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78) #ExponentialInsights Data Demystified: What Your Financial Brand Needs to Know ft. Kim Snyder
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
...well, unfortunately, banks have notthought about data as an enterprise wide asset before. Now, in my opinion,right, typically, data lives with the I T department. Okay, it's not viewedfrom a business objective perspective, and that needs to change in theindustry. Mm, mhm. Mm, You're listening to Banking on DigitalGrowth with James Robert Lay, a podcast that empowers financial brand marketing,sales and leadership teams to maximize their digital growth potential bygenerating 10 times more loans and deposits. Today's episode is part ofthe Exponential Insight series, where James Robert interviews the industry'stop marketing sales and fintech leaders, sharing practical wisdom toexponentially elevate you and your team. Let's get into the show Greetings andHello, I am James Robert Ley and welcome to the 78th episode of theBanking on Digital Growth podcast. Today's episode is part of theExponential Insight series, and I'm excited to welcome Kim Snyder to theshow. Kim is the founder and CEO at Clovis, and they are working to delivera transformational Data Analytics solution to community financial brandscreated by bankers for bankers Clara. This enables employees at all levels ofthe organization to confidently make data driven decisions. Welcome to theshow, Kim. Thanks, James. Robert. Happy to be here as we get started with ourdiscussion and before we go to help The dear listener demystify data together.What are you working on right now that you're just most excited about? So we're working, continuing to developthe product right? And so our product evolution that some of the key thingsthat we have on our plate right now, or transactional information making thateasily accessible to our bankers. And so that's a huge priority for us andsomething that we're thrilled about and super excited about. I like thatbecause you know it's particular when you think about digital growth. It's anongoing journey, and it's a lot of financial brands. They I think theyhope, as we all do, and wish that there's an end point. But it's almostlike the further that you get. You're always seeing more opportunities toeither create capture or capitalize on or new roadblocks that we need toeliminate in and work through together. So I like this ongoing evolution asyou're continuing to develop the product, and when you're looking atdeveloping the product one of the things that you believe, as do I, isthat the challenge when it comes to demystifying data is that communityfinancial brands, they don't lack data. There's an abundance of data. But whydo you believe this? Why do you believe that the challenge is not a lack ofdata? Let's start there. Well, I think that goes back to my banking experience,right? I know the amount of data that that goes through the banking systemsand its enormous always always tell our clients that you have the most intimatedetails and information about your customers' than anyone else does. Youknow, forget Google. Forget Facebook. You know all of these big players inthe in the tech space. Your financial institution knows you should know youbetter than any of those other folks because you're communicating with thatfinancial institution every day through the way you transact doesn't matter,and it should not matter how you transact with them, right? It shouldmatter. It does right now, because banks are having a hard time gettingaccess to that data and understanding their customer stories. That's wherethe problem really lies. It's not the abundance of data. There's plenty ofthat. It's cutting through the noise and giving the banks the ability tofocus on the high value, actionable data that's meaningful to the customer.I really like that. This is non verbal...
