• Jürg Truniger, Product Marketing Lead at Appway


• 10.04.2017 08:15 am
Digital Innovation

We've arrived in the Digital Age. But does this mean that all businesses are digitally advanced?

In short, no.

Digitalization is an ever-evolving process, and many CIOs in the financial services feel they’re not meeting industry expectations when it comes to digitalization and innovation.

In its report 2017 CIO Agenda: A Financial Services Perspective (David Furlonger, February 2017), Gartner states that “financial services firms are lagging behind global top-performing organizations in relation to digital transformation, and hoping doing ‘more of the same’ will equate to improved performance.” They also find that “25% of FS CIOs report running IT as being a more important function of their role than delivering innovation.”

The FS CIO survey indicated CEOs are expecting revenue acquisition from digitalization to double over the next three years. So, executive teams need to address whether they are spending enough on IT to enable that revenue growth (see Figure 5 in report).”

We’ve realized the same here at Appway.

Since the underlying goal is still to improve efficiency, there will be a lot of missed opportunities for increasing revenue. None of our customers digitalize all their processes from the start. But they quickly realize that digitalizing only certain parts of their business won’t create a big enough impact on customer experience or help them achieve long-term revenue growth.

In our experience, digital onboarding is the ideal starting process for digitalizing banks. It manages the different stakeholders involved, from end customers to relationship managers, as well as those in the front and back office, and even compliance. When done right, everyone can enjoy the improved experience, especially customers.

So what do customers expect from their banks?

They expect a seamless experience across channels that continues beyond having their new bank account opened. Although the onboarding process is only the start of the relationship between the customer and the bank, it sets the tone for the rest of the customer experience.

In the report IT Market Clock for Mobile Imaging for Banks, 2016 (Gartner, September 2016), analyst Stessa Cohen writes about what she calls ‘New Account Opening’: "Its impact will be felt most as the first point of interaction between the bank and a customer. Therefore, the customer experience must be easy to use and responsive. Ideally, banks will select a vendor that can address all types of account opening, not only consumer accounts, but also small business accounts, private and wealth management accounts, and new loan and mortgage accounts."

Since client onboarding differs depending on the customers you serve, we feel that banks need to think beyond account opening. Adopting a more holistic approach that looks at the entire client lifecycle will help banks provide greater customer experience.

Stessa Cohen offers the following advice for FS CIOs: “As many digital banking platforms offer new account opening, coordinate this asset class with the bank’s digital banking initiative. If the bank does not have such an initiative, make sure this project is aligned with other mobile banking and mobile account-opening initiatives.”

This is where the platform approach comes into play. Appway Onboarding takes advantage of Appway Platform’s capabilities and integrations. They can be replicated to transform other processes, drive revenue, and even enable changes in business models.

Only when companies fully commit to digitalization can they move forward with their digital evolution

We’re happy to see more of our clients embarking on the digitalization journey. They appreciate how Appway Platform digitalizes their existing processes as well as their business.

Since customer and user preferences will keep changing over time, it is most effective to base onboarding on a platform instead of a siloed solution. For instance, adding a separate mobile onboarding application will create many costs but miss many of the synergies. This isn’t the case when it's implemented on a platform that offers multichannel support.

Providing seamless digital services that live up to clients’ expectations is the key way for banks to improve customer experience in order to increase long-term revenues.

Want to find out more insights from the Gartner report? Then check back soon to read my next article in our blog series on Gartner’s 2017 CIO Agenda.

To learn more about what Gartner says are the next steps for CIOs in the financial services, you can download the full report here:

Gartner: 2017 CIO Agenda: A Financial Services Perspective, David Furlonger, 09 February 2017. 
Gartner: IT Market Clock for Mobile Imaging for Banks, Stessa B Cohen, 09 September 2016.