Building a Digital-First Mindset in Banking

Jim Marous (00:11):

Welcome to a special executive leadership series edition of the Banking Transformed Podcast. Recorded at the Financial Brand Forum in Las Vegas. This series is sponsored by our friends at Microsoft. I'm your host, Jim Marous.

Jim Marous (00:25):

During this series of episodes, we dive deep into the world of digital transformation in the financial services industry. We speak with seven top executives from some of the most progressive financial institutions, each of whom has embarked on a unique digital transformation journey to become more future ready and responsive to the changing needs of consumers.

Jim Marous (00:48):

We explore the strategies, challenges, and lessons learned by these forward-thinking organizations as they navigate the complex landscape of digital transformation. Whether you're a financial services professional, a fintech entrepreneur, or simply interested in the future of banking, this executive leadership series provides you with valuable insights and inspiration as we explore the cutting edge of digital transformation in the banking industry.

Jim Marous (01:18):

Okay, we're going to start up just so we don't fall behind too much. For those of you who don't know — there's not many, I don't think, but since I've been around here for the last 10 years, I'm Jim Marous from the Financial Brand. I'm the co-publisher of the Financial Brand, the owner, and CEO of the Digital Banking Report, and the host of the Banking Transform Podcast … Banking Transformed.

Jim Marous (01:40):

This week has been our first try at recording the podcast in front of live audiences. It's gone very well. There's been some dynamic moments. There have been some very interesting interchange moments, some great questions.

Jim Marous (01:55):

Anybody here yesterday with Derek White, will not forget that podcast, only because he ended up the podcast on the edge of his seat, almost threatening the entire audience saying, "You've got to go digital." It was quite an enjoyable experience.

Jim Marous (02:10):

When we put together the different podcasts we did this week, we tried to take different parts of the digital transformation process. Things such as, what do you do at branches? How do you innovate? How do you go to the digital element and actually make it a digital top of glass experience?

Jim Marous (02:26):

Today we're going to be talking to a marketing officer from Fifth Third Bank. We're going to be talking to the chief innovation officer at the U.S. Bank. And we also have a person from Bank of Montreal, BMO-BMO. I don't know what to call it because I've been in Canada long enough to know I can use it's full name or it's half name.

Jim Marous (02:48):

The reason why we searched out Brianna Elsass from BMO is because I am very familiar with their president of the U.S. unit. She was a person I worked with at CIBC in Canada, and she's a person that took no prisoners in getting things done.

Jim Marous (03:05):

And when we talk about any kind of culture shift, transformational shift, we really need to focus at the top of the organization. I kid that I can talk to any banker, and I can tell you within five minutes if they're really embracing change that's needed for digital transformation, if they're really engaged in their employees, because it all's a top-down thing.

Jim Marous (03:29):

It's all something that really is driven from the leadership of the organization. And so, it was great to have Brianna here because I knew what her boss liked, and we shared some old stories, and we weren't exposing ourselves where we had to sign an NDA and we didn't have time for that.

Jim Marous (03:44):

So, Brianna, it's interesting you have a long illustrious career. You've been a few places.

Brianna Elsass (03:51):

I have.

Jim Marous (03:52):

Can you talk a little bit about how your journey ended up at BMO and what paths you took and how has it made an impact on the way you do your business today?

Brianna Elsass (04:02):

Yeah. So, I didn't expect to start out in banking ever. I actually started out in engineering in undergrad and then spent a little time in nonprofit and then landed at Discover, Discover card, and made my path through looking at quality assurance and then getting a challenge on, hey, you understand how to test things really well, maybe you can build things then as well.

Brianna Elsass (04:34):

So, came up through developing IVR systems and then front-end systems for bankers on the collection side of things. And then it was by happenstance, hey, this digital stuff is coming into market. You're the youngest member on the team. Would you like to give a stab at it?

Brianna Elsass (04:53):

So, built digital for Discover, then continued on to Discover Bank and launched their first mobile app. Then had the opportunity to move over to Capital One and build digital with them at Capital One, help them through an agile transformation.

Brianna Elsass (05:11):

When they bought the co-branded, single branded card business from HSBC. Came over, stood up the digital shop for Capital One in Chicago, helped them through an agile transformation, then spent a little bit of time with Wells doing digital strategy.

