As the world grows more and more digital, customers across every industry are expecting digital-first, timely assistance and support. As shown in this digital transformation in banking case study roundup, all businesses — including banks — have been forced to change and evolve with the times.
Digital transformation isn’t so much optional as it is imperative for survival.
For proof, look at how the banking landscape has changed over the past two-plus years. The COVID-19 pandemic has proven that continuous product innovation and improvements to the customer experience — two hallmark benefits of digital transformation — need to drive key business decisions for banks.
But as you’ll see in the following case studies, the need for digital transformation started before the pandemic — and according to Forrester, banks are signaling the need will continue after the pandemic.
Just 1% of bank decision makers surveyed in The State of Digital Banking, 2022, said they are not interested in implementing or expanding their digital transformation efforts at their organization, while the largest percentage (35%) report that they have implemented and are currently expanding their digital transformation efforts.
Read Next: Digital Transformation in Banking: Why it Matters Now More Than Ever
Banking Digital Transformation Case Study Examples
The following banking digital transformation case study examples highlight several essential tools and methodologies that can help drive a bank’s digital transformation.
Commonwealth Bank deploys innovation and problem solving
Commonwealth Bank (CBA) recently took decisive action on its own digital transformation. Christian Eggers, executive general manager at CBA, shared that some of their pain points with their previous tool included reduced project data transparency, multiple sources of truth for different processes and teams, and lack of spend justification.
According to Eggers, Planview Portfolios “will help CBA deliver and manage our significant change agenda through greater transparency of project data.”
Christian Eggers, Executive General Manager at CBA
CBA invests more than $1 billion a year in technology for different teams, solutions, and employees, so the importance of software like Portfolios can’t be understated. They plan on standardizing around 100 processes related to finance for a team of over 10,000 employees.
Read the full digital transformation in banking case study: CBA brings in tool to help verify $1bn tech budget is well-spent
NatWest continues to transform, reaping the benefits of agile
Prior to July 2020, NatWest was known as the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). As a centuries-old financial institution, they’re no stranger to innovation and transformation. With over 70,000 employees and 700 banking locations, change needed to happen incrementally.
Layers of oversight, multiple tools, and manual operations made it very difficult for RBS to respond to change with agility. A lack of transparency meant great ideas were often left in the lurch.
In order to successfully standardize and simplify their processes and toolset, RBS used Portfolios to open up transparency across all teams, correctly identify and define dependencies across the company, and implement Lean-Agile practices and mindset.
“We had to move from a traditional operating model based on traditional methodologies to thinking more about incremental, iterative value delivery where we could pivot quickly to meet the changing needs of customers.”
Stephen Marjot, Head of Change Center of Excellence at NatWest (formerly RBS)
But was that successful? Absolutely. RBS went from 400 business cases to 25 business cases per year because of Agile and Portfolios. Their start-up processes simplified—now taking less than 12 days instead of eight weeks.
Read the full digital transformation in banking case study: Royal Bank of Scotland: Transforming PPM with Lean-Agile practices
Post-rebrand, NatWest continues to transform and reap the benefits of Agile. Digital transformation is ongoing, multi-faceted, and cross-functional, and this requires an Agile environment. When faced with a global pandemic and unpredictable economic and governmental conditions, NatWest relied on its strong partnership with Planview to continue to evolve.
By using Planview’s Agile Program Management solution, NatWest removed barriers to adoption and let teams experiment with different working methods and strategies. They developed ways to get teams up to speed and upgraded from previous systems; they continue to do so today to keep up with the changing demand they’re seeing from the business.
Read the full digital transformation in banking case study: NatWest finds their key to Agile transformation
Santander experienced business agility and sustainable growth
In the face of macro- and microeconomic changes in UK banking, Santander UK found itself in need of enterprise agility, as its business and IT processes weren’t well integrated. They needed to accelerate decision-making, improve resource management and capacity planning, and initiate overall change in their group organizational construct.
They lacked a single operating model, and when it came to software, they wanted a technology partner with a dynamic platform capable of supporting them throughout the transformation process.
“We wanted to create an ecosystem that would enable this organizational construct to have more agility as an enterprise, and that would allow us to connect strategy to delivery, add transparency, and simplify processes day-to-day… at the very base is optimizing IT tooling.”
Joaquim Cols, Director of Operations at Santander Technology UK
Here’s where Planview’s Project Portfolio Management solution came in. With Planview, Santander was able to successfully integrate multiple independently working companies into one seamless operating model. Agile processes, combined with traditional project portfolio management, helped speed up this integration. Plus, the solution helped them adapt to constantly changing circumstances and governance.
As a result, Santander tracked 6.5 million hours yearly — hours dedicated to tracking over 500 business initiatives, 2,500 pieces of work, and more than 4,000 users. Resource utilization improved significantly, too: Santander experienced an 80% rise in better-informed budget reallocations and 25% quicker decisions.
Read the full digital transformation in banking case study: Santander UK unlocks business agility with Planview Portfolios
Bank of New Zealand Went Through a Transformational Journey
If any business understands the difficulty in implementing a digital transformation with fewer resources, it’s Bank of New Zealand.
BNZ’s Paul Littlefair is determined to keep and grow that human element of the banking business. He knows the real challenge in banking is providing real-time enablement for value streams, along with that essential human aspect, in a digitally enabled way.
“Banking has always been reliant on tech… What we’re seeing is the next generation of technology enablement with complex, critical relationship tasks. One of the tenants BNZ is adopting is, ‘Digital First, Human When It Matters.’”
Paul Littlefair, Executive Technology at Bank of New Zealand
Tasktop, a newly acquired Planview company, transforms traditional businesses into tech companies prepared for that relentless pace. By implementing Planview Viz, BNZ gained access to vital analytics and insights to continue to make improvements in variety of areas: time-to-market, total output, productivity, and a more positive work culture.
“We’ve had a great relationship with Tasktop. It has been such a good fit for us at BNZ. It’s given us the guardrails and processes that we need to really start helping enable our teams to move forward. Tasktop has enabled us to come up with definitive measures and metrics around what is actually going on… and make a very compelling case for needing to introduce some improvements and make some changes.”
Paul Littlefair, Executive Technology at Bank of New Zealand
Read the full digital transformation in banking case study: Banking on Flow Metrics – The Bank of New Zealand Transformation Journey
Take the Lead and Start Your Digital Transformation Now
It’s impossible to ignore the rising need for digital transformation in your banking business. To make an effective and future-proof digital transformation strategy, download the eBook Deliver Your Digital Transformation Strategy at Speed: Financial Services Edition.
