I read this post yesterday, and it made me think. I had the opportunity to chat with Marcus today, and it really came home that there is an opportunity here to solve the classic problem that Banks live with. How do we move from product centric to customer centric.
The new ‘database’ – or more correctly datamatrix, is an open spider, leveraging the ever changing landscape of datasources and dataservices for its purposes – while adjusting its internal relationships and properties to accommodate.
Source: M7
Thinking back to my banking days, the perennial problem that has been generally accepted is this … how do we evolve from being ‘product centric’ to being ‘ customer centric’.
First off, some definitions, so we at least know where we agree and disagree on the scope of the discussion. Here is my depiction of the issue.
| Product Centric | Customer Centric |
| Systems and databases built around savings accounts, mortgages, mutual funds, displaying which customers own each product | Systems built around customers, displaying all that each customer owns |
Problem: Banks, over the years, have built out their systems based on product needs. In order to convert to a customer centric system would require a complete port from ‘old way’ to ‘new way’ Estimated cost … average size bank, with 6 million customers – $ 1 bn.
That estimate is a rounded number based on the estimates I have seen. One billion dollars to take 6 – 8 disparate systems and provide some form of integration, within a new system.
Observation: No-one has defined ‘customer centric’. if you work in a Bank, ask someone senior what that means. Then ask another person … the answer starts to be defined by the nature of the job of the person you are asking.
Observation 2; no-one said we had to move the old systems into a new system. Maybe in 10 years time that would prove to be antiquated once again.
hmmmmmmmmm ….. Marcus could be on to something here. Is it possible we could define a solution that would satisfy all the stakeholders?
Summary of the problem: Banks have an expensive legacy of multiple systems, driven from a product oriented business, called Banking. Meantime those darned marketing people want us to become customer centric, to see all bought services, plus potential services in one view, so that we can display the right information and offer to customers. This is really hard!
The datamatrix view says that we can use new technology, including XML, OBDC, sprinkled with lots of new and fresh thinking, to aggregate information from the old systems into a new view that can be adjusted as required, to provide the right view at the right place for users.
This is worth exploring. There are enough examples now that it works. There is also enough evidence that culture is a larger hindrance than technology …. we need to think about that …..
Technorati tags: Banking Strategy
Bankwatch 
Well the other approach would be to make customer-centric decisions. This might require the same level of customer data integration, but it might not. Some customers process each account, decide on the best actions for the account, aggregate the decisions for a customer and then push the updated decisions back into each account record. Net result, customer-centric decisions stored in product-centric data.
JT
http://www.edmblog.com
James … from my perspective the the customer centric problem usually comes up on service issues relative to products. The infrastructure that contains those service issues is in effect another one or many product systems. Then there are the behavioral and transactional activities within the ATM, online banking and branch networks. That data needs to be viewable at the right time, and place.
I still believe we need a method of providing aggregated customer information that can be accessed as appropriate by Branch, online banking, call centre, or marketing.