Brianna Elsass (05:28):

And then finally at BMO, at first when they were BMO Harris in the U.S. Before we dropped the Harris from a branding perspective and came in really to help them transform their digital experience. They had at the time a mix of digital platforms.

Brianna Elsass (05:51):

They had an online experience that was hosted by one vendor. They had a mobile experience that was hosted by a second vendor. Trying to blend those and pull together an experience. It actually resulted in a digital property that nobody wanted to talk about. It was really poorly rated.

Brianna Elsass (06:10):

And so, I kind of had carte blanche to start and transformed the experiences we were able to provide for customers. And it was a really unique challenge. So, got to come over to BMO Harris and help them transform their digital platform.

Brianna Elsass (06:26):

Again, moving to agile as well, and taking a digital first approach in terms of how we were going to drive servicing and experiences within the U.S. and build up from there.

Jim Marous (06:40):

So, it's interesting, we could have easily had the whole conversation be similar to Derek White's and talk all about the digital side. We took a different angle because we sometimes take for granted what it takes to change the employee, the team, to be digital first mindset, and to not be threatened by where we're going.

Jim Marous (07:00):

Because yesterday we talked about Wingspan Bank, which was a online banking entity out of Phoenix, Arizona, and Wilmington, Delaware, that was part of Bank One back in the day. And the reality of how they closed that shop, because the branch group in the organization kind of said they were threatened by it, and they said, "We don't need this. We'll just roll it up."

Jim Marous (07:23):

We've seen that actually with Chase Bank and their initial digital only platform. But so much of it is not just the technology, it's not just the turning a couple switches doing a core transformation or core conversion, a rip and replace, whatever you want to call it.

Jim Marous (07:39):

It's actually getting everybody on board that this direction is where we're going to go. And it doesn't mean the avoidance of the other part of the business, the human part.

Jim Marous (07:49):

So, BMO again, being over a hundred years legacy in Chicago being the combination of a lot of different organizations as part of Harris. And more recently your acquisition of Bank of the West. How does your organization on an ongoing basis reinforce the importance of digital without undermining what a person has done for in some cases, maybe 25, 30 years?

Brianna Elsass (08:17):

Yeah, it's a great question and it's a constant challenge. I think on a fundamental level, everybody knows there's a lot to do. I could look out and say, probably all of us have way more to do than we have time in our days to do it.

Brianna Elsass (08:36):

And that trickles down through most of your banks as well. And digital, really, if done right, should facilitate the better experience for customers and for your internal associates as well to do more. There's higher value ideas and processes that they could be working through that digital can help facilitate.

Brianna Elsass (09:00):

So, you have better conversations. You're showing up to represent your bank, to represent your products for your customers in a more in-person manner that's supplementing or driving even deeper enrichment than what maybe digital can do. You're meeting those customers who only want a digital experience where they want to be met.

Brianna Elsass (09:22):

But you're saving a lot of that manpower, that intelligence, that personal touch for the supplemental conversations, the deepening, the enrichening, those kind of things.

Brianna Elsass (09:32):

So, I think if you can take the experience and the opportunity to really sit down and say, if you take digital first at a very fundamental level, it's, yeah, you've got the online experiences, the mobile apps, those kind of things, but it's also an enriching and enhancing and streamlining and making the bank on the back end more efficient as well.

Brianna Elsass (09:54):

So, you can take things that are very basic, very rudimentary off the plates of the folks that really would rather be having the conversations or doing more deep and enriching activities with your customers.

Jim Marous (10:08):

So, there's a sense of urgency at BMO to be digital first. It wasn't simply, we're going to do things at a time, and we'll let things take their course. We've never had a negative revenue year as no bank has. And basically, you're fighting against status quo. You're fighting against I say many times change sucks. And so, nobody's driving saying, let's change unless the person knows the benefits and understands the benefits.

Jim Marous (10:38):

What was the biggest challenge at BMO as far as the moment when you said all the games were off the field, we're going to go digital first, and our mindset's going to continually look at ways to do things better, not just to save costs. But to better serve a consumer who's running faster than us and faster than we can keep pace in some cases.

Brianna Elsass (11:00):

Yeah. We started out with what we called Ambition '25, between our CEO and Ernie, which is our group head that you had mentioned. They laid out a very ambitious set of goals for us. Part of that included efficiency. Part of that actually specifically stated digital first is mindset and an approach to how we do business.

