics.

Presenter

Kevin O’Dell, Chief Technology Officer
O’Dell is growing and scaling the company by solving the most challenging customer analytics problems faced by enterprises.
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Finovate Webinar: Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks – Modernizing Print Management in the Age of Privacy

Finovate Webinar: Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks – Modernizing Print Management in the Age of Privacy

September 12, 2019 | 2pm Eastern Daylight Time | Register now

Each year billions of documents are produced by the banking industry in the US and Europe. These documents include statements, notices, correspondence, and bills that are essential to managing relationships with customers. However, many banks still rely on legacy print management solutions that cost millions of dollars in maintenance every year, haven’t been updated in over 2 decades, don’t support modern digital access methods like mobile, and most importantly, they don’t conform to modern privacy and security regulations.

Join this #FinovateWebinar with Nuxeo to learn how your peers are modernizing print management in today’s age of privacy. We will cover how to: 

  • Replace expensive printing and posting with digital delivery and a “mobile first” strategy
  • Modernize antiquated and expensive legacy print management solutions
  • Manage and maintain compliance with regulatory requirements, such as GDPR and the California Privacy Act
  • Delivers consistent customer service for the print impaired ensuring compliance with Section 508, AMA, AODA, the UK Equality Act

Featuring

  • Chris McLaughlin, Chief Marketing Officer, Nuxeo
  • Tim Nelms, Vice President International, Crawford Technologies

Register now >>

Kabbage Secures $200 Million Credit Facility

Kabbage Secures $200 Million Credit Facility

To help support its rapid growth, online SME lender Kabbage has closed a $200 million revolving credit facility. The financing comes courtesy of an unnamed subsidiary of a life insurance firm, and was managed and administered by 20 Gates Management and Atalaya Capital Management. The funding adds to the $700 million securitization Kabbage announced earlier this year, and marks the longest period of committed debt funding for the company.

“This transaction further diversifies Kabbage’s committed sources of funding and prepares us to meet the escalating demand for capital access among small businesses,” Kabbage Head of Capital Markets Deepesh Jain said. He called 2019 a “tide-shifting year,” citing the more than $670 million customers accessed via Kabbage in the second quarter.

Kabbage provides SMEs with a line of credit of up to $250,000 with six-, 12-, and 18-month term options available. Businesses can apply for funding online via Kabbage’s mobile app and get a decision in as little as ten minutes. Since it was founded in 2009, the company has provided more than 185,000 U.S. small businesses access to more than $7 billion in capital.

Atlanta, Georgia-based Kabbage demonstrated its Kabbage Card at FinovateSpring 2015. The card enables small business owners to take their Kabbage line of credit with them to make purchases for inventory or supplies wherever they are. The company is also a veteran of our developers conference, presenting its automated lending platform at FinDEVr Silicon Valley 2015.

Featured last month in CEO World’s look at companies that are fighting for fair lending, Kabbage teamed up with online banking platform Azlo in May to launch a new financing program for SMEs called Mission Street Capital. Also in May, the company announced a partnership with the Building Trades Employers’ Association to help provide funding to female and minority-owned business contractors.

What Mary Meeker’s Report Says About the State of Fintech

What Mary Meeker’s Report Says About the State of Fintech

Mary Meeker, general partner at Bond Capital, a VC firm she founded, released her Internet Trends Report this week at Recode’s Code conference. The report, which aims to deconstruct the future of the internet, has come to be a yearly highlight for techies since 1995, as it contains data and insights on nearly every aspect of the internet.

At 333 pages long, the report contains a wealth of information relevant to a range of industries, so we’ve dissected a quick look at some of the details that are relevant and useful specifically for banking and fintech.

  • The number of internet users is at 50% global penetration but growth is slowing.
  • The Asia Pacific opportunity persists: Asia Pacific claims 21% of global internet users. The U.S. trails at 8%.
  • Ecommerce growth is “solid” and up from last year.
  • Customer acquisition costs are rising and have been steadily increasing over time.
  • Customers try a new service if they see a positive product recommendation or if they can first use a freemium version. In fact, Meeker said the freemium strategy as a business model is “just getting started.”
  • Investment from VCs, public stock exchanges, and IPOs remains high.
  • The best ways to engage with audiences are through short form video or voice engagement, such as podcasts or Amazon Echo, which now has 4.7 million users (up 2x since last year).
  • Cyber attacks are on the rise but the time it takes to detect them is falling.
  • Digital payments account for more than 50% of daily transactions.

In the report, Meeker also mentioned specific fintechs and their growth. Including:

  • China’s Alipay has 1 billion users, up 2x in two years.
  • South Korea’s Toss has 12 million users, up 2x in one year.
  • Revolut has 4 million users, up 2x in 10 months.
  • Brazil’s NuBank has 9 million customers, up 2x in one year.
  • Latin America’s Mercado Libre has had 389 million transactions, up 2x in two years.

