ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Episode · 1 year ago
SHARE THIS EPISODE
Episode · 1 year ago
78) #ExponentialInsights Data Demystified: What Your Financial Brand Needs to Know ft. Kim Snyder
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
...well, unfortunately, banks have not thought 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 viewed from a business objective perspective, and that needs to change in the industry. Mm, mhm. Mm, You're listening to Banking on Digital Growth with James Robert Lay, a podcast that empowers financial brand marketing, sales and leadership teams to maximize their digital growth potential by generating 10 times more loans and deposits. Today's episode is part of the Exponential Insight series, where James Robert interviews the industry's top marketing sales and fintech leaders, sharing practical wisdom to exponentially elevate you and your team. Let's get into the show Greetings and Hello, I am James Robert Ley and welcome to the 78th episode of the Banking on Digital Growth podcast. Today's episode is part of the Exponential Insight series, and I'm excited to welcome Kim Snyder to the show. Kim is the founder and CEO at Clovis, and they are working to deliver a transformational Data Analytics solution to community financial brands created by bankers for bankers Clara. This enables employees at all levels of the organization to confidently make data driven decisions. Welcome to the show, Kim. Thanks, James. Robert. Happy to be here as we get started with our discussion 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 develop the product right? And so our product evolution that some of the key things that we have on our plate right now, or transactional information making that easily accessible to our bankers. And so that's a huge priority for us and something that we're thrilled about and super excited about. I like that because you know it's particular when you think about digital growth. It's an ongoing journey, and it's a lot of financial brands. They I think they hope, as we all do, and wish that there's an end point. But it's almost like the further that you get. You're always seeing more opportunities to either create capture or capitalize on or new roadblocks that we need to eliminate in and work through together. So I like this ongoing evolution as you're continuing to develop the product, and when you're looking at developing the product one of the things that you believe, as do I, is that the challenge when it comes to demystifying data is that community financial brands, they don't lack data. There's an abundance of data. But why do you believe this? Why do you believe that the challenge is not a lack of data? 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 systems and its enormous always always tell our clients that you have the most intimate details and information about your customers' than anyone else does. You know, forget Google. Forget Facebook. You know all of these big players in the in the tech space. Your financial institution knows you should know you better than any of those other folks because you're communicating with that financial institution every day through the way you transact doesn't matter, and it should not matter how you transact with them, right? It should matter. It does right now, because banks are having a hard time getting access to that data and understanding their customer stories. That's where the problem really lies. It's not the abundance of data. There's plenty of that. It's cutting through the noise and giving the banks the ability to focus 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 great perspective because we say so much, not through the words that we speak, but through the actions of particular when it comes to money, through the actions of which we just transact from swiping that card auto pay and there's there really is there's a There's a narrative and a story to be told for every single individual, and many people aren't even aware of these behaviors that they have in. Some are probably more negative than others and are putting them in a not so good situation. And I see an opportunity to maybe bring some of this to light to empower and illuminate a path forward to help someone really achieved the best version of themselves financially and as a result, really just become the best version of themselves because that wallet, the pain that someone feels in in the wallet, whether that's a digital wallet or a physical wall, it really impacts their physical well being as well as their mental well being and what you said, I think it's important. And I'd like to take a step back because you've been there. You've seen the other side of the table. How did you get to this point in just your own personal journey of growth? Can we go back and and just lead up to this moment in time? Yeah, I know. Absolutely. James, Robert, I'd love to do that. So I was a community bank CFO for 10 years, and, um, our bank sold. That was a huge event in my life. Personally as well as professionally was not something that that that I thought would ever happen. Right? And it did. So Voila. Welcome to a new chapter in your life. Um and, um, I decided to start a consulting business and focus on the financial institution industry. And I was fortunate to pick up some quick clients started hiring back my banking executives who had worked with me at my my prior bank, and and our desire was to create this boutique consulting firm of bankers who could go in, help banks move projects forward and get out of the way so they could keep running their bank. I thought as a banker, that would have been a great group of people who have had, like, access to, and so that's really what we were trying to create in in our consulting company. Therapist was born out of that experience. It didn't. We worked with about 30 different financial institutions over the course of about four years. Again, we were a small boutique firm. 60 plus percent of our clients hired us for 2nd, 3rd, 4th engagement. So we really are. Desire was to become a trusted business advisor, and that's what we did. We worked in a variety of spaces strategic planning, M and A. We did finance and accounting, and we did process improvements, and it didn't matter which one of those engagements we were working on. It didn't matter how big the bank was. It didn't matter how sophisticated it didn't matter. What core system they were on didn't matter how many ancillary systems they had. Everybody was struggling with data. It was paramount. And when I realized that that was in every community bank problem, not just a small community bank problem, we decided we wanted to go and solve it. And so that is truly how clear this was born. And we used our customer feedback as we were building our proof of concept from our consulting clients to guide that development of that proof of concept to make sure that we were on the right track. We're not just we didn't just develop what Kim Snyder thought the banking industry needed, right? We went to our banking clients and said, What do you want us to solve for? I think that right there to the dear listener listening there's so many lessons to unpack because it wasn't what you Kim Snyder seeing as the opportunity it was the V o. C. Or the voice of the customer. Those experiences those patterns guiding your decision making, and I almost can parallel that back into the opportunities for a financial brand, letting the voice of the customer the data. Those experiences guide that financial brand to the next steps forward on their own journey of of digital growth. For that matter, when you look at those opportunities of listening and using data and and pattern recognition, the way that I...