Brianna Elsass (11:24):

So, it was great to have it from the top down and really layer it in. And that can mean a couple of different things across the organization. And sometimes digital first initiatives are not led by the digital team. It's led by our back-office group or our branch associates.

Brianna Elsass (11:41):

So, it's really trying to find ways to automate, to drive more efficient processes where we can look end to end at solutions. And when you're streamlining something for the field or for back-office, can you also then translate that into something that can help the customer?

Brianna Elsass (12:02):

So, for us it was just something that we fundamentally knew had to be part of how we did business moving forward. And it became part of the tenets around where we were going to invest dollars, how we were going to talk through the next initiative that we prioritized, how we were going to look at the experiences we were looking to craft and create for our customers.

Jim Marous (12:27):

So, when you take an initiative, some relatively large initiative comes together, who's at the table, because I've known Ernie, we've talked about Ernie. There's no doubt the person's going to get involved in saying, "Here's what I want you to accomplish."

Jim Marous (12:43):

Who do you put at the table in trying to make it so that culture ship, that digital first mentality doesn't get lost in the weeds where somebody's speaking up and going, "Yeah, but I think we still have to have people do credit adjudication name anything," because you're going to always have pull, even though organizationally you say this, you push this when you have a major initiative, maybe even have an example who's at the table?

Brianna Elsass (13:09):

It depends on the initiative. Sometimes there's that balance between having too many cooks in the kitchen but having the right advocates and stakeholders at the table for yourself.

Brianna Elsass (13:20):

When you look at some of the first things that I did when I was coming in and really starting a lot of the transformation and a lot of the work that we had to do around even the replatforming, or if you look at the Bank of the West acquisition or some of the big initiatives, there's a level of inertia that you have to get past.

Brianna Elsass (13:44):

And I take it from the perspective of a lot of people are wanting to see what have you done for me lately? And if you can prove the value and the little wins on a regular basis, that's where I actually think agile is tremendously helpful.

Brianna Elsass (14:03):

Even as you're introducing something like agile into the organization, showing we did this, we changed this process. Here's the small win. We were able to deliver this in two months or three months or have better quality outcomes or lower cost of delivering an initiative than what was previously.

Brianna Elsass (14:24):

And I'm going to continue to build on that. And then here's this next piece and here's this next piece. And when you can continue to drop those items in, you start to build advocacy, you start to gain a little trust from the folks around the table.

Brianna Elsass (14:41):

And none of the initiatives that I've ever put forward start out with the business case around cutting people. It's such a friction point for everybody, and you could look at it and say, for example, any of the back-office efficiency plays that you're doing or even enhancing fraud models when you're looking at new Zelle functionality or new money movement functionality.

Brianna Elsass (15:09):

The first thing they're going to on the fraud side ask you for is more headcount. And the business side is going to look for more efficiency from that group or from other groups. And it's this mix. You're going to have a need for some headcount at the start to make sure that as you're introducing something new, those friction points are removed, the customers are secure in what they're looking at doing.

Brianna Elsass (15:32):

You're providing the safety and security. Over time, you can look to reduce the overall operational cost, and you can remove some of those headcounts. But usually by that point in time, there's the next new thing, and you can redeploy those folks to that new initiative or that new piece that needs the focus or the energy.

Brianna Elsass (15:51):

And particularly in areas like fraud, the fraudsters are pacing much faster than a lot of us can keep track with. So, there's always another initiative to deploy smart minds against, so-

Jim Marous (16:05):

So, you're talking about initiatives and if you're the banking world that we started in, mine being further back, we looked at annual plans, we looked at three-year plans, we looked at five-year plans. And a lot of the things we implemented took a year, three years, five years.

Jim Marous (16:21):

What's been the experience of BMO with regard to the speed of innovation? The speed of initiatives deployment against when the initiative is initially thought? I know they're going to vary across the board.

Jim Marous (16:32):

But let's take a good meeting, one that's not just a slam dunk, but one that would in the past be a one year or two year implementation. Now maybe you mentioned three to four months on some things, what's been the experience at BMO? What have you seen as the speed and efficiency and of the way you get more nimble?

Brianna Elsass (16:51):

Yeah. I think part of it goes back to proving out the smaller incremental proof points you mentioned the Bank of the West acquisition. We just finished that up last Labor Day weekend.