...communication, and that's a greatperspective because we say so much, not through the words that we speak, butthrough the actions of particular when it comes to money, through the actionsof which we just transact from swiping that card auto pay and there's therereally is there's a There's a narrative and a story to be told for every singleindividual, and many people aren't even aware of these behaviors that they havein. Some are probably more negative than others and are putting them in anot so good situation. And I see an opportunity to maybe bring some of thisto light to empower and illuminate a path forward to help someone reallyachieved the best version of themselves financially and as a result, reallyjust become the best version of themselves because that wallet, thepain that someone feels in in the wallet, whether that's a digital walletor a physical wall, it really impacts their physical well being as well astheir mental well being and what you said, I think it's important. And I'dlike to take a step back because you've been there. You've seen the other sideof the table. How did you get to this point in just your own personal journeyof growth? Can we go back and and just lead up to this moment in time? Yeah, Iknow. Absolutely. James, Robert, I'd love to do that. So I was a communitybank CFO for 10 years, and, um, our bank sold. That was a huge event in mylife. Personally as well as professionally was not something thatthat that I thought would ever happen. Right? And it did. So Voila. Welcome toa new chapter in your life. Um and, um, I decided to start a consultingbusiness and focus on the financial institution industry. And I wasfortunate to pick up some quick clients started hiring back my bankingexecutives who had worked with me at my my prior bank, and and our desire wasto create this boutique consulting firm of bankers who could go in, help banksmove projects forward and get out of the way so they could keep runningtheir bank. I thought as a banker, that would have been a great group of peoplewho have had, like, access to, and so that's really what we were trying tocreate in in our consulting company. Therapist was born out of thatexperience. It didn't. We worked with about 30 different financialinstitutions over the course of about four years. Again, we were a smallboutique firm. 60 plus percent of our clients hired us for 2nd, 3rd, 4thengagement. So we really are. Desire was to become a trusted businessadvisor, and that's what we did. We worked in a variety of spaces strategicplanning, M and A. We did finance and accounting, and we did processimprovements, and it didn't matter which one of those engagements we wereworking on. It didn't matter how big the bank was. It didn't matter howsophisticated it didn't matter. What core system they were on didn't matterhow many ancillary systems they had. Everybody was struggling with data. Itwas paramount. And when I realized that that was in every community bankproblem, not just a small community bank problem, we decided we wanted togo and solve it. And so that is truly how clear this was born. And we usedour customer feedback as we were building our proof of concept from ourconsulting clients to guide that development of that proof of concept tomake sure that we were on the right track. We're not just we didn't justdevelop what Kim Snyder thought the banking industry needed, right? We wentto our banking clients and said, What do you want us to solve for? I thinkthat right there to the dear listener listening there's so many lessons tounpack because it wasn't what you Kim Snyder seeing as the opportunity it wasthe V o. C. Or the voice of the customer. Those experiences thosepatterns guiding your decision making, and I almost can parallel that backinto the opportunities for a financial brand, letting the voice of thecustomer the data. Those experiences guide that financial brand to the nextsteps forward on their own journey of of digital growth. For that matter,when you look at those opportunities of listening and using data and andpattern recognition, the way that I...
...look at data is that it's the oil. It'sthe oil that makes what I call the digital growth engine run smoothly, andit can really provide some perspective. Are we gaining altitude? Are we losingaltitude? You know? Course correct, if you will. What are some of theopportunities for a community institution and really just anyfinancial brand, for that matter when it comes to identifying patterns, kindof like you have done just from your own personal experience of listening?Well, well, I think again the patterns are there in the data. The strugglethat community financial institutions have our visualizing the data in a waythat they can understand it easily. Banks are used to getting theirinformation and linear reports. Here's a report of your new depositors. Here'sa report of your new loans. Here's a report of the loans that paid off. Hereis a report of the deposit customers who left Here's A There's nothing thatties it together without a lot of manual intervention, And so it's veryhard to glean any kind of insights right when you're looking at data in alinear fashion, very difficult. If you have a platform like clear of us, thatenables you to aggregate all of the high value data points, pull ittogether and then visualize it in a way that makes sense so you can understandyour customer trends. You can understand the behaviors. You canunderstand what's happening at your bank all of a sudden. Now you're ableto glean insights that you could not green before from just these specificlinear pieces of information. There disparate pieces of information untilyou pull them together and make a picture out of them if you will, andthat's what we're trying to do. Well, I like that analogy because coming backto the digital growth engine model, you know there are ones and