To be successful with digital transformation financial institutions need to take a step back and evaluate their digital maturity, especially the extent to which they are driven by data and focused on solving real problems.
Financial institutions need to start by determining where they fall on the digital maturity scale. Especially considering that only 13 percent of banks were ranked as “highly mature” in Accenture’s latest Digital Maturity Index report. To truly progress, it is critical that your financial institution receives an unbiased assessment of how far along you are in your digital journey. Understanding your maturity level makes it possible to plan for investment and execute a digital strategy with less friction.
The amount of customer data that goes into digital investment planning and roadmap prioritization processes is a critical component needed to assess a financial institution’s digital maturity. Using customer data produces meaningful insights that can be used to spark innovation and transformation within an organization. Data helps renew focus on solving real problems that need fixing and truly delighting customers through the appropriate application of digital capabilities.
It should be noted that establishing where a financial institution stands in terms of digital maturity can be a difficult and lengthy process. It may be beneficial to add additional resources to help assess a financial institution’s areas of need and define a clear path forward.
In some cases, it can be crucial to rely on an outside perspective that bypasses internal politics throughout the exercise to ensure unbiased results. Using an external organization to guide your institution through the process and provide mediation when necessary, can be very helpful – not only in the timely completion of the exercise, but also in minimizing disruption of current operations.
Finding Your Position in the Maturity Model
The digital maturity model is broken into four milestones along the journey to successful digital transformation. Financial institutions should understand and consider these milestones to identify where they fit in the framework and establish a plan to fill any gaps in their maturity.
Reactive
These financial institutions respond to issues as they arise through ad hoc investment, pulling resources from other projects as required and setting priorities with very little insights used from customer data.
Prepared
These financial institutions invest in areas where they have been forced to react in the past. Resources are probably being pulled between projects, and data collection as a means to determine success is still minimal. Prioritization is typically driven by executive leadership based on available historical data.
Proactive
These financial institutions concentrate their investment in areas that they find are important to customers, based on previous experience and scattered data sources. While resources are typically staffed to manage any shortages, they may not be fully utilized. Data is used more extensively but stored in multiple locations, which requires analysts to hunt for the information they need, and priorities are set based on available data and market insights.
Intelligent
These financial institutions gather data from customer behaviors and habits across all channels to create a single source of truth to drive investment decisions. Resources and staff are fully utilized throughout the transformation process. In this stage, leadership has a big-picture view of digital development and uses data to guide investments.
Financial institutions need to determine where they currently are in this model before they can design their strategic roadmap to reach digital maturity. To find out more about how to gather the data required to assess your institution’s position within the framework, reach out to our team today.