Brianna Elsass (17:06):

From the time that we announced it to the time that we implemented, it was about a year and a half effort. That's not a quick effort. It wasn't digitally led. There's many, many, many more parts than an acquisition when you're merging two banks than just a digital perspective.

Brianna Elsass (17:22):

But I helped lead and actually set the direction for the digital conversion. And we had a very specific journey that we walked customers through because we knew digital was going to be a massive friction point for customers. It was going to be an immediate proof point. And we set a very audacious goal around having a best-in-class customer conversion experience led through digital.

Brianna Elsass (17:45):

So, when you're going through a conversion that for a lot of banks, for a lot of groups, pauses everything else, and that's what they focus on, and that's what they move forward with.

Brianna Elsass (17:56):

One of the few groups that actually didn't pause everything else was digital. And we continued, we segmented the groups. We had a conversion team that was focused on the conversion journey and what they needed to do. And we created a whole onboarding journey in like a year's time.

Brianna Elsass (18:20):

But that was converting credentials, taking them through how they log in, what their experiences afterwards, how we were going to convert the information.

Brianna Elsass (18:30):

But we had this second track that was doing all of the BAU items, so we did an evaluation very quickly around, okay, there's not only this conversion and the journey that we're going to walk customers through, but there's these gaps that we're actually creating because the experience is different or because they had a focus on something else at Bank of the West.

Brianna Elsass (18:53):

And so, there's holes that we have and how many of the holes can we plug? And so, we were building against a BAU backlog and building against conversion simultaneously. And so, over the course of the year and a half, I think my team put in, I think it was 69 different releases over the course of a year and a half. And it's, looking at some of those were very big. Some of those were small.

Jim Marous (19:19):

Is a time of conversion when most organizations are simply saying, I just need to make sure we get out. As opposed to we're going to change things as the vehicle's moving.

Brianna Elsass (19:30):

Right. And we as a group, we were very focused on quality. We couldn't mess things up. The code had to be almost perfect, if not perfect going in. And so, we actually stopped all of our code releases that weren't defect fixes in June.

Brianna Elsass (19:49):

So, you're really taking, instead of a year and a half conversion, you're taking about a year and you're putting out 69, 70 different releases over the course of 12 months. And so, you're in this constant state of iteration.

Brianna Elsass (20:07):

And so, you're looking at where can I drive the smallest incremental value that's customer facing that's going to make a difference? And I can build off of that. This isn't my only release, this isn't going to be the last time I can touch it.

Brianna Elsass (20:20):

So, where can I build forward that I can help layer on for the next piece of functionality or the next inroad for a customer or the branch support? We spent a lot of time actually pivoting to helping our contact center and our branch be able to service customers when they showed up in person or on the phone.

Brianna Elsass (20:38):

Because we knew that we were going to cause a lot of customers rolling into those areas for a secondary gut check, a safety measure. The person I can reach out and literally talk to make sure I'm okay.

Jim Marous (20:53):

So, it's interesting, you talk about BMO and Bank of the West, they come in as different companies. And in a digital world, they're coming in with as always different back-offices, different cores. There's a lot of things that are different.

Brianna Elsass (21:05):

Yeah.

Jim Marous (21:06):

But in this case, I'm envisioning as my visual analogy for me is like a racecourse going around a track and you're merging two vehicles that are running at different speed coming into it. So, Bank of the West in certain categories could have been all advanced more than BMO. BMO could have been advanced more than Bank of the West. And you can't disrupt either one of the organizations in the process.

Jim Marous (21:31):

Was the end result of this conversion a better digital experience than either bank had or was it more of moving Bank of the West towards more of what BMO had at that point?

Brianna Elsass (21:43):

So, I'd love to say it was a better experience when they ended up with us. I would say for maybe our retail customers, they were better. We were able to give them higher money movement limits. We were able to give them some additional functionality.

Brianna Elsass (21:56):

For small business customers, transparently, it wasn't, we messed up on and messed up being a different, maybe language, but they had functionality at Bank of the West that I did not have readily available for them when they came to BMO.

Brianna Elsass (22:12):

It was part of our decision strategically to say, we're going to move onto the BMO platforms. And we were very transparent about where there were gaps that I wasn't going to be able to close in time. And it was going to cause friction for our customers, and it was going to cause friction for our associates.

Brianna Elsass (22:31):

And so, what were the things that we needed to prep in terms of conversation starters, policy and procedures, customer communications, the handholding into the right product sets. How do we help them get to a spot that was not going to be as challenging as maybe what we would have originally set them up with?