zeros, andthat's kind of the root of of data. And then you can have some of the thegauges, the analytics that begin to visualize. But when you really get tothat clear picture painting that clear picture that provides a clarity thatwe've never really had before. And when you consider about this idea of datavisualization through analytics and really analytics to gain that clearlyto gain the insight from your perspective, what is the high cost?Because I think if we talk about the costs from a banking perspective. Whatis the high cost of bad customer data for a financial brand? What? It mighthold them back right here. Well, unfortunately, banks have not thoughtabout data as an enterprise wide asset before. Now, in my opinion, right,typically, data lives with the I T department. Okay, It's not viewed froma business objective perspective, and that needs to change in the industry.So the high cost of bad customer data, right? So oftentimes you'll go into anorganization and you'll have the c i o. Saying we need a day to clean upproject. We need to go clean up our data. We need to do a data scrub, right?Who wants to spend time doing that? What's very interesting when we bring aclient upon clear of us, it's like an aha moment. It's like, Oh, my gosh, NowI see it. Now I understand. Now I get it. Now I know why we need to go spendtime cleaning up that piece of data. So until you do that right, going back toyour question about the high the high cost of that customer data, you cantake advantage of predictive analytics. You can take advantage of artificialintelligence. You can take advantage of marketing campaigns where if you can'tserve up the right data to campaign to the right, you know customers profiles,right? How are you going to do that if you have bad customer data? So it's notjust a financial cost of the effort going to clean it up right? It's trulya cost on the financial value of your organization and your ability to growyour franchise Well, there's so much talk at the macro level about databeing the oil of the new economy. And I'm curious to learn from yourperspective, because I see this, too.
Why has data historically been siloedfrom the lens of I T. Information technology? You know, because I seethere's opportunity from a marketing perspective, and there's an opportunityfrom the cells in a lending perspective. But can we just unwind some of this ofy I t. For lack of a better word traditionally holding the keys to thekingdom? And how might we allow I t to let go of some of that power andcontrol and and and reduce some of the traditional silos that might be holdingback progress here. Yeah, I think it goes back to a team, manages the coresystems of a bank right there. They're typically the owners of the core system,and the report writing right functionality lives within the core forfor a lot of the key data points, right? And so oftentimes a bank will Will willhave a core system. They will have a report writing license, but thosereport writing licenses might be expensive. They're cumbersome. It's notan easy thing to do, right, So So it's. It's a certain group of people insideof your organization that has the skill set right to write reports and deliverinformation. And so I think it's a system problem. To be honest with you,it's the way data is delivered to the banks today. It's their data, but theyhave a difficulty accessing it. That's that's the problem we're trying tosolve. That's the problem. We are solving it clear of us, right? And youmentioned marketing James Robert, and sometimes you'll go in and data will beowned entirely by the marketing department. That's not the right answer,either. It truly needs to be an enterprise wide asset art from the topdown. The strategic plan needs to be talking about the importance of dataand Data Analytics. It needs to have board Byeon right, and it needs to bebaked into the DNA of the bank. I mean, that doesn't happen overnight. That's aculture change, for sure. But it's critical in this new post covidindustry. The world that we're living in, it's absolutely critical. It'sgoing to be paramount for them to be able to continue to compete. In myopinion, I'm going to poke on that point of cost a little bit more becauseI can see and I agree with you. Data is not just a marketing or it is thatcultural perspective. Top to bottom, bottom to top, but from a cost. I canthink of a couple of examples recently of some financial brands that I've beenadvising to wear marketing. Marketing has to go to I t. To do a core report,pull that data set, load that up into marketing automation, and there mightbe 5 to 10 hours worth of time just to get that insight to then take action on.It could even be more than that, depending upon the complexities of this.And then when you look at operational izing and system izing that, well, thenthey're doing that. Is it Is it once a month, is it is it bi weekly? And sothen you have all of this costs in time that we don't really think about itjust well, these are the things that we have to do to get to hear. But fromwhat I'm understanding from you and what I see as well, there's a betterway forward. Yes, yes, absolutely. I call it Let's free up the gray spaceguys, your bankers. Okay, So stop spending your time writing informationand creating the information. Let's leverage technology to deliver theinformation in a way that you can quickly and easily interpret that. Justan act. Right? Right. Data, right, Hands, right. Time right decisions.That's what we're trying. That's what we're all about. It clear of us. And sowe're cutting that that one process that you described when we were doingprocess improvement engagements. I can't tell you the number of banks thatwe would go in. They could have five people in five different reapdepartments, writing five different reports with the same pieces ofinformation on it on a daily weekly or...
