By Oscar Berg, Future Office Evangelist
May 11, 2010 - 7:13 AM
Some time ago I had the opportunity to meet with a couple of researchers working at the Innovation Department at a large Scandinavian bank. They shared with me their vision of the future; highlighting some of the key trends they will have to adapt to if they are to remain successful as a bank in the future. As a consultant, it’s always very interesting (an important learning experience) to hear these kinds of things from “the customer side”.
One of the key things they shared with me is the belief that - as products and services become more and more similar – the ability of their business to innovate more and faster in the combination with delivering an outstanding customer experience will be key to remaining competitive within their industry.
This is a vision of the future which companies like Apple are already living and breathing. But banks? Let’s just say they have a long and bumpy road to travel, and many of them are painfully aware of this.
Here are three key trends that will reshape the banking industry:
RELATIONSHIPS: The strength in a business’ relationships with its customers and external stakeholders, as well as with employees, will determine its ability to compete on the marketplace.
COLLABORATION: Customers (and other stakeholders) demanding shorter response times and fewer interactions will force the business to become better at communicating and collaborating internally, as well as externally. More and more tasks will need to be solved in collaboration by teams and projects, especially as customers demand one point of contact with the business.
EMPOWERMENT: Investing in the employee becomes increasingly important as knowledge work and creative work increases in both volume and importance – a business must go from empty words to action when it comes to maximizing the potential of each employee as well as the entire workforce.
The power of relationships is often underestimated by businesses. Most businesses tend to overemphasize the value transactions often at the expense of their relationships with customers, partners and employees, probably because that is where the value being created gets visible and tangible. Since good relationships are much more likely to lead to transactions and value being created than bad or non-existing relationships, businesses necessarily need to focus much more on building and nurturing relationships than they do today. Relationships need to be treated as the foundation for all value creation in a business. This necessary shift in focus from transactions to relationships requires a corresponding shift away from the currently dominating one-way and transaction-oriented communication to a richer, more personalized, honest and transparent two-way communication with customers and other stakeholders.
This also implies that a business needs to become better at using the full potential of its social capital and maximizing the value of knowledge work and creative work being done. The question that Enterprise 2.0 practitioners like myself naturally ask ourselves is how we can get better at understanding, explaining and demonstrating what role(s) 2.0 principles, practices and technologies can, should, and will play in such a scenario.
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