4 Lessons You Can Learn About Digital Transformation From Politics
To use digital banking technology to realize large & small transformation, you must change the way you use that technology.
Photo by Brad Starkey on Unsplash
If you’re a banker or a fintech or software provider, you’re feeling the pressure to expand the number of products your customers use, acquire new customers, prevent existing customers from abandoning or closing their accounts.
Though you know they haven’t worked all that well in the past, it’s oh-so-tempting to dip back into old habits and and same old demographic segmentation to “create” and market banking and payments solutions.
So, what can you do? Look at banking differently.
When I started this newsletter, I wrote 4 newsletters that use Rick Wilson’s book Running Against the Devil as a jumping off point to identify ways you - whether you work at a bank or for digital banking software provider - can use digital banking technology differently to realize transformation.
Four Lessons Digital Banking Vendors Can Learn From Rick Wilson & Politics
Rick Wilson’s book Running Against the Devil is not on any business or fintech or future of banking reading lists, but I think it’s one of the best books about disruption I’ve ever read. The crux of the book is Wilson’s argument that to adapt to the current political environment in the US, Democrats must change how they’ve always approached every aspect of the 2020 Presidential election cycle. I think digital banking vendors seeking differentiation similarly must take a radical new approach. Digital banking vendors – and their bank customers – can learn 4 lessons from Rick Wilson:
1. Discover hidden tribes
2. Focus on Who Votes
3. Think Digital Everything, Not Digital First
4. Stop Flying by Seat of Your Pants
Focus on Who Votes - If your bank or fintech focuses only on capturing the “youth market” however you define it think about this: The lost opportunity to address the real and varied needs of older customers. Following Wilson’s dictate that “old people vote,” digital banking solutions that don’t have capabilities to address the specific needs of older adults pass up a huge opportunity.
Think Digital About Everything & Stop Flying by the Seat of Your Pants - Is your digital banking solution is the platform not only for mobile or online services or voice banking but also every other contact with your customers. Yes, including the branch. Yes, including the ATM. How easily can your bank respond to customers as they move from device to channel to device? This is an old problem. Have you solved it? Given the challenges posed by harshest day and months of COVID 19, how quickly can your bank pivot services, no really, all services, to be digital anywhere or everywhere? Further, you have to stop flying by the seat of your pants when it comes to customer needs and wants. The platform-agnostic digital banking solution that doesn’t enable your bank customers to listen to and act on data from social media, from its mobile apps, from the branch - well, from anywhere. The bank must be able to use that data as the basis of actions and services the bank will take or create for customers.
Where are Those Hidden Tribes is a deeper dive into my analysis of how banks and software vendors can identify and use hidden tribes to create new products, services and sources of revenue.
Me, Elsewhere
Adopt an Agile Digital Banking Platform: How bankers must have an agile digital banking platform to support both global and local trends and requirements to help them identify new niche markets that will drive innovation, create new value and increase profitability. In this report I identified a set of capabilities that a digital banking platform must have that will help take banks into a competitive future and urges banks to select a digital banking partner who shares their innovation, vision and support for new value creation.
How Your Financial Institution Can Leverage Niche Markets for Next-Level Growth: The old rules that influenced how mid-sized financial institutions acquired technology and the tradeoffs they had to make no longer apply. Why? Because new thinking on old models brings new ways for banks and credit unions to deliver new products and services to new niche customer markets. I moderated a vibrant discussion about this & more with Jeffery Kendall, Chairman and CEO, Nymbus and Tim Hamilton, CEO of Praxent.
Think like a Challenger: How banks and credit unions can compete and win - I recently moderated this conversation on challenger banks with Bryan Clagett of Moven and Ted Brown of Digital Onboarding. And, yes, I talked about challenger banks for teenagers.
Digital banking transformation’s surprising secret for success in Entersekt’s ebook New Directions in Authentication
Does It Fit Me? Tailored Banking - The Next Step in Digital Transformation.
Yes, I worked with clients on these ebooks and webinars. They may ask you for information before you can download or watch them. If you’re interested in collaborating with me on similar or totally different types of projects, please contact me at stessa@pivotassets.co or schedule a short meeting.
Who writes PivotAssets?
I’m an independent analyst & consultant & a former Gartner analyst. I’ve worked in and covered the banking industry for over 2 decades. I write about digital banking in this newsletter - not to confirm what you know (and you are plenty smart!) but to give you a fresh perspective & analysis on the transformation that is —and isn’t happening - in the industry.
I write this newsletter for people and companies who are trying to differentiate their banking software in an increasingly competitive market. That could be people who work at software companies currently developing banking software or people at vendors that want to move vertically into the banking market. It’s also for bankers and investors who want to know more about digital banking transformation strategies & the technologies that power them.