...look at data is that it's the oil. It's the oil that makes what I call the digital growth engine run smoothly, and it can really provide some perspective. Are we gaining altitude? Are we losing altitude? You know? Course correct, if you will. What are some of the opportunities for a community institution and really just any financial brand, for that matter when it comes to identifying patterns, kind of 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 struggle that community financial institutions have our visualizing the data in a way that they can understand it easily. Banks are used to getting their information and linear reports. Here's a report of your new depositors. Here's a report of your new loans. Here's a report of the loans that paid off. Here is a report of the deposit customers who left Here's A There's nothing that ties it together without a lot of manual intervention, And so it's very hard to glean any kind of insights right when you're looking at data in a linear fashion, very difficult. If you have a platform like clear of us, that enables you to aggregate all of the high value data points, pull it together and then visualize it in a way that makes sense so you can understand your customer trends. You can understand the behaviors. You can understand what's happening at your bank all of a sudden. Now you're able to glean insights that you could not green before from just these specific linear pieces of information. There disparate pieces of information until you pull them together and make a picture out of them if you will, and that's what we're trying to do. Well, I like that analogy because coming back to the digital growth engine model, you know there are ones and zeros, and that's kind of the root of of data. And then you can have some of the the gauges, the analytics that begin to visualize. But when you really get to that clear picture painting that clear picture that provides a clarity that we've never really had before. And when you consider about this idea of data visualization through analytics and really analytics to gain that clearly to gain the insight from your perspective, what is the high cost? Because I think if we talk about the costs from a banking perspective. What is the high cost of bad customer data for a financial brand? What? It might hold them back right here. Well, unfortunately, banks have not thought 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 viewed from a 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 an organization and you'll have the c i o. Saying we need a day to clean up project. 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 a client upon clear of us, it's like an aha moment. It's like, Oh, my gosh, Now I see it. Now I understand. Now I get it. Now I know why we need to go spend time cleaning up that piece of data. So until you do that right, going back to your question about the high the high cost of that customer data, you can take advantage of predictive analytics. You can take advantage of artificial intelligence. You can take advantage of marketing campaigns where if you can't serve 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 not just a financial cost of the effort going to clean it up right? It's truly a cost on the financial value of your organization and your ability to grow your franchise Well, there's so much talk at the macro level about data being the oil of the new economy. And I'm curious to learn from your perspective, because I see this, too.
