How US Bank is building workflow solutions for SMBs and where its offering needs to go next

To win SMB customers, banks need to build strategies that center around workflows and pain points: being digital is simply not enough. 

Only 35% of SMB owners report that they are able to manage their workload and have enough time to complete all of their tasks. And less than half (48%) report that they have the right digital tools to manage their business, according to a recent survey by US Bank. 

US Bank recently launched two new products to its SMB offering: a spend management platform as well as an all-in-one checking account called Business Essentials that will help SMBs accept card payments with same-day access to funds. It also comes with a free mobile card reader, no maintenance fees, and the ability to integrate a business’ accounting into budget management software. 

These products are a result of a years-long strategy at US Bank that combines fintech acquisitions, like that of Bento Technologies which the firm acquired in 2021, with internal innovation to build products that can serve SMBs holistically and at scale. 

Here is how US Bank led with vision, CX, and cross-functional collaboration to make its Bento acquisition a success:

i) Leading with vision: The Bento Technologies acquisition came as a part of the bank’s vision to bring banking and payment services into an interconnected ecosystem focused on simplifying cash flows and management for SMBs, says Shruti Patel, Chief Product Manager for Business Banking at the firm.

“Bento Technologies’ software was complementary to our existing capabilities at US Bank… but it was important to integrate the functionality deeply within the US Bank platforms in order to expand the reach and bring the benefits to as many SMBs as possible,” she said. 

ii) CX-led integration: Fintech acquisitions allow US Bank to plug capabilities into their systems that might have otherwise taken them years to build but there is always a risk of integrations leading to a choppy and fragmented experience for customers. US Bank was able to avoid this by keeping the main thrust of integration efforts aligned with and optimized for customer experience. 

“There has been a lot of collaboration and technology work behind the scenes to integrate our

Platforms, and equally important, from the highest level, we’ve been transforming our customer experience model to focus on the holistic customer journey vs. multiple individual products,” said Patel. 

iii) Leveraging cross-functional collaboration: The bank’s recent spend management tool is a result of teams like business banking, payments, IT,  project teams, as well as the employees who joined from Bento owning the build regardless of where they were based in the country.  “Team members were located everywhere from San Francisco to Minneapolis to Chicago. It was a real cross-bank collaboration,” she said. 

The great rebundling

Not too long ago, the financial services industry had fintechs popping up with very specific niches. At the time, tools like spend management could only be leveraged outside the banking environment. This has changed over the years, and SMB customers in particular have reverted to centering their business management activities through their bank. 

A previous US Bank survey shows why SMB customers are turning to their banks despite being spoiled for choice when it comes to solutions offered by fintechs:

1. i57% of SMB owners report being overwhelmed by the number of digital solutions they need to run their business.
2. 75% say that consolidating their digital tools is a priority for streamlining their workflow. 
3. 80% of SMB owners prefer service providers who can bundle the banking, payments and operations digital tools they need.

SMB bank customers are driven but also exhausted, and having a multitude of digital touch points is making their jobs harder.  “Fintechs have done a great job of solving specific pain points of SMBs and building great experiences and products around them, and they move at great speed. Banks have a broader base of customers and capabilities to bring together a holistic experience for clients, but they need to become more agile and accelerate the speed of innovation. Given these complementary assets and gaps, the collaboration and partnerships will only grow, to the benefit of SMBs,” shared Patel. 

The array of tools that banks have to integrate to improve their SMB offerings will continue to grow and even as banks have caught up to things like spend management, technologies like Gen AI are opening new opportunities for firms to improve. 

Despite the newness of the technology, already 57% of SMB owners are currently using or plan to implement Gen AI solutions in the next year, according to US Bank’s research. 

SMB owners are leveraging the technology for quite a few tasks:

1. 44% are using Gen AI for content creation
2. 41% are using it for data analysis and information gathering (e.g., analyzing customer purchase data, analyzing market trends, forecasting)
3. 39% are employing Gen AI for marketing and sales strategies. 

Fintechs have been faster than banks at bringing Gen AI-powered tools to SMB customers, with firms like Lili launching Accountant AI which uses businesses’ financial data and the latest industry information to provide business owners with personalized, instant recommendations about their businesses’ finances.

The possibilities for banks are massive: Integrating Gen AI in bank-offered spend management and cash flow management tools can help SMB owners get answers faster and execute business plans more efficiently.

More broadly, CX is trending towards enabling a higher level of automation, where jobs to be done are executed by Gen AI and monitored by employees. Banks have yet to catch up onto this change and their movement is likely to be the same slow and deliberate gait we have seen in years past but it doesn’t mean that the C-suite is sleeping on this innovation. iIt’s just prioritizing the back office:

“We are incorporating AI into our own operations and in innovations that benefit clients. For example, to make our interactions with customers as frictionless as possible, our customer service teams use AI for call transcriptions, knowledgebases that give the representatives quicker access to the information they need, and personalized product recommendations.

We’re exploring a number of ways to use AI, including investing in our own data and technology infrastructure so we can deploy AI at speed and scale. We will continue to look at innovations that can help our clients save time and money and improve their operations,” said Patel.