...monthly basis. But the executive thatthey were writing the report for wanted it a little bit different, right? Andso just think about the manpower that you have in the labor that is beingused to do that. And as I said before, they're typically high paid,intelligent people because you have to be pretty smart to be able to writereports out of the database. It's not something you can just pick up somebodyoff the street to say, Hey, go become my report writer It doesn't work thatway so that is 100% the foundational layer that Clara this is solving. Youjust hit on it. But and that's how much time are we gaining like, How much timeare we buying back? And it's from the time of what are the other things thatwe can do to really create exponential value, and that's where technology is amultiplier. That's something that we've really never seen before, and I thinkone of the ways that I have found to be very helpful to drive some of thisawareness, the perspective and really the buy in is to not start with thewhat This is what we're gonna do. Or this is how we're going to do that.Because sometimes it does create a little bit of resistance. But, you know,to to lean on Simon cynics perspective of starting with wire what we talkabout really defining a purpose. And that purpose I see is found here. Andit comes from a study from the center where they found that more than 95% offinancial brand customers do not feel that their institution knows them andtheir financial needs well. And I see that as a really sobering thought,considering we teach here at the Digital Growth Institute theperspective of of human behavior and a personal relationships playing out in adigital world like I need to know you before I like you. I need to like youbefore I trust you, and I need to trust you before I can tell the world howgreat you are. But the study from a censure really digs into a massiveproblem, with 97% of consumers feeling the financial brand does not know them,even though we have all of this information to the point where westarted this conversation. Number one, Why is this the case? And then numbertwo, What are maybe some quick actions that financial brands could commit totake? And that's the key. I think it's like, Why is this the case? But whatare those quick actions that we can take? Tell me so the reason it's thecases, because a community financial institution today could have customerinformation that lives on 10 15 different systems. Okay, And while theyall say they like to talk to each other at the end of the day, they don't evenif they live under the same umbrella, they don't because because the way thebig cores have have evolved right as they bought up pieces of othercompanies and and they not, they haven't necessarily integrated themtogether. And so and if you think about the fintech space and and all thechanges what you're doing right, all the innovation around the mobile, right,the online banking There's all these new players in the space today, andbanks are going out and embracing those new players to be able to provide abetter digital experience for their customers and that digital customerjourney that is so important. But on the back end of that, if I've got 15different systems and I have a customer customer information that lives on all15 systems, how the heck do I know my customer? How am I going to do thatright? And so again, that's what we're trying to solve, it clarifies, is bypulling in all that information from all those those disparate systemsclarifies is going to sit in the middle of the banking ecosystem, right? And soyou go to one place for your information to act, to make decisionstactically as well as strategically, because you can now see your customerholistically there. Where, as you can see, the banks don't have insight intothat today. It's not easy insight without going into 15 different places.It's just the way it is. It's crazy. It's just the way it is. Technology hastransformed our world, and digital has...