Brianna Elsass (22:53):

Prime example, Bank of the West had delegates for their small businesses. So, I was like, if we had the same company, I could assign you certain tasks in the digital experience to do on behalf. I don't have that at BMO. At least today within my digital platform.

Jim Marous (23:14):

Are you looking to take some of the capabilities that Bank of the West had in it was like one of these eye openers going, "I want to try to replicate that at the acquiring bank."

Brianna Elsass (23:24):

Yeah. So, that was one thing where we, we talked about it. We spent the time, we spent the energy, we laid out, here's the friction points we're going to create, and are we going to spend the energy and the money to try to close those before the conversion, which maybe would then cause a detriment on the conversion experience or our timelines or something that way.

Brianna Elsass (23:46):

Or do we say, "No, we're going to maintain that friction point." We'll put it into the next roadmap item. We'll prioritize that later. We'll have the appropriate conversations with the customers, with our leadership, and look to build that in later.

Brianna Elsass (24:04):

So, we had a couple of the bigger businesses that we looked at, we combed through and said, "We don't have this on the retail platform right now. We do have a commercial platform that does have that, and maybe temporarily or long-term, depending on your needs and your experience and how you bank with us at BMO. Maybe the commercial platform is okay for what you need going forward."

Brianna Elsass (24:29):

And so, we looked and gave them optionality and where they wanted to be serviced and experienced their digital journey. And we changed up how we converted some customers based off of that.

Jim Marous (24:43):

So, the digital first mentality changes the employee experience. We've talked about that quite a bit in the last few interviews where the employee experience can't be ignored because they're real people. And they're being impacted along the way.

Jim Marous (24:57):

To train up, to upskill, to hire new, how do you instill that mentality, the digital first mentality in a way that's very appealing? Because in many organizations it's a better opportunity for, for almost every employee. But how do you do that as a real tactical effort?

Jim Marous (25:16):

How do you work at communicating things? How do you work at making it so that these people are taking ownership and most importantly, how do you upskill so these people feel qualified for the new world?

Brianna Elsass (25:28):

Yeah. I would say we employed different tactics based off of the area we were going into. So, when we looked at our branch and our contact center associates, we spent time pulling together what we called quite literally digital advocates.

Brianna Elsass (25:47):

And so, they were a number of associates or branch managers or contact center leads that had a little bit of exposure to digital or had a passion around digital. Sometimes they were younger, sometimes they weren't, sometimes they were more seasoned in their career.

Brianna Elsass (26:04):

But they had a passion and an interest in learning. And so, we had special forums for them that they could come, they could ask us questions. They became part of our beta testing group. So, when we launched new functionality, they helped us test it out first. So, they had experience and exposure to what we were building. We'd ask for feedback.

Brianna Elsass (26:24):

We would try to incorporate that going forward. So, they felt like they had a stake in the game. And then they could also help then their associates and their colleagues across their group when something new came out and they didn't understand it, they would help be our voice in the moment for customers or their internal associates.

Brianna Elsass (26:46):

At the headquarter level, a lot of it was helping to understand what their business needs were and where we were driving solutions. Being very transparent around either the cost or the associate impact.

Brianna Elsass (27:03):

Sometimes it was finding the right way to collaborate. I had a business partner that was maybe a bit more less of an advocate on the digital side. But it became one of those, I tried to find a synergistic way to help in the sense of technology may or may not be your forte.

Brianna Elsass (27:27):

Let me be your business technology partner. Let me interpret for you, let me help you vet the estimates that are coming back. Does it make sense? I think maybe we've missed this. Let's make sure that they're evaluating this when they're looking at the solution. Because I don't want you to not have what you were looking for from the technology teams.

Brianna Elsass (27:50):

And they were unrelated to digital type of projects. But if it was an experience or a group of my technology partners that I could help steer in the right direction, that provided a lot of advocacy across different groups and got them involved.

Brianna Elsass (28:06):

And then over time, the more and more we talked about the projects we were launching and the initiatives we were doing and where we were dipping our toe in, it became, "Oh, well you guys are doing the fun stuff. How do I become part of the fun stuff?" Or "You guys get money in a tight budget year."

