Making Account Opening Digital Transformation Successful in financial services companies or any other industry for that matter is not an easy task. The statistics about the success rates of digital transformation projects range from 50% to 84%.

As we all know by now, everyone is doing digital now, and nearly everyone is a digital strategist, digital technology, or digital transformation guru. So, amid all the hype and hoopla, why are digital transformation projects underperforming? As with any other digital transformation endeavor, the account opening digital transformation is fraught with challenges, and unless one has clarity about the desired north star and concrete steps to get there and how to measure success once they get there, it is doomed to underperform or worse still fail.

Whether you are a bank, credit union, brokerage, insurance firm, or a wealth manager, it is evident that millennials and the affluent users are early adopters of the mobility paradigm and other native digital experiences shape their expectations. So, to capture a slice of the desirable segment of the marketplace is it imperative the account opening digital transformation leapfrogs the current state.

Let’s look at the scary statistics of project success, or rather project failure in the digital transformation realm, which showcases how difficult it is making Account Opening Digital Transformation Successful in large enterprises.

IDC claims “By 2018, 70% of siloed digital transformation (DX) initiatives will ultimately fail because of insufficient collaboration, integration, sourcing, or project management.”
Furthermore, according to Bill Keyworth, VP of Research at IDC, “Desired business outcomes from DX follow innovation projects that integrate new digital technologies into stable business services and incorporate new skills, techniques, and culture into the fabric of the IT and LOB organizations. Initiatives that do not infuse innovation into the scale and breadth of the whole enterprise have not achieved the prime directive: digital transformation.”

Gartner predicts about 30% of the digital transformation initiatives will succeed and 70% will fail. Per Gartner, “Through 2017, insufficient business process management (BPM) maturity will prevent 80 percent of organizations from achieving the desired business outcomes from their digital business strategies.” According to Marc Kerremans, Research Director at Gartner, “Deficits in BPM maturity prevent change agents (individuals who lead changes) from delivering game-changing business outcomes from digital business initiatives. Delivering expected returns from digital business investments requires process reinvention — that is, a significant innovation in how products and services are created, priced, distributed and serviced across not just one group, but often across the entire value chain.”

According to Digital Clarity Group, “When we asked business owners and project leaders post-deployment (the system is up and running) if their project was a success, did it bring measurable business benefits? Many are unable to answer the question with any conviction either way. They simply don’t have a good metric to judge success or failure.”

Five things to help in making Account Opening Digital Transformation Successful:

1. Define your digital transformation destination in actionable terms: Just saying, “We want our account opening to be excellent” does not translate into an actionable strategy. So instead of highfalutin, but vague, assertions, it is better to be clear as to what is the north star. Statements like, “We want to lower our online account opening application abandonment rates from the current state of 30% to less than 10%,” or “By 2020, we want our Prospect to Customer workflow to reduce from 180 clicks to under 100 clicks,” will help a great deal in making the digital transformation north star clear, compelling and actionable.
2. Account Opening Digital Transformation is not just about Technology: Buying a new shiny top and installing it does not translate to digital success. Despite the fantastic set of features, if your digital strategy is not clear, and your enterprise is unwilling to address the underlying causes, the new system will end up like lipstick on a pig. (No disrespect for the pigs, though.)
3. Process Reimagination is the foundation for digital transformation success: Clunky processes and unwieldy workflows do not augur well for digital transformation. Reimagining the processes for the digital paradigm involves a mobile first and “touch” first standard to account for the tablet and smartphone revolution.
4. Seamless Omnichannel Handoff is not optional: The design, the information architecture, and the workflow for digital account opening must be defined based on a multi-channel and a multi-device world we live in. It should support native experiences with features and tenets like “Auto-save and resume,” “minimally required data entry” and “seamless transition to a different device and form factor.”
5. Measure, Measure and Measure some more: Measurement should be an integral part of the account opening digital transformation. Measure which design will likely to succeed by doing A/B testing. Measure which process works best by conducting focus group studies. Measure the end results and success rates. However, be cautious of missing the forest for the trees with too many metrics. Just one to three parameters for each significant capability will suffice. Beware of the paralysis by analysis syndrome. Of course, it is not enough to just measure, but you will need to iterate and refine the digital account opening process.

Making Account Opening Digital Transformation Successful is not easy, but can be done! Please contact Finantrix.com consulting and advisory services for professional services help.