...changed the way consumers shop for andbuy financial services forever. Now, consumers make purchase decisions longbefore they walk into a branch. If they walk into a branch at all. But yourfinancial brand still wants to grow loans and deposits. We get it. Digitalgrowth can feel confusing, frustrating and overwhelming for any financialbrand marketing and sales leader. But it doesn't have to because James Robertwrote the book that guides you every step of the way along your digitalgrowth journey. Visit www dot digital growth dot com to get a preview of hisbest selling book, Banking on Digital Growth, or order a copy right Now foryou and your team from Amazon. Inside you'll find a strategic marketingmanifesto that was written to transform financial brands, and it is packed fullof practical and proven insights. You can start using today to confidentlygenerate 10 times more loans and deposits now back to the show. So putdata at the center of all of your thinking and all of your doing. And ifI was to humanize that, put people at the center of all of your thinking andall of your doing, because people give off so many signals from once againcoming back to their transactions. Even I I think, to the point of like theirdigital behavior, how they're engaging with a website. What are they lookingat It. And the opportunity here is to move from a historical reactive stancein the marketplace to taking a proactive stance into people's lives.And that's where you know, in this post covid world, 85% of Americans here inthe United States are filling the stress yet alone globally. And I can'thelp but think that in addition to the pandemic, we're also going to have anepidemic rooted in people's wallets. I've talked about this financial stress,taking a toll on people's health, their relationships, their overall sense ofwell being. And it's really it's creating a very negative effect at amacro level. And so if we can transform a person's wallet, their bank account,we can transform their lives for the better. I know you have a stronghealthcare perspective when it comes to data. This is something that I'vewritten extensively about. I just did a report privately for for an institution,and I think a lot of light bulbs are starting to go off when they're lookingat. Not just we're just not a financial brand anymore. We play a much biggerrole in much bigger purpose in people's lives. What valuable lessons canfinancial brands learn from the health care industry? When it comes tomaintaining customer data, It's real simple. Every time you go to the doctor,what do you do? You verify your name? You verify your address, you verifyyour phone number. You verify your email address. We don't do throughbanking. We don't we should, but we don't. And it's crazy. I was part in myconsulting business. I was part of, you know, we told you we did. We did somework in the M and a space, and we help banks do merger integrations and andand really the heavy lifting there. And, um, one of the deals that we were partof the bank didn't realize it, but the activation code for their debit cardspen, you know what it was. It was a phone number, and the bank had been inexistence for 60 70 years. So guess what phone number was there it was thecustomers landlines. So when they had to call in with this conversion andactivate, they were being asked for their phone number, and it didn't matchthe phone number that was in the system because it was the phone. The phonenumber that was in the system was still the phone number that they gave themback when they opened up the account, which was a landline that doesn't evenexist today. That's a problem to eight one to a 14790372 That was my landlinegrowing up as a kid. And I only remember that because it's like you getpro. That was ingrained, right? Yeah, but I could not tell you anyone else'slandline like That's a very interesting and your healthcare first name last.Name this in every single time you show...
...up every time you go to the doctor. Ifyou could go today and you could go back tomorrow and they're going to askyou that same question every single time, banks need to be better aboutthat. Let's just verify and validate the basic customer information that wehave about you in the system. Another major problem with our systems today,when you have a different online banking system than you have with yourcore, a lot of customers will go in and update that that information on theironline banking system. It doesn't automatically translate to the poor.Yes, that doesn't happen. You think it does, but it doesn't need a process tomake that happen. And I think, too, about this whole healthcare experience.What we've learned out of covid like telemedicine has reached new heightsand new adoption. And people are becoming more comfortable, you know,connecting with and talking to a doctor kinda like we're doing right now. I cansee you and it's a It's a great experience because so muchcommunication is body language and the unspoken part of of of what we'resaying without saying it, almost like the transactional side that I was. Iwas referencing before. But then I think about like, you know, if I have aquestion with my doctor now, I can literally log into a portal, ask aquestion to the nurse or to the P. A. I know that I'm going to get a responsein 24 hours, and all of that is getting logged into my master file. And then Ithink, with health care, we're starting to see organizations share data, andthen you got the whole hippo thing coming into play. But if I give theconsent for them to share data because now have multiple healthcare providerswho are getting all of this data on me, they can provide much better treatmentor recommendations framed around my unique situation. And if we can do thisin healthcare across organizations, we can definitely do this within anorganization coming back to your 15 systems. Even right? Yeah, absolutely.Hands down, no question. And