Disruptive Innovation Can Drive Win-Wins for Banks

The Big Picture

Research shows that fewer than 30% of digital transformations are successful—which means that 70% fail outright or get kicked down the road, maybe to resurface in another form.

With consumer behaviors from 2020 strongly demonstrating that customers are embracing digital channels, banks must maintain an aggressive pace of innovation to deliver meaningful digital offerings. But are they positioned to press the accelerator with an aim toward competitive advantage?

The Spinnaker Approach

In a recent American Bankers Association podcast, I took a deep dive into the opportunities for disruptive innovation in digital transformation. Shelly Loftin, the ABA’s senior vice president for retail, lending and payments, sparked some great discussion with questions ranging from what contributed to today’s digital ecosystem to what advice banks should follow for effective digital transformations.

Over the course of our 10-minute discussion, I offered some key takeaways:

• Understand your customers and what they want.
• Look at digital transformation as an end-to-end opportunity.
• Create inviting, streamlined experiences for your customers.
• Measure performance to confirm you’re migrating customers out of your branch and phone channels.
• Engage every associate in an enterprise vision: If your people aren’t using your digital channels, how can they be effective ambassadors for them?

We kept the conversation going.

Afterward, Shelly hosted a second, more in-depth webinar focused on “Maintaining Your Digital Transformation Momentum in 2021: How to Get It Right for Customers and Employees.” She facilitated a great conversation between John Findlay, founder of Launchfire, and myself on the importance of making this an enterprise initiative. That webinar provides tactics for establishing priorities to help bite-size your efforts and points out common roadblocks you may run into.

The Client Benefits

Both audio experiences offer insight into why a successful digital transformation has never been more critical for banks, as well as what and who it takes to do it well. (Spoiler alert: It’s never only your technology team.) Listen now to both the podcast and the expanded webinar. Then reach out to me to start a conversation about how we can help you take your bank’s digital journey to the next level.