Thanks to companies like Amazon and Venmo, delightful, frictionless consumer experiences are well-known and well-loved. These Big-Tech enterprises have not only revolutionized the way we think about frictionless digital experiences, they reveal a very important fact…that frictionless digital experience is really the result of operations built for the digital age.
When you click the buy now button on Amazon and receive a package at your doorstep two days later, the technology you used was simply a portal or a window on Amazon’s revolutionary operations. It is the operational alchemy behind the scenes that delivered delight, not the technology. Similarly, in financial services, it is not about the app.
Your financial institution can deliver delightful, frictionless consumer experiences, the very essence of modern relevance, once operations are rebuilt for the times. These three, successive steps of the Relevance Equation will take you there.
The Relevance Equation
1/3 Strategic Evolution: The first step in the Relevance Equation is a relatively subtle, but essential, shift in strategic thinking; data is the beating heart and mission-based soul of every business.
1/3 Operational Transformation: The second step (many small steps, really) are the intentional and relentless efforts to restructure operations to aggregate and analyze data to create delight and maximize efficiency and relevance.
1/3 Frictionless Digital Experience: Finally, the third steps, the ones that most organizations mistakenly address first, are the implementation of digital interfaces. When the first two factors of the Relevance Equation are skipped, digital options are limited to third-party creations that re-segregate data, undermining the heart and soul of your Strategic Evolution. More on this double folly below. Following the Relevance Equation breaks this cycle.
DaLand’s Strategy Protection Services are all about your delightful relevance!
An operational state that assures your organization remains the hub of community and commerce as our lives and relationships accelerate across digital domains.
There are no magic pills or proxies; no pre-packaged solution will ever deliver delightful relevance! Let’s get started.
The First Third is Conceptual
Strategic Evolution: DaLand’s one-day Strategy Seminars plainly present this essential shift in thinking. In conversation with your leaders, we demonstrate that you are now in the data business, as much, and perhaps more than, the “banking” business. Having seen this era on the horizon for many years, predicted its implications, and even shaped it for our clients, we have the talent, experience, and tools to deliver this profound paradigm-shift. Once this shift is made, Operational Transformation can be made clear and tangible through Strategy Mapping; Frictionless Digital Experience becomes attainable thanks to your Operational Transformation.
Congratulations, you have started one-third of your relevance journey!
The Second Third is Practical
Operational Transformation: This is the core of the Relevance Equation and the core of your relevance journey—puns intended! Your daily touchstone for this stage will be a Strategy Map. And your strategy map is equipped with experienced navigators. Your Strategy Map will detail and schedule every step of your Operational Transformation, reflecting the evolving contours of your Strategic Evolution, operational efficiencies gained, and the technological advances achieved.
Your Strategy Map will necessarily be an iterative process, one DaLand will curate together with your team to continuously educate and guide your organization, furnishing you with a roadmap to deliver Frictionless Digital Experiences.
Just as your Strategic Evolution was the first, essential step to bring Operational Transformation into focus, each step of your Operational Transformation was required to realize the efficiencies of the digital age, delight staff, clients, and communities, and position your organization for emerging forms of value creation and exchange.
Three Thirds—The Pay-Off
Frictionless Digital Experience: You have arrived! By working the factors of the Relevance Equation in sequence, your organization has transformed itself—with some timely assistance from DaLand CUSO. You are now structured for and by the digital era, energized by continuous, live data-based insights, previously the exclusive domain of the Master of Digital Commerce. Internalized and maximized digital-era efficiencies allow you to deliver far greater value to your communities than your tradition-bound rivals. (Having skipped the first two factors of the Relevance Equation, your rivals are busy, patching-in another third-party “solution,” paying extraordinary fees for the privilege of insight shrouded in yet another remote data silo.)
Frictionless Digital Experience means your institution has created a modern strategy, taking direct control of your consumer interactions, collecting all related data and redeploying it in real time as delightful, frictionless self-service interactions. And in your new operation, frictionless means that these consumer experiences are no longer staged by staff pushing paper in the back office!
The delightful, frictionless experience of buying books on-line, made possible by new strategic thinking and a deep dedication to data, now allows Amazon to promote and sell nearly anything. Your operational transformation, realizing truly frictionless, digital experiences will have similarly profound effects.
Frictionless Digital Experiences, built on the Relevance Equation, are enabling other institutions to solve previously unrecognized consumer pain points, like:
Expanding partnerships with local business, non-profits, etc., equipping them with the digital tools they need for safe, secure, local, and valuable contactless retail operation (rewards, promos, loyalty programs, lending relationships, appointment scheduling, mobile payments)
Serving as a bridge for your community to access the finance networks arising around us including cryptocurrency; using the core processor to vault and process cryptocurrency and digital assets
Engaging consumers 24x7, inside and outside of your branches including in local, partner retail shops via contactless and self-service operations
The data business changes what is possible.
So, as your institution heads into your planning sessions and begin to map out your 2022-2023 strategies, keep in mind… DaLand is here to continue this conversation; educating, empowering and extending relevance with your institution.