I think, too. It's like how many relationships?And I think I shall saw Ron Shevlin writing an article about this, thesecret relationships that our customers have with other financial brands thatwe just simply don't have any clarity on because Number one, we've probablywe've never asked, right. But you can see some of those relationships in thedata if they're if they're paying your you know, your mortgage from a bankaccount, that's not your bank, right? You and they're doing thatelectronically. You can see that in the data. If you've got the right. Ifyou've got the right technology, so and so and so then, yeah, you absolutelyshould be able to capitalize on some of those opportunities. And that's where Iwas going with. We've never ask. We don't necessarily even have to askanymore. We can ask or find that, knowing that awareness by just lookinghere and then come back and provide them. Hey, maybe there's a better pathfor Maybe we should have a conversation about this or here is just anotheroffer and we make that seamless. From an experience standpoint, I have afollow up to this. You know when when you think about because there's a lotof buzz. There's a lot of chatter about data. What is a common belief that thisindustry has about data that maybe you just passionately disagree with? Maybethere's a misconception that you might have a different point of view on whatwould that be? I'm gonna go back to what I said earlier. There's still toomany people in this industry that think that data should live in the I T worldand the I T department, and I nationally disagree with that with mywhole body and they do, and some of it is because they don't understand it.It's just the business objectives, you know, bringing the business to theforefront too often. Let's take an example of that when the I T departmentis in control and I might I'm not like I love I think so. I don't write. Ilove. I love them, right? They're focused on security. That's what theyneed to be focused on. That's what you pay them to do, right? They're focusedon keeping the systems up and running...
...those types of things. Oftentimes theyhave insight and help govern the coding right of how you put loans onto thebooks or deposits onto the books or what have you. You need to be thinkingabout those things from a business objective standpoint you get to do so.How am I going to use that information? Let's take P P P. As an example. When P.P. P. Came around last year, right? We got to get them on the system. We gotto get them on the system. I'm not going to be around a little while.Let's put them on Excel. We'll just put them on. Excel will do that and do amanual journal entry, right? And then three months later they're like, Ohgosh, I don't know how many new customers I got out of P P. P. Well,you didn't book it on the system, so you don't have that insight. And it'sbecause you didn't think about the business objectives before you decidedhow you're going to process. And that's a change in culture. James Robert. Ithas to. The business objective has to be driving right the strategy and thedecisions around data and the data governance and your practices and yourpolicies and so forth. Start with the end in mind and then work backwards.Great example. In the PP Speyside with the Excel. I see that all the timebetween, like a marketing and a sells team relationship. We've got an f ithat we're advising and they're setting up a digital branch right now. Andthey're looking to empower this digital branch to start doing outbound callsbased in outbound contacts based upon the information that they're gettingfrom the marketing team. And I'm like, So where is all of this data, thiscommunication and and these touchpoints gonna live? And they said in Excel. Andso we started to go down the rabbit hole of all of the blind spots thatthis would create. We're not opening this up to where someone could jump in.It's like the health care perspective coming back. All of that information iscollected in a central area to where if the nurse goes away, well, the nextnurse can come in. Read the history, the last visit and here's okay, great.And you were getting caught up to speed. And so I think that that p P. P.Example the example that I'm talking here, that's just a microcosm of where,not having all of this centralized and so the opportunity was really CRM forthem. And there's a lot of, like, bristling. I see when you mentioned thewords CRM internally. There's some history there, and and it's not a goodhistory to where I'm saying, Okay, fine. Customer relationship management wordshave power. Maybe we we we call this a customer relationship multiplier toreframe the context of the value creation that can come from CRM. Buteven to your point about I t. I'm gonna come back to that because historicallyI t has been about protecting the kingdom, and what you're referencing isreally future focus, its growth related. And so there's just a different evenmaybe a mindset that goes into this looking at even like CRM. How was thatconversation coming up in Just the data work that you're doing withinstitutions? Yeah, it comes up a lot, and you're right. CRM has a bristlingeffect. I love that because it does. And I think that goes more to,unfortunately, accountability, culture or lack thereof. Um, inside of somecommunity f i s just That's something that not everybody is always embracingright now. If you're in growth mode, then you definitely are embracing itand so forth. But I think, unfortunately, in the past, CRM systemsvery seldom, unfortunately, do I see a bank implement those? Well, to behonest with you, So So I think that that's why that friction exists aroundaround them. I want to go back for a second, if I can. Because when you weregiven your example that the light bulb kind of went off in my head about aboutcustomer relationships. So community banking is all about relationshipbanking, okay? And I'm gonna I'm not...