Brianna Elsass (28:24):

And we didn't get money. So, where are we able to look at how you're driving things or how you're running a project, or can I help understand a little bit more? So, we do a number of different trainings that way to try to keep folks engaged and involved in upskilling as they're going through, and learning more about digital.

Jim Marous (28:46):

So, no transformation, digital transformation efforts go forward without any hiccups, detours, problems. Since you've joined BMO. So, I'm going back a little ways. You had different experiences, obviously with Capital One, their starting point when you joined them.

Jim Marous (29:04):

And even Discover card and Discover Bank when you joined them, they were much more digital to start with, even way back then. You had some very innovative things with Household Bank and the ability to do things in a completely different way that banking hadn't thought of, such as when you opened account, having the credit bureau drawn with, which it was a long time ago, but I remember that being really cool because you knew so much about the customer, before they even opened their first account.

Jim Marous (29:37):

At BMO, though, you got into a branch based legacy organization that needed a lot of change to happen. What was the biggest challenge over this period? And you can just take the recent past, or you can start from the beginning of it saying, "This really tested my nerves and everything else and tested my decision process saying, geez, where do we go from here?"

Jim Marous (30:00):

But what's the biggest challenge that most financial institutions may not realize they're going to be up against?

Brianna Elsass (30:10):

That's a big question. So, if I think back around my journey with BMO specifically, one of the things, thankfully when I walked in, everybody knew we needed a digital first mindset. And we needed a new digital experience. We really weren't driving much acquisition digitally. We really weren't able to service folks very well digitally. So, that I would say fundamentally everybody was bought into.

Jim Marous (30:43):

How fast did that change? When you talk about digital acquisition, things like that, how long did it take to ... because that's really a front door, but we sometimes don't do the basics very well. And it puts everything else at risk. We do things that are good superficially, but they're not changing the business.

Brianna Elsass (30:58):

Yeah. I joined BMO in October of 2016, I want to say. And we launched our first customer experience because we had changed out the front end, the API layer, and all the middle layers all the way down to effectively where they connected to the host, pulled it on site. So, we changed all that out.

Brianna Elsass (31:30):

We were launching it to customers by August of 2018. Because it was fully redone. And that was a sales platform and a servicing platform.

Jim Marous (31:43):

It was everything. It's the core.

Brianna Elsass (31:44):

It was everything outside of the core.

Jim Marous (31:46):

Yeah. But it was core to the digital experience.

Brianna Elsass (31:48):

Yes, exactly.

Jim Marous (31:49):

We're using core in that way.

Brianna Elsass (31:50):

Yeah, exactly. And that actually started and launched with our internal advocates and associates first. And pulled together a pilot group of 2000 associates inside the bank and said, you're going to bank with us first and you're going to help us test this out. And if it's not right, we're going to try to change it before it launched to all the customers in October.

Brianna Elsass (32:11):

So, we gave ourselves two months to fix everything that everybody found and incentivized them to help us find the defects. It's a blessing and a curse when you get that much feedback.

Jim Marous (32:26):

Well, you find out your blind spots.

Brianna Elsass (32:27):

You find out your blind spots.

Jim Marous (32:28):

And it's interesting because it's going to get easier and easier to find those things. I mean, ChatGPT and all that helps find those things better than we were able to do it two years ago.

Brianna Elsass (32:38):

Yeah. So, I mean, it was a very quick pace to re-platform, the digital experiences which is great, and really interesting. But that piece, everybody had bought into. How we did it, actually, not everybody was bought into, because we also forced the bank, or I forced my team and then subsequently the teams that were working with us into an Agile mind frame while we were doing the replatforming.

Brianna Elsass (33:09):

And that was actually, I had to spend a lot of time reeducating the folks around us. Here's why there's not a requirements document that is going out that you're all going to read after three months of writing it all down and we're going to have multiple sign offs.

Brianna Elsass (33:25):

No, we're going to do this iteratively. We're going to look at this piece, we're going to look at that piece. We'll come in, we'll tell you, but I'm going to tell you more in pictures than I am in terms of requirements.

Brianna Elsass (33:36):

Because you're going to see what it looks like. Don't worry about the 30, 40, 50 page worth document that nobody's really going to read in detail nor understand the technical acumen behind all of it.

Brianna Elsass (33:48):

And we pulled together something like two or 3000 user stories in order to drive building out these experiences, which drove a lot of faith in us as the experts coming to the table and driving it.