Why has data historically been siloed from the lens of I T. Information technology? You know, because I see there's opportunity from a marketing perspective, and there's an opportunity from the cells in a lending perspective. But can we just unwind some of this of y I t. For lack of a better word traditionally holding the keys to the kingdom? And how might we allow I t to let go of some of that power and control and and and reduce some of the traditional silos that might be holding back progress here. Yeah, I think it goes back to a team, manages the core systems of a bank right there. They're typically the owners of the core system, and the report writing right functionality lives within the core for for a lot of the key data points, right? And so oftentimes a bank will Will will have a core system. They will have a report writing license, but those report writing licenses might be expensive. They're cumbersome. It's not an easy thing to do, right, So So it's. It's a certain group of people inside of your organization that has the skill set right to write reports and deliver information. 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 they have a difficulty accessing it. That's that's the problem we're trying to solve. That's the problem. We are solving it clear of us, right? And you mentioned marketing James Robert, and sometimes you'll go in and data will be owned entirely by the marketing department. That's not the right answer, either. It truly needs to be an enterprise wide asset art from the top down. The strategic plan needs to be talking about the importance of data and Data Analytics. It needs to have board Byeon right, and it needs to be baked into the DNA of the bank. I mean, that doesn't happen overnight. That's a culture change, for sure. But it's critical in this new post covid industry. The world that we're living in, it's absolutely critical. It's going to be paramount for them to be able to continue to compete. In my opinion, I'm going to poke on that point of cost a little bit more because I can see and I agree with you. Data is not just a marketing or it is that cultural perspective. Top to bottom, bottom to top, but from a cost. I can think of a couple of examples recently of some financial brands that I've been advising 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 might be 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, then they're doing that. Is it Is it once a month, is it is it bi weekly? And so then you have all of this costs in time that we don't really think about it just well, these are the things that we have to do to get to hear. But from what I'm understanding from you and what I see as well, there's a better way forward. Yes, yes, absolutely. I call it Let's free up the gray space guys, your bankers. Okay, So stop spending your time writing information and creating the information. Let's leverage technology to deliver the information in a way that you can quickly and easily interpret that. Just an 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 so we're cutting that that one process that you described when we were doing process improvement engagements. I can't tell you the number of banks that we would go in. They could have five people in five different reap departments, writing five different reports with the same pieces of information on it on a daily weekly or...
...monthly basis. But the executive that they were writing the report for wanted it a little bit different, right? And so just think about the manpower that you have in the labor that is being used 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 write reports out of the database. It's not something you can just pick up somebody off the street to say, Hey, go become my report writer It doesn't work that way so that is 100% the foundational layer that Clara this is solving. You just hit on it. But and that's how much time are we gaining like, How much time are we buying back? And it's from the time of what are the other things that we can do to really create exponential value, and that's where technology is a multiplier. That's something that we've really never seen before, and I think one of the ways that I have found to be very helpful to drive some of this awareness, the perspective and really the buy in is to not start with the what 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 talk about really defining a purpose. And that purpose I see is found here. And it comes from a study from the center where they found that more than 95% of financial brand customers do not feel that their institution knows them and their financial needs well. And I see that as a really sobering thought, considering we teach here at the Digital Growth Institute the perspective of of human behavior and a personal relationships playing out in a digital world like I need to know you before I like you. I need to like you before I trust you, and I need to trust you before I can tell the world how great you are. But the study from a censure really digs into a massive problem, with 97% of consumers feeling the financial brand does not know them, even though we have all of this information to the point where we started this conversation. Number one, Why is this the case? And then number two, What are maybe some quick actions that financial brands could commit to take? And that's the key. I think it's like, Why is this the case? But what are those quick actions that we can take? Tell me so the reason it's the cases, because a community financial institution today could have customer information that lives on 10 15 different systems. Okay, And while they all say they like to talk to each other at the end of the day, they don't even if they live under the same umbrella, they don't because because the way the big cores have have evolved right as they bought up pieces of other companies and and they not, they haven't necessarily integrated them together. And so and if you think about the fintech space and and all the changes 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, and banks are going out and embracing those new players to be able to provide a better digital experience for their customers and that digital customer journey that is so important. But on the back end of that, if I've got 15 different systems and I have a customer customer information that lives on all 15 systems, how the heck do I know my customer? How am I going to do that right? And so again, that's what we're trying to solve, it clarifies, is by pulling in all that information from all those those disparate systems clarifies is going to sit in the middle of the banking ecosystem, right? And so you go to one place for your information to act, to make decisions tactically as well as strategically, because you can now see your customer holistically there. Where, as you can see, the banks don't have insight into that 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 has transformed our world, and digital has...
