Digital Transformation From a Branch Perspective

If you ask five bankers to define what constitutes a successful digital transformation, you will receive five different answers. However, organizations can employ a few measures to help them succeed, including establishing priorities, assessing capabilities and creating a digital road map.

Meeting current challenges
Many financial institutions were in no rush to transform prior to March 2020. However, the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the implementation of digital-first models. It also put pressure on organizations to battle-test alternative business models supporting remote operations and service delivery. Most notably, banks had to activate remote working models while simultaneously figuring out how to service and support face-to-face customers.

Now in 2021, the initial challenges posed by the pandemic have mostly been addressed. At the same time, bankers acknowledge that branch traffic levels might never recover to pre-pandemic levels.

Establishing priorities
First, organizations should establish priorities. The average mid-size, full-service retail office has annual operating expenses exceeding $350,000 a year – real money that could be repurposed to build a competitive digital service. Unleashing this capital and using it more effectively is key to initiating an effective digital transformation.

One initial objective should be to rank branch locations in terms of profitability and other performance metrics to identify the bottom 20%. In most cases, that percentage represents the locations that have been habitual low performers, or that might be in declining markets or suboptimal locations. It’s important to determine if these locations are leased, and if so, if there is a clear path to exit the lease. These details affect the timeline required to exit and any write-offs or write-downs related to each location.

Digital channels do not work in a vacuum. Experience tells us that community bankers do not like to lay off staff who live and work in these markets, and organizations should consider redeployment of these employees. Reassigned branch personnel can support new customers and existing users as they navigate organization websites and online product applications.

Once organizations understand the exit strategy and cost impact for low-performing locations, they can create plans that outline the timing and potential resources that could be freed up from physical branches and funneled into the digital channel.

Assessing capabilities
After determining the digital transformation budget, organizations should make an honest assessment of their existing capabilities and identify gaps or weaknesses. One goal should be to fix what is broken or not optimal, then prioritize the spend and deployment timeline for true enhancements.

Selecting digital enhancements involves many options, dependencies and complexities, which can slow down decision-making about digital transformation initiatives. Fixing obvious problems first and then investigating enhancements will take time, so organizations don’t need to close low-performing branches immediately.

Executives need to fully understand the features of potential enhancements, what is lacking from current capabilities, what is additive to current capabilities, enhancement release timelines and costs associated with each improvement. They also should consider the roll-out of these features and the impact on existing and future customers.

Creating a digital road map
Creating a digital road map can enable banks to set expectations about when changes to digital services will occur. Doing so requires honest introspection about where the organization is positioned on the digital transformation continuum.

For example, banks might think they have effective online account opening processes, but they should ask: Is it truly an automated, end-to-end process that works at all times under all conditions? Or do deposit operations personnel need to manually move data or paper along to make sure accounts can get set up? Organizations should fully understand where and how their existing customers might be affected, and where and how new customers will be serviced as they open accounts online.

While creating their digital road maps, banks also should take a look at the digital features they’ve already deployed. Are they useful and easy to adopt? Do they drive the user toward desired actions? Do the customers really use the available digital features? Are there benefits to users? If the answers to any of these questions is “no,” organizations should consider removing problematic features or improving processes.

Teeing up for success
Keeping tabs on customer usage trends and optimizing the customer experience should be top priorities in a digital transformation. Banks that make necessary changes can help improve the entire digital experience. To learn more about digital transformation from a branch perspective, view this video.