Planning for 2021: Digital Strategies for Banks

When asked about digital transformation, one chief innovation and technology officer at a UK bank expressed frustration: “Shareholder expectations really put a strain on how much money you can put into digital transformation. Everyone knows the customers’ demands, but it is about us creating the financial capacity to invest in it. We know what to improve, just how do we do it? You have to hit ROE numbers or your share price won’t perform.”

Banking customers want a digital banking experience, but internal and external pressures make it difficult to get a digital strategy going. The key is to create a strategy that is innovative enough to target your customers’ specific needs and reliable enough to appease leadership. Here are some considerations and tips for choosing a successful digital strategy that fits the bill:

Rediscover Customer and Employee Pain Points

Before you plan a new digital strategy, it’s vital that you understand your customers’ pain points—as well as your company’s internal challenges. How do you discover pain points? For your internal strategy, it may be as easy as a quick employee survey. For your customer-facing strategy, you may need to completely revamp your customer journey map. 

Recommended Webinar: Strengthening Operational Resilience in Banking

 

 

Other ways to discover customer pain points might be getting your sales team to make note of the pain points their prospects mention, reading your online reviews, and searching online to see what pain points your competitors are targeting. To help you get started, here are some common pain points to look into. For customers, they might include the following:

• Lack of proactive, informed customer service
• Unsatisfactory time to resolution
• Inconsistent service across channels and regions

And here are some employee pain points to consider exploring:

• Inefficient back-office processes due to disparate legacy systems (which may result in the customer pain point of disconnected experiences)
• Lack of operational resilience due to ineffective compliance and risk management processes or platforms

For example, let’s say you are sure your mobile banking app resolves the pain point of accessibility. But upon closer inspection, you might discover that your customers want the app to give them greater access to humans to resolve their issues. 

Whatever your situation, your customers’ pain points can become vital signposts in your digital strategy. For example, after growth through acquisition, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) was using thirteen ITSM tools. These disparate systems meant staff were spending too much time on change management and not enough time on work that would most benefit employees and, ultimately, customers. 

RBS implemented ServiceNow ITSM for a simpler, more unified IT experience. As a result, 75 percent of employees reported that their workday improved, and customer service was upgraded. 

“We needed the flexibility and speed to deliver incremental changes with contained risk and improve the way we deliver technology services to our businesses, enabling them to deliver the best service to our customers,” says Pete Coleman, head of service delivery at Royal Bank of Scotland.

Find an ITSM Platform that Balances Flexibility with Robust Capabilities

With the rapid and unpredictable changes in business, the economy, and technology, your digital strategy must include strong technologies. 

First, find a platform that meets your current goals. Whether your institution needs help with compliance, risk management, or even performance improvement, a strong platform like ServiceNow ITSM can be integral to your digital strategy. “With ServiceNow ITSM and the Now Platform® as your foundation, you can consolidate your IT tools into our single data model to transform the service experience, automate workflows, gain real-time visibility, and improve IT productivity.”

Then, find “a partner that has the culture and architecture to be able to meet your goals ten years in the future.” Today’s challenges include real-time payments, the Internet of Things movement, and creating new products in-house. By 2030, banks may need to be prepared to face complex CyFi attacks, keeping integrity in data analytics as more third parties become involved and remaining agile in a rapidly-changing digital landscape. A partner with a culture and architecture built for flexibility will be able to help you build a digital strategy that is up to the challenge.

Banks need a solid digital strategy that can meet challenges now and in the future. By rediscovering pain points, matching technology to pain points, and finding the right platform and partner, your bank can be prepared to meet any challenge it faces.

Contact us today for a tailored assessment of the state of your bank’s digital tools. We would be happy to walk you through how to take your bank’s digital strategy to the next level using ServiceNow.