...changed the way consumers shop for and buy financial services forever. Now, consumers make purchase decisions long before they walk into a branch. If they walk into a branch at all. But your financial brand still wants to grow loans and deposits. We get it. Digital growth can feel confusing, frustrating and overwhelming for any financial brand marketing and sales leader. But it doesn't have to because James Robert wrote the book that guides you every step of the way along your digital growth journey. Visit www dot digital growth dot com to get a preview of his best selling book, Banking on Digital Growth, or order a copy right Now for you and your team from Amazon. Inside you'll find a strategic marketing manifesto that was written to transform financial brands, and it is packed full of practical and proven insights. You can start using today to confidently generate 10 times more loans and deposits now back to the show. So put data at the center of all of your thinking and all of your doing. And if I was to humanize that, put people at the center of all of your thinking and all of your doing, because people give off so many signals from once again coming back to their transactions. Even I I think, to the point of like their digital behavior, how they're engaging with a website. What are they looking at It. And the opportunity here is to move from a historical reactive stance in 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 in the United States are filling the stress yet alone globally. And I can't help but think that in addition to the pandemic, we're also going to have an epidemic rooted in people's wallets. I've talked about this financial stress, taking a toll on people's health, their relationships, their overall sense of well being. And it's really it's creating a very negative effect at a macro 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 strong healthcare perspective when it comes to data. This is something that I've written 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 looking at. Not just we're just not a financial brand anymore. We play a much bigger role in much bigger purpose in people's lives. What valuable lessons can financial brands learn from the health care industry? When it comes to maintaining 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 verify your phone number. You verify your email address. We don't do through banking. We don't we should, but we don't. And it's crazy. I was part in my consulting business. I was part of, you know, we told you we did. We did some work in the M and a space, and we help banks do merger integrations and and and really the heavy lifting there. And, um, one of the deals that we were part of the bank didn't realize it, but the activation code for their debit cards pen, you know what it was. It was a phone number, and the bank had been in existence for 60 70 years. So guess what phone number was there it was the customers landlines. So when they had to call in with this conversion and activate, they were being asked for their phone number, and it didn't match the phone number that was in the system because it was the phone. The phone number that was in the system was still the phone number that they gave them back when they opened up the account, which was a landline that doesn't even exist today. That's a problem to eight one to a 14790372 That was my landline growing up as a kid. And I only remember that because it's like you get pro. That was ingrained, right? Yeah, but I could not tell you anyone else's landline 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. If you could go today and you could go back tomorrow and they're going to ask you that same question every single time, banks need to be better about that. Let's just verify and validate the basic customer information that we have about you in the system. Another major problem with our systems today, when you have a different online banking system than you have with your core, a lot of customers will go in and update that that information on their online 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 to make that happen. And I think, too, about this whole healthcare experience. What we've learned out of covid like telemedicine has reached new heights and 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 can see you and it's a It's a great experience because so much communication is body language and the unspoken part of of of what we're saying without saying it, almost like the transactional side that I was. I was referencing before. But then I think about like, you know, if I have a question with my doctor now, I can literally log into a portal, ask a question to the nurse or to the P. A. I know that I'm going to get a response in 24 hours, and all of that is getting logged into my master file. And then I think, with health care, we're starting to see organizations share data, and then you got the whole hippo thing coming into play. But if I give the consent for them to share data because now have multiple healthcare providers who are getting all of this data on me, they can provide much better treatment or recommendations framed around my unique situation. And if we can do this in healthcare across organizations, we can definitely do this within an organization 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, the secret relationships that our customers have with other financial brands that we just simply don't have any clarity on because Number one, we've probably we've never asked, right. But you can see some of those relationships in the data if they're if they're paying your you know, your mortgage from a bank account, that's not your bank, right? You and they're doing that electronically. You can see that in the data. If you've got the right. If you've got the right technology, so and so and so then, yeah, you absolutely should be able to capitalize on some of those opportunities. And that's where I was going with. We've never ask. We don't necessarily even have to ask anymore. We can ask or find that, knowing that awareness by just looking here and then come back and provide them. Hey, maybe there's a better path for Maybe we should have a conversation about this or here is just another offer and we make that seamless. From an experience standpoint, I have a follow up to this. You know when when you think about because there's a lot of buzz. There's a lot of chatter about data. What is a common belief that this industry has about data that maybe you just passionately disagree with? Maybe there's a misconception that you might have a different point of view on what would that be? I'm gonna go back to what I said earlier. There's still too many people in this industry that think that data should live in the I T world and the I T department, and I nationally disagree with that with my whole 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 the forefront too often. Let's take an example of that when the I T department is in control and I might I'm not like I love I think so. I don't write. I love. I love them, right? They're focused on security. That's what they need to be focused on. That's what you pay them to do, right? They're focused on keeping the systems up and running...
