This year was Perficient’s first year exhibiting at BAI Retail Delivery and there was a lot to take in from the event! As we prepared for the conference and I worked on messaging, we knew our financial services technical capabilities were in-tune with the major topics being discussed at BAI. What we were suprised by was the percentage of banks that have or are in the process of undertaking larger transformational technology projects.
Financial services and banking professionals consistently heard from BAI presenters and vendors that online and mobile channels are the future for retail banks. As a result, a large number of the presentations and panel discussions focused on these three key areas:
- Customer engagement
- Payment innovations and trends
- Mobile banking solutions and stats
I thought I would share some thoughts from BAI discussions we had with banking executives regarding challenges they are facing as retail banks take on transformation projects in these three key areas. Customer Engagement
Kenneth Olan, senior executive vice president of First Victoria, and Steve Resnick, principal at Ingage Solutions, led the session “The Rules of Engagement: How to Build a Nearly Unbreakable Bond Between Customer and Brand”, and during the session a majority of the audience reached out looking for follow-up information on the “how to’s” of engagement and customer interaction. In addition to the very clever “sneak peek” for the session, the inclusion of technology as a tool for customer engagement was mentioned as a critical element.
From our perspective, the “How” of engagement is just as important as the “What” – when implementing technology to drive profitability and growth. A bank’s “mission” should be to understand how they can leverage customer data they already have to enable effective marketing strategies and product and service development.
Payment Innovations and Trends
To tie in the Payments discussions during BAI, during a session on P2P payments with PayPal, Fiserv and ClearXchange, the debate of a “customer-centric” versus “bank-centric” solution was the focus of the discussion. As I listened to both sides of the argument, I put my “banking customer” hat on and thought back to my experience recently attempting to make a P2P payment. I owed a friend of mine some money for a concert ticket she bought me.
So being the financial services technology marketer that I am, I thought I’d check out my bank’s service they are touting as a function for their online banking. As I signed up for the service, I had to supply the mobile number for the recipient (easy enough). The service then sends the recipient a text message and a link to validate the payment request. However, my friend didn’t happen to be a banking customer at my bank, so she had no way to link an account to complete the transaction via mobile device without having her account and routing information handy.
In short, it was the most inconvenient process for what I thought would have been an easy process. Ron Shevlin’s Snarketing 2.0 blog post, “What Customers Really Want from P2P Payments” couldn’t have said it better – I want SIMPLICITY. To be the payment method of choice, banks need to get this right! Guess what my friend said to me over dinner while attempting to complete my P2P payment? “Do you have a PayPal account?” To her that was the easiest way for me to pay her. Again, banks need to understand customer preferences and data to take on payments as part of online banking services.
Mobile Banking and Social
We heard a lot about social and mobile during BAI. Banks understand that mobile is a must in engagement banking. They also heard that social is maturing in the financial services industry and that banks need to embrace it as a channel for engagement, customer service and revenue. Mobile relies heavily on the need for customer intelligence to embark upon successful, transformational mobile banking solutions.
I had a lengthy discussion with a top tier bank at BAI on how they’re justifying the use of social media as a marketing and sales tool. Their digital marketing manager commented that she needed the data to be able to demonstrate ROI to management. That data was housed in multiple locations across the company and real-time access to data for business decisions was impossible. Their digital marketing manager shared that the bank was in the process of consolidating all of this siloed information which was requiring a significant commitment from internal IT resources.
Big Data as a Common Denominator
With both of these focus areas, again, data is the common denominator for success. Banks are implementing mobile banking solutions, but still lack business intelligence capabilities to create loyalty programs, offer rewards and develop additional online banking services that truly engage their mobile customers on a new level. Likewise, a majority of banks lack the capability to use Big Data and social analytics to make informed business decisions for marketing and multi-channel strategies.
In recap, BAI Retail Delivery surfaced a number of relevant and timely topics for retail bankers to tailor their banking strategies. The conference addressed innovative thinking and the willingness for banks to commit to transformational projects. Sessions even covered how to implement enterprise-level change programs, but one all important element remained a mystery – data. With all of these banking tactics, organizations must first fully adopt Master Data Management (MDM) and utilize customer intelligence gathered from data before the bank can truly embrace mobile, payments and engagement banking.
So guess what our next Financial Services webinar will be on? The how-to’s of Business Intelligence and Analytics. So stay tuned for more!
