
Mobile Banking is as much a Platform Strategy as it is about the User Experience


Christopher Danvers, VP Payments & Digital Services, American Airlines Federal Credit Union
It goes without saying that the user experience for mobile banking is critically important. Intuitiveness, ease of use, and how the end user feels after using the app will ultimately determine how successful your mobile banking strategy will be.
Think of a great user experience as the end game; so what do you need to do right to win your end game? A few things that come to mind are:
• A clearly defined strategy that articulates for your organization what you are trying to achieve with mobile banking
• Executive buy-in so all areas of the organization understand what the strategy means or the enterprise as well as their respective teams
• Alignment of ownership of the your mobile strategy with the right combination of other channels, products, and/or transactional capabilities you’re trying to advance
Your mobile banking strategy should also define what kind of platform(s) you’d need to ultimately build your user experience
Thinking Platform(s) First
Your mobile banking strategy should also define what kind of platform(s) you’d need to ultimately build your user experience. Considerations should include:
• Integration and Platform Combinations – Will all of your business partner’s platforms play nice together? Think about the entire list of partner platforms that will need to talk to each other to build out your mobile experience, and whether or not they have complimentary integration capabilities.
• Integration Capabilities – How Application Programming Interface (API) friendly is your mobile platform? Can they support suites of APIs offered through your other business partner platforms? Or, will you need to rely on other integration experiences, such as Single sign-on (SSO); and how will those translate to the user experience you desire to offer?
• Custom Development Needs – What kind of experiences would you desire that will be considered custom development rather than standard functionality available out of the box? Are the technologies, such as APIs there to support your vision?
• Custom Development Capabilities – If you have a mature development skillset within your organization, does the platform offer a Software Development Kit (SDK)? If you don’t, then will your platform provider develop these for you and at what cost? And, how quickly can this process enable your organization to respond to needs that require custom development?
• Technical Debt – Does the combination of required business partner platforms and integration pressure from the mobile channel saddle your organization with too much technical debt? As you expand the expectations of integration across your mix of business partner platforms, are you taking necessary steps to “pay down” your technical debt?
This “platform first” perspective will become even more important as integration expectations expand beyond your partner’s platforms. We first saw this trend with the emergence of wearables such as watches viewed as extensions to your traditional mobile device, and in response the same mobile ecosystem being extended to those devices.
The latest trend is developing around voice command devices like Amazon Echo and it’s underling Alexa persona/engine. As these devices continue to become embedded into our everyday lives, consumer’s expectations change and they’ll likely demand you be where they now want to transact, so your platform’s scalability and ability to expand integration will be of critical importance.
Courage and Conviction
Now that you have your strategy, executive buy-in, completed a good assessment of your collective business partner integration and have calculated your technical debt— and more importantly a strategy that will help you “pay down” this debit—it’s time to execute.
This will require courage and conviction to stay true to your strategy and in some cases will require you to change some existing business relationships, and perhaps defend unpopular decisions required along the way. Using your strategy as the litmus test for these tougher decisions can help ensure you’re making changes for the right reasons, and not shying away from changes that might be necessary but more difficult.
Measuring Your Success
We embarked on our first iteration of our payments and digital services strategy about Four years ago, which included a digital banking platform conversion. Two and a half years after that conversion we’ve seen some great performance indicators, including
• 45 percent increase in registered users; now representing 67 percent of our membership
• 54 percent increase in active users with 71 percent of registered users considered active
• 109 percent increase in overall login activity
• 240 percent increase in logins from mobile devices, which now represent over 65 percent of all login activity
• 94 percent increase in intra-account transfer activity
Mobile is a journey with an end game that will be a constantly moving target. While we’ve made progress executing against our strategy we still have a lot of work ahead of us, but the numbers we’re seeing are a promising sign that we’re heading in the right direction.
Featured Vendors
Claim Connect IQ: A Digital Marketplace that Connects Insurance Professionals with the Best Service Providers
FastTrack Disability Risk Management Solutions & Services: Robotics Driven Claims Adjudication Processes
EDITOR'S PICK
Essential Technology Elements Necessary To Enable...
By Leni Kaufman, VP & CIO, Newport News Shipbuilding
Comparative Data Among Physician Peers
By George Evans, CIO, Singing River Health System
Monitoring Technologies Without Human Intervention
By John Kamin, EVP and CIO, Old National Bancorp
Unlocking the Value of Connected Cars
By Elliot Garbus, VP-IoT Solutions Group & GM-Automotive...
Digital Innovation Giving Rise to New Capabilities
By Gregory Morrison, SVP & CIO, Cox Enterprises
Staying Connected to Organizational Priorities is Vital...
By Alberto Ruocco, CIO, American Electric Power
Comprehensible Distribution of Training and Information...
By Sam Lamonica, CIO & VP Information Systems, Rosendin...
The Current Focus is On Comprehensive Solutions
By Sergey Cherkasov, CIO, PhosAgro
Big Data Analytics and Its Impact on the Supply Chain
By Pascal Becotte, MD-Global Supply Chain Practice for the...
Technology's Impact on Field Services
By Stephen Caulfield, Executive Director, Global Field...
Carmax, the Automobile Business with IT at the Core
By Shamim Mohammad, SVP & CIO, CarMax
The CIO's role in rethinking the scope of EPM for...
By Ronald Seymore, Managing Director, Enterprise Performance...
Driving Insurance Agent Productivity with Mobile and Big...
By Brad Bodell, SVP and CIO, CNO Financial Group, Inc.
Transformative Impact On The IT Landscape
By Jim Whitehurst, CEO, Red Hat
Get Ready for an IT Renaissance: Brought to You by Big...
By Clark Golestani, EVP and CIO, Merck
Four Initiatives Driving ECM Innovation
By Scott Craig, Vice President of Product Marketing, Lexmark...
Technology to Leverage and Enable
By Dave Kipe, SVP, Global Operations, Scholastic Inc.
By Meerah Rajavel, CIO, Forcepoint
AI is the New UI-AI + UX + DesignOps
By Amit Bahree, Executive, Global Technology and Innovation,...
Evolving Role of the CIO - Enabling Business Execution...
By Greg Tacchetti, CIO, State Auto Insurance
Read Also
Balancing Innovation and Standardization
Leveraging Quality Engineering and DevOps to thrive in the face of...
Pioneering the Future Through Technology Innovation
Reimagine Naval Power
The Shifting Enterprise Operating System Ecosystem Is Helping...
Digital TRANSFORMATION: Challenge the Status Quo, Be Disruptive.