...those types of things. Oftentimes they have insight and help govern the coding right of how you put loans onto the books or deposits onto the books or what have you. You need to be thinking about 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 got to 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 a manual journal entry, right? And then three months later they're like, Oh gosh, 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's because you didn't think about the business objectives before you decided how you're going to process. And that's a change in culture. James Robert. It has to. The business objective has to be driving right the strategy and the decisions around data and the data governance and your practices and your policies 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 time between, like a marketing and a sells team relationship. We've got an f i that we're advising and they're setting up a digital branch right now. And they're looking to empower this digital branch to start doing outbound calls based in outbound contacts based upon the information that they're getting from the marketing team. And I'm like, So where is all of this data, this communication and and these touchpoints gonna live? And they said in Excel. And so we started to go down the rabbit hole of all of the blind spots that this 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 is collected in a central area to where if the nurse goes away, well, the next nurse 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 for them. And there's a lot of, like, bristling. I see when you mentioned the words CRM internally. There's some history there, and and it's not a good history to where I'm saying, Okay, fine. Customer relationship management words have power. Maybe we we we call this a customer relationship multiplier to reframe the context of the value creation that can come from CRM. But even to your point about I t. I'm gonna come back to that because historically I t has been about protecting the kingdom, and what you're referencing is really future focus, its growth related. And so there's just a different even maybe a mindset that goes into this looking at even like CRM. How was that conversation coming up in Just the data work that you're doing with institutions? Yeah, it comes up a lot, and you're right. CRM has a bristling effect. I love that because it does. And I think that goes more to, unfortunately, accountability, culture or lack thereof. Um, inside of some community f i s just That's something that not everybody is always embracing right now. If you're in growth mode, then you definitely are embracing it and so forth. But I think, unfortunately, in the past, CRM systems very seldom, unfortunately, do I see a bank implement those? Well, to be honest with you, So So I think that that's why that friction exists around around them. I want to go back for a second, if I can. Because when you were given your example that the light bulb kind of went off in my head about about customer relationships. So community banking is all about relationship banking, okay? And I'm gonna I'm not...
...gonna go back to my silos on this one again. Sometimes you could have if you're truly serving your customer Well, and you know your customer, right? You might have four different salespeople working with that customer. You could have a mortgage person, right? Working with them, You could have a If they have a business, then they've got a business banker. Maybe that they do business with. They could have a retail private 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 know what the wealth persons doing and when they're looking at that customer, they can't see that total relationship. You've got a real problem. That's why the consumer thinks you don't know who I am because you should know I'm dealing with one financial institution. They should know. Even if I'm dealing with multiple people inside of that bank, they should know me. And they should understand that. Yeah, I did just do a mortgage, you know, three months ago and refinanced my house. Don't. The wealth person shouldn't be asking me that question, But oftentimes we fumble there and we fumbled there because of that disparate data problem that we have in the industry and the silos. And if all of that was logged in essential system, coming back to the perspective of CRM that would really solve some of those pain points. And there, I think, health care. Once again, I think I've got my g p. I've got my cardiologist. I've got my neurologist and I've got all of these specialists who really provide that unique expertise. But if we kept all of that information blood work, et cetera, you know, I would be donating blood every time I went to go see each one of these doctors. Um, that's that's a that's a really great practical example of, and I think it it ties deeper into a perspective that I've been thinking a lot about banking with expertise, because if every product that we bring to bear in the marketplaces commoditize are unique, identify IRS or either the experience, whether that be digital in person, 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 we need to empower our experts with the knowledge of the customer so that they can provide even more value because otherwise there's a lot of blind spots internally and when you think about those blind spots being a banker yourself, what is just one practical piece of advice a recommendation that you could can make to others to just take this first step to maybe capture some low hanging fruit with what we'll just call a data strategy for the time being? Yeah, I would get the executive team in the in the room and and have a conversation about data. Make sure the business leaders are there. And what data points do you need to serve your customers better that you don't have access to? Simple question. They'll tell you. I guarantee you, they'll tell you. Or maybe you don't phrase it. And what data points? What information would you like to have about your customer instead of having to go to I t and ask for report and wait for two weeks before it comes to you? Because it 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 white board. Okay, Do we have that information? And if we have it, how do we get it accessible to you? that to me is the starting point. How could we help you be a customer? Yeah. How could we help you be even smarter, to do even more, 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 then working backwards. And I think that's why maybe CRM falls short so many times is they're buying the tool or the...