Brianna Elsass (34:04):

But there was a lot of friction around how often am I telling people, how often am I bringing people along in the story? Where am I showing them the experience? Where am I showing them pictures? When can they lean in and help drive changes? What it looks like, what it feels like versus this is an informed moment, not a open discussion and asking for opinion.

Jim Marous (34:33):

I like that terminology. But it's interesting because even though we'd like to be warm and fuzzy, digital transformation's not an option. By the way, we're not asking for votes on this. We're going to give the employees as many tools and as many capabilities to get on board as possible.

Jim Marous (34:50):

But I had a boss that once said, "You're either going to be on the train, you're going to miss the train. And oh, by the way, there's no in between here because we need to do this." And I expressed this on so many different podcasts. There's so many different writings. And in more of these podcasts, and even on Monday when I did a learning session, change sucks. But it's got to happen.

Jim Marous (35:10):

You can't continue to be the one sole pre adjudicator at the financial institution when we're going to be going automation on that process. There's going to be a way to have you be on board in the new part of the organization in the same way when you acquired Bank of the West. By the way, we're going this way. It's not all going to be pretty, but it's not an option.

Jim Marous (35:31):

And that takes top down from the very top commitment. Because if they realize, number one, it's not an option. Number two, if I work in the right direction, I'm going to get complete commitment from the top down. It's not going to all of a sudden disappear.

Brianna Elsass (35:48):

Yeah, I would agree. I think the one thing, if you're really looking to build momentum behind a digital first transformation-

Jim Marous (35:55):

With rewards connected.

Brianna Elsass (35:56):

There's rewards element to it. I think you can do it in small ways. Everybody tends to think that this digital transformation has to be all encompassing and you pull everything out at once and then you slam everything in at once. And it doesn't have to be that.

Brianna Elsass (36:10):

Oftentimes the biggest wins, the biggest aha moments that we've experienced is prime example, I show up at a conference, internal conference that we had when we were doing the Bank of the West acquisition and sat down with a bunch of bankers and asked them what their biggest friction point was.

Brianna Elsass (36:30):

And if I was able to then go back and be like, "I could actually probably fix that for you," and I make a phone call, or I shoot off an email and then something changes. One of them was so truly simplistic and easy. I just hadn't heard of it, that I was actually able to change it for this banker before I left the conference.

Brianna Elsass (36:50):

And so, you're talking about hours in the course of a day or two, and then they're tangibly walking out and being like, "Oh my gosh, I just had a conversation with a person, and I was able to make my job easier. My job didn't change fundamentally. It just took literally the one piece of thing that was sticky and caused friction and was annoying to my customers. And it caused me to have this conversation over and over again. And they were able to fix it for me."

Brianna Elsass (37:19):

And so, when you get that, you alleviate some of the nerves and the pain, and then they'll be more open and transparent with you on the next item. And if you build up these incremental pieces, you get more and more transformed and you get more advocacy around the iteration and the agile process and the digital process and automating things, whether or not it's even a massive project. Oftentimes the biggest wins are on the small things.

Jim Marous (37:48):

And you keep on getting back to the incremental, the ability of atomic habits, atomic movements where every 1% adds up really quickly when you get it done quickly. And it gives you the agile nature.

[Music Playing]

Jim Marous (38:00):

And we are in an amazing time right now. It's proven by the people that are displaying downstairs. Composable solutions get you there really quick. You don't have to rip out the core to get a brand-new new account opening experience like you used to have to do, to do that.

Jim Marous (38:14):

You can do these things at the same parallel path. Today's process helps acquisition because you learn how to move two moving cars as opposed to having one or both have to stop to change the tire, so to speak.

Jim Marous (38:29):

Brianna, thank you so much. Never enough time. It is interesting because the whole culture thing at BMO is a big deal. Because a rip and replace culture is probably a fair thing to say over time because you had again, a very state, very traditional organization within Chicago, not just ... it was known that if you went to Chicago, that was going to be a little different than some of the other organizations.

Jim Marous (38:56):

But to come in and actually have that happen and have the employees experience it for better, for worse in some cases is very important.

Jim Marous (39:04):

Thank you so much for being on the show.

Brianna Elsass (39:05):

Sure. Thank you.

Jim Marous (39:14):

We hope you enjoyed these candid conversations sponsored by Microsoft. Microsoft enables digital transformation for the era of intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.