...gonna go back to my silos on this oneagain. Sometimes you could have if you're truly serving your customer Well,and you know your customer, right? You might have four different salespeopleworking with that customer. You could have a mortgage person, right? Workingwith them, You could have a If they have a business, then they've got abusiness banker. Maybe that they do business with. They could have a retailprivate banker that they also do business with on the wealth side,Perhaps. Well, if your data is in silos and the mortgage person doesn't knowwhat the wealth persons doing and when they're looking at that customer, theycan't see that total relationship. You've got a real problem. That's whythe consumer thinks you don't know who I am because you should know I'mdealing with one financial institution. They should know. Even if I'm dealingwith multiple people inside of that bank, they should know me. And theyshould understand that. Yeah, I did just do a mortgage, you know, threemonths ago and refinanced my house. Don't. The wealth person shouldn't beasking me that question, But oftentimes we fumble there and we fumbled therebecause of that disparate data problem that we have in the industry and thesilos. And if all of that was logged in essential system, coming back to theperspective of CRM that would really solve some of those pain points. Andthere, I think, health care. Once again, I think I've got my g p. I've got mycardiologist. I've got my neurologist and I've got all of these specialistswho really provide that unique expertise. But if we kept all of thatinformation blood work, et cetera, you know, I would be donating blood everytime I went to go see each one of these doctors. Um, that's that's a that's areally great practical example of, and I think it it ties deeper into aperspective that I've been thinking a lot about banking with expertise,because if every product that we bring to bear in the marketplaces commoditizeare unique, identify IRS or either the experience, whether that be digital inperson, remote, what have you and I think even more important than that?It's the expertise that we bring to bear through those experiences. But weneed to empower our experts with the knowledge of the customer so that theycan provide even more value because otherwise there's a lot of blind spotsinternally and when you think about those blind spots being a bankeryourself, what is just one practical piece of advice a recommendation thatyou could can make to others to just take this first step to maybe capturesome low hanging fruit with what we'll just call a data strategy for the timebeing? Yeah, I would get the executive team in the in the room and and have aconversation about data. Make sure the business leaders are there. And whatdata points do you need to serve your customers better that you don't haveaccess to? Simple question. They'll tell you. I guarantee you, they'll tellyou. Or maybe you don't phrase it. And what data points? What informationwould you like to have about your customer instead of having to go to I tand ask for report and wait for two weeks before it comes to you? Becauseit goes through lots of changes before it gets to you right back and forth?What information would it would help you, right? And let's go do a whiteboard. Okay, Do we have that information? And if we have it, how dowe get it accessible to you? that to me is the starting point. How could wehelp you be a customer? Yeah. How could we help you be even smarter, to do evenmore, to create even more value for the customer that you're serving once again?And that's the business objective, that starting with the end in mind and thenworking backwards. And I think that's why maybe CRM falls short so many timesis they're buying the tool or the...