...technology without really thinking through of what's the objective that we're working towards here? And I even see, like with CRM, pilot programs go a long way, starting small instead of like, trying to like, you know, shove this down the throat of culture and create new cultural behaviors and habits. But we start small. We get some micro winds that increases the confidence of the team at large, and it'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 to create even more value, right? Yeah. No, absolutely. I think starting with that business objective in mind at the end of the day. It's interesting we, you know, through this past year, as we've launched Clara bits and had lots of conversations with lots of different institutions, we often get asked, Are you going to turn into a CRM? And the answer to that is no, there's plenty of those out there will integrate with the CRM. But you know, we're going to focus on what we do best, right? So that but But secondly, a lot of the larger institutions sometimes will say, Well, I'm just going to go higher or I've hired 10 data scientists to come join my team to build out this. This this platform and the problem is, is that data scientists don't understand banking, and it's really hard to find someone who understands both sides of the equation. And so it kind of goes back again. If if you don't have the business driving the technology, anybody can go buy a pretty piece of technology, tons of them on the market today, you are exactly right. Oftentimes, where they fail is, they think technology is going to solve the problem. It doesn't it doesn't solve the problem. You have to have a strategy around it right and the implementation, whether it's a customer relationship management system, whether it's a Data analytics tool, whether it's a you know, a marketing platform, whatever it might be, you have to have a strategy just going to buy the piece of technology. It just doesn't solve the problem on its own. Yeah, it's like you. You buy the Rolls Royce and a beautiful, 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 a Rolls Royce. Probably want a driver to drive. Exactly. Exactly. And so that's That's a That's a great point you mentioned you're having all these conversations this year, and you're getting a lot of questions. Besides what you just referenced what might be the top question that you're getting over and over that pattern recognition Once again, what's the top question that you're continuously getting in these conversations about data? So while it may not be a question that the comment that we're that we're hearing most frequently now that that banks are starting to pick up the phone and reengaged 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 need data analysts today more than I needed it yesterday. They're recognizing it, right because they understand the digital transformation journey that everybody has been saying is coming. Well, it's here. They get it, they understand it. They want to understand for future branching strategies. How much of this channel change sticks, right? We had this extensive massive change and channel delivery right where folks that we said would never, ever use mobile to do their banking or online banking. All of a sudden, they did right because they didn't have a choice. How much of it sticks? Because that's going to impact the brand, the bank or it should. They should have insight into that right as they're designing their growth strategy, and they're branching strategy going forward. And so bankers are understanding that CEO CFO is the executive team that they're talking about it. They're thinking about it, Um, all not just the big boys, the community financial institutions is really you know, where we're primarily focused today. They're having those conversations and they want to understand how How do I make this happen? I need to. I understand that That's great news, not just for you, but I think, really, for the industry at large, because we can move forward,...
...we can make progress together. And we're doing this to empower the lives and make the lives of the people in the communities that we serve even that much better as well. Kim This has been such a great conversation. If someone's listening, they want to connect with you. They want to say hello. They want to continue the conversation. What is the best way for them to do that? They can email me at Kim Snyder at clear of this dot com. You can go to our website and my phone number, I think, is out there as well. So I would love to have a conversation and continue the conversation because I love talking about data. Well, it has been fun. It has been a great conversation. Kim, Thank you so much for joining me on another 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 for listening 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 on apple podcasts, Google podcasts or Spotify and subscribe while you're there. To get even more practical improvement insights, visit www dot digital growth dot com to grab a preview of James Roberts. Best selling book Banking on Digital Growth or order a copy right now for you and your team from Amazon. Inside, you'll find a strategic marketing and sales blueprint framed around 12 key areas of focus that empower you to confidently generate 10 times more loans and deposits until next time, be well and do good.
In-Stream Audio Search
NEWSearch across all episodes within this podcast