Read the full report or check out Recode’s bullet point breakdown to get a gist of the fuller picture.

Revolut Seeks Banking License in Russia; Mastercard Pledges Partnerships with Indian Fintechs

As Finovate goes increasingly global, so does our coverage of financial technology. Finovate Global: Fintech News from Around the World is our weekly look at fintech innovation in developing economies in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Central and Eastern Europe.

Sub-Saharan Africa

  • DisruptAfrica profiles TeamApt and its role as the “go to” fintech startup for Nigeria banks.
  • Nairobi, Kenya-based CarePay International raises $44.7 million (€40 million) for expansion into new markets.
  • expressPay goes live with Visa on mobile in Ghana.

Central and Eastern Europe

  • Austrian fintech Bitpanda launches gold and silver trading on its platform.
  • Revolut announces plans to pursue banking license in Russia.
  • Nayax introduces its new cashless payment integration, the Bluecode payments solution, in Austria and Germany.

Middle East and Northern Africa

  • Visa teams up with Bahrain FinTech Bay to drive fintech innovation in the country.
  • Saudi Payments inks memorandum of understanding to introduce QR code-based national payment system in Saudi Arabia.
  • National Bank of Bahrain (NBB) says it is the first MENA-based bank to launch an open banking offering.

Central and Southern Asia

  • PayPal India unveils its OneTouch feature which, integrated with Google Smart Lock, enables users to register their Android device with PayPal and remain logged in for all subsequent PayPall purchases on that device.
  • Mastercard pledges partnerships with Indian fintechs via its India Investment Fund.

Latin America and the Caribbean

  • Descendants of the Medici banking family launch a digital bank, Medici Bank, in Puerto Rico.
  • Japan’s SoftBank invests $20 million in Mexican payments innovator Clip.
  • Scotiabank’s fintech accelerator, FactoryA, introduces its incoming cohort of startups from Chile, Colombia, and Mexico.

Asia-Pacific

  • Singapore-based YouTrip raises $25.5 million for its multi-currency payments app.
  • Hong Kong Monetary Authority issues another four virtual bank licenses.
  • South Korea unveils new regulations to empower robo-advisory services.

Top image designed by Freepik

Jemstep Advisor Pro App Launches on Salesforce Exchange

Jemstep Advisor Pro App Launches on Salesforce Exchange

Digital advice solutions provider Jemstep announced today that its Jemstep Advisor Pro app is now live on the Salesforce AppExchange. The app can be used by advisors working with the company’s Advisor Pro digital advice platform, and is configured for Lightning and Financial Services Cloud as well as Sales and Service Cloud.

The new app will make it easier for wealth management companies who want to provide more personalized, 24/7 service to their clients. And by leveraging Salesforce, the solution is a boon for Jemstep’s enterprise customers, enabling them to access the data that will drive better, more meaningful engagement with both current and potential clients.

“Jemstep embraces collaborations to unify the digital advice experience for banks, broker-dealers, insurers, and RIAs,” Jemstep President and CEO Simon Roy explained. “Combining the modern, goal-based investing experience of Jemstep Advisor Pro with Salesforce’s extensive CRM capabilities results in an intelligent and scalable enterprise class digital platform for advisors supporting personalized solutions for investors.”

The new app from Jemstep will also help wealth management firms and advisors grow assets under management. The Salesforce integration, for example, gives advisors a broader, more comprehensive view of the investor-customer’s financial profile, including the ability to “engage retail banking clients in wealth management solutions.” As such, the app and integration support a “more targeted and scalable approach” with regards to attracting new clients and reaching out to current ones.

In addition to lower the cost of servicing clients, the Jemstep Advisor Pro app makes it easier for wealth managers to get investor information and data to advisors and back office teams more readily. Being able to onboard new clients in 10 minutes or less is another plus for the platform and app, leveraging straight-through processing and deep custodian integrations to make opening and managing accounts straightforward and seamless.

“We are excited to welcome Jemstep to Salesforce AppExchange and into the Financial Services Cloud ecosystem,” SVP and GM for Financial Services at Salesforce Rohit Mahna said. “We look forward to watching Jemstep continue to build innovative solutions that empower financial advisors to deliver the best client experience.”

Jemstep was founded in 2008, and is headquartered in Los Altos, California. The company demonstrated its Portfolio Manager at FinovateSpring 2013 and, three years later, was acquired by Invesco for an undisclosed sum. More recently, Jemstep has forged partnerships FIs like KeyBank, which deployed the company’s Advisor Pro solution in 2017.

