Digital transformation is one of banking’s top priorities. Product based processes, which might have been necessary a couple of decades ago, are severely damaging the customer experience and banks’ profitability.
Technology’s ability to break data silos and service the customer throughout his lifecycle offers banks opportunities to increase stickiness.
Though most banks have embarked on their digital transformation journey, only 4 percent reported that they have completed it, according to a new report by enterprise software company LifeRay.
When asked about the main challenges to digital transformation, respondents cited a wide array of issues, indicative, perhaps, of the lack of comprehensive vision and goals for the process as well as of the specific problems it intends to solve.
To be fair, this is a hard problem to solve that needs coordination between many people, IT systems and decision makers.
Fragmentation is the nature of the old product-based silos and procedures. It is this legacy that is preventing banks from truly creating a customer centric culture. When asked for the number one barrier to addressing the full customer lifecycle, a whopping 46 percent answered that different business units own different parts of it.
With different departments owning various parts of the lifecycle, and with the very human tendency to not let go of organizational power and responsibility, how can management move the effort forward?
The path chosen by most FIs was the easy one: dealing with what they can, without stepping on too many toes. 53 percent of the survey respondents said they just deal with parts of the customer lifecycle right now.
Only 3 percent of respondents claimed they have created continuity across all customer touch points. 55 percent are in the midst of coordination and 36 are just starting to look at solutions.
As the adag, popularly attributed to Albert Einstein, goes: you can’t solve a problem with the same kind of thinking used to create it. Overcoming organizational silos will require banks to truly commit to the customer as the goal of their digital transformation.