...technology without really thinkingthrough of what's the objective that we're working towards here? And I evensee, like with CRM, pilot programs go a long way, starting small instead oflike, trying to like, you know, shove this down the throat of culture andcreate new cultural behaviors and habits. But we start small. We get somemicro winds that increases the confidence of the team at large, andit's like, Well, I want what they have. Can we do? Can we do even more of that?And it's a, uh, self fulfilling cycle to be even smarter, to do even more tocreate even more value, right? Yeah. No, absolutely. I think starting with thatbusiness objective in mind at the end of the day. It's interesting we, youknow, through this past year, as we've launched Clara bits and had lots ofconversations with lots of different institutions, we often get asked, Areyou going to turn into a CRM? And the answer to that is no, there's plenty ofthose out there will integrate with the CRM. But you know, we're going to focuson what we do best, right? So that but But secondly, a lot of the largerinstitutions sometimes will say, Well, I'm just going to go higher or I'vehired 10 data scientists to come join my team to build out this. This thisplatform and the problem is, is that data scientists don't understandbanking, and it's really hard to find someone who understands both sides ofthe equation. And so it kind of goes back again. If if you don't have thebusiness driving the technology, anybody can go buy a pretty piece oftechnology, tons of them on the market today, you are exactly right.Oftentimes, where they fail is, they think technology is going to solve theproblem. It doesn't it doesn't solve the problem. You have to have astrategy around it right and the implementation, whether it's a customerrelationship management system, whether it's a Data analytics tool, whetherit's a you know, a marketing platform, whatever it might be, you have to havea strategy just going to buy the piece of technology. It just doesn't solvethe problem on its own. Yeah, it's like you. You buy the Rolls Royce and abeautiful, beautiful car, but then you don't have any money left over for gas.Or you don't have a driver to drive you in the car because you're gonna get aRolls Royce. Probably want a driver to drive. Exactly. Exactly. And so that'sThat's a That's a great point you mentioned you're having all theseconversations this year, and you're getting a lot of questions. Besideswhat you just referenced what might be the top question that you're gettingover and over that pattern recognition Once again, what's the top questionthat you're continuously getting in these conversations about data? Sowhile it may not be a question that the comment that we're that we're hearingmost frequently now that that banks are starting to pick up the phone andreengaged right last year wasn't a great year necessarily to launch a new,not launch, a new product. With Covid coming on board, however, it's I needdata analysts today more than I needed it yesterday. They're recognizing it,right because they understand the digital transformation journey thateverybody has been saying is coming. Well, it's here. They get it, theyunderstand it. They want to understand for future branching strategies. Howmuch of this channel change sticks, right? We had this extensive massivechange and channel delivery right where folks that we said would never, everuse mobile to do their banking or online banking. All of a sudden, theydid right because they didn't have a choice. How much of it sticks? Becausethat's going to impact the brand, the bank or it should. They should haveinsight into that right as they're designing their growth strategy, andthey're branching strategy going forward. And so bankers areunderstanding that CEO CFO is the executive team that they're talkingabout it. They're thinking about it, Um, all not just the big boys, thecommunity financial institutions is really you know, where we're primarilyfocused today. They're having those conversations and they want tounderstand how How do I make this happen? I need to. I understand thatThat's great news, not just for you, but I think, really, for the industryat large, because we can move forward,...
...we can make progress together. Andwe're doing this to empower the lives and make the lives of the people in thecommunities that we serve even that much better as well. Kim This has beensuch a great conversation. If someone's listening, they want to connect withyou. They want to say hello. They want to continue the conversation. What isthe best way for them to do that? They can email me at Kim Snyder at clear ofthis dot com. You can go to our website and my phone number, I think, is outthere as well. So I would love to have a conversation and continue theconversation because I love talking about data. Well, it has been fun. Ithas been a great conversation. Kim, Thank you so much for joining me onanother episode of banking on digital growth. Thanks for having me as always.And until next time be well, do good and wash your hands. Thank you forlistening to another episode of banking on Digital Growth with James Robert Ley.Like what you hear? Tell a friend about the podcast and leave us a review onapple podcasts, Google podcasts or Spotify and subscribe while you'rethere. To get even more practical improvement insights, visit www dotdigital growth dot com to grab a preview of James Roberts. Best sellingbook Banking on Digital Growth or order a copy right now for you and your teamfrom Amazon. Inside, you'll find a strategic marketing and sales blueprintframed around 12 key areas of focus that empower you to confidentlygenerate 10 times more loans and deposits until next time, be well anddo good.
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