Expensify Integrates with Southeast Asia Ridesharing Company Grab

Expensify Integrates with Southeast Asia Ridesharing Company Grab

Expense tracking software company Expensify has integrated with Southeast Asia-based ridesharing startup Grab to automate expense tracking and rideshare reimbursement for Grab users.

When they connect their Expensify account to their Grab business profiles, Expensify customers who live in or travel to Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, and Cambodia can automatically create and submit expense reports for their Grab rides. Upon booking rides in Grab’s mobile app, the receipt for the trip is automatically sent to Expensify.


Expensify opted to integrate with Grab because receipt volume for the ridesharing platform grew 200% in 2018. “Business travel has become one of Grab’s priority segments, with more users discovering and using Grab Business Profiles every day,” says Shawn Heng, Regional Head of Business Development and Grab for Business. “Partnering with Expensify, a great app for anyone who needs to keep track of receipts and expenses, is an exciting next step to make business travel even smoother for all of Grab’s customers.”

Grab is not the first ridesharing company Expensify has integrated into its platform. The California-based company integrated with Uber in 2016 and with Lyft in 2017. Today’s deal does, however, mark the company’s first partnership in the Southeast Asia region. Expensify also has partners in the U.S., the U.K., and Australia.

Founded in 2008, Expensify most recently demoed at FinovateSpring 2013, where the company’s CEO David Barrett showed off invoicing technology. The company teamed up with rapper 2 Chainz and actor Adam Scott earlier this year to create a SuperBowl ad. You can check it out below:

The Human Side of Digital Transformation

The Human Side of Digital Transformation

This is a guest post written by Dave Jones, VP of Product Marketing at Nuxeo, a Silver Sponsor of FinovateSpring. Jones is a strategic marketing leader and information management expert with 20+ years of experience in the technology space.

Today, consumers embrace a willingness to experiment with new ways of doing things. This, in turn, is driving the need for financial services companies to accelerate their digital transformation initiatives in order to compete and remain relevant to customers.

But digital transformation should not mean customers never talk to a human being. A digital business should look to exploit technology to create new sources of value for customers above and beyond their products and services. They should also look to increase operational agility in the service of those customers—and that service does not always have to be digital. It can, and often should, be a human interaction.

Many describe this human element within an organization as the culture – but what is culture?

It’s a shared set of values and beliefs that drive behavior. It’s not what you say, it’s what you do. It’s how people behave when no one is looking and when no one is telling them what to do that will pave the way for great innovation.

At Nuxeo, we believe that a digital culture is critical to the success of a digital transformation project. Below are four ways that culture can play a pivotal role in digital transformation projects:

  1. To drive digital experiences, strive for a culture that fosters customer empathy and that values a deep understanding of customers’ needs and ecosystems.
  2. To drive digital operations, focus on things that customers value, and reward digital experimentation and collaboration. Nurture a culture that embeds metrics (customer metrics) into the scorecard of every employee. And foster customer empathy and customer-led decision making.
  3. To leverage digital ecosystems for broadening platforms and partnerships, nurture a culture that promotes internal and external collaboration.
  4. To place digital innovation at the intersection of experiences and operations, support a culture that encourages speed instead of perfection. Develop a healthy tolerance for risk, and a willingness to fail fast and learn from failures.

In order to become a digital business and move up the digital maturity curve, no financial institute can ignore culture because it impacts everything. The traits found in strong digital and customer-focused cultures include:

• Customer Obsession

• Empathy

• Speed & Agility

• Collaboration

• Experimentation

These are the traits that successful digital businesses have in common, and they’re the traits that allow organizations to drive their digital transformation to the highest level. However, these traits are missing from many digital transformation programs, despite assertions by many who say “Yeah, we’re doing that.” This is a problem.

Most organizations are still addressing digital transformation as a tactical, short-term savings focused exercise. Some are getting some cost savings and functional agility, but very few are creating end-to-end digital businesses with a sustainable and long-term competitive advantage. What we have are organizations that think they are done with digital transformation who were never truly on the journey, and never addressed the human and cultural piece of the puzzle.

To those organizations, we implore you to rethink your strategy and to factor culture into your digital transformation journey. But to those organizations who are using empathy, collaboration, and the natural human instinct to help others as a way to deliver a stronger and more sustainable offering to their customers – bravo. You are in the enviable position of having all the right pieces in place for your digital transformation journey – all that remains is for you to push ahead, build on the strength of your new human-digital culture and enjoy the trip.

To learn more about the trends driving digital transformation and strategies for success, download this complimentary Digital Business Playbook for Financial Services. Nuxeo is a Silver Sponsor of FinovateSpring, coming to San Francisco in less than one month! Find out how you can get involved with FinovateSpring here >>