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Accelerating the Future of Banking at Dreamforce 2022

Sep 29, 2022 | Admin, Financial Services, Latest News

It’s now or never for banking: embrace a digital future or slowly fade into memory.

That was the overarching takeaway from this full-house speaking session at Dreamforce 2022, with leaders from Citizens Bank and Old National Bank sharing their digital transformation insights. Saumit Pande, Muhammad Kashif, Paul Kilroy, and Sandip Saha took the stage, sharing advice for the industry at large, as well as a closer look at their Salesforce transformations. 

See highlights from the session below, as well as a deep dive into Citizens Bank transformation journey to date. 

 

Changes in the financial services industry

The conversation kicked off with a discussion of the state of financial services today and some of its biggest changes given current economic and social conditions. Leaders all agreed that the rapid changes in market and customer expectations are pushing more banking institutions to achieve true omnipresence across all channels—online, social media, chat, in-branch, etc. The pandemic has only made these demands even more pressing. 

As more banking institutions allow digital transformation to climb the priority list, our banking leaders suggest looking into the ways banks can leverage tech like AI and machine learning to capture the vast amount of data available to create seamless, compelling customer experiences. 

 

Choosing digital transformation with Salesforce

Citizens Bank, specifically, was spurred on by three key drivers to chase digital transformation more seriously: 

  • The paradigm shift in customer behavior during the pandemic: Citizens Bank noticed its customers becoming “more digital more quickly” as the restrictions of the pandemic changed everyday habits and routines. As the pandemic eased, these customer behavior shifts remained and the shift to digital channels was considered permanent.
  • Foundation of banking models shifting to experiences: With more and more banking products becoming embedded or “invisible,” Citizens Bank wanted to make their banking journey more experience-focused rather than product-focused like the days of old. With the emphasis on customer relationship and experience with the bank, Citizens desired a way to deliver seamless, always-on, interconnected interactions for its customers. 
  • Increased focus on efficiency: “A bank of the future cannot operate with the cost structure of the present.” Citizens Bank knew it needed fewer transactional branches and more efficient call centers to remain competitive and meet the new shape of banking today. 

With these motivations at play, Citizens identified four goals for their ongoing digital transformation efforts: higher profits, at-scale personalization, smart omnichannel experiences, and rapid innovation cycles. Next, it was time to find a technology solution and partner that could help Citizens Bank attain those objectives. 

Salesforce became the apparent pick due to the way it checked all of Citizens Bank’s requirements for a key technology platform or “nimble fintech.” Citizens Bank wanted a solution that could deliver functionality for each specific business line (from wealth management and lending to branch services) and its enterprise services, such as analytics and democratized data layer. Additionally, Salesforce impressed as a platform to Citizens Bank due to its broad out-of-the-box capabilities minimizing custom code to deliver Customer 360 quickly, its extensive ecosystem of third-party apps prime to partner with fintech and risk-free innovators, and its marketplace of strong, talented consulting partners. 

Thank you to all of these insightful speakers for sharing your experience and making the case for truly transformative platforms in the financial services space!

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