Exploring a New Digital Partner? Consider this...

If you, like many of your peers in the community banking space, are considering moving from your core’s digital banking platform to a standalone digital banking firm, this article is for you. 

A good digital banking partner will walk you through the process and make sure that you understand how things will function when working with them as opposed to your core.

That being said, you should be empowered to ask the important questions and ensure that your team has the full picture.

*Culture fit, strategic alignment and other big picture discussions are not mentioned in this article- these questions are geared towards functionality and customer experience.

Consider the following as a guide for some of the more technical questions you will want to discuss with any digital banking company that you explore working with. This is certainly not an exhaustive list but it should give you a good start for some of the conversations that you will want to have.

Customer Experience

·     What type of support do your customers receive?

·     Do we work with a dedicated Customer Success Manager (or a similar function)?

·     What type of ongoing trainings do you offer? Are they free or do they cost extra?

·     How involved is the executive management team?

·     Do you have annual get togethers/conferences?

·     Will you facilitate meetings between clients to provoke thought leadership if we want to discuss anything with similar financial institutions?

·     How does your company integrate customer feedback in roadmap planning?

·     How do you track customer satisfaction?

·     What happens if a customer is unsatisfied with their relationship?

·     Is customer support available 24x7?

·     Where is your customer support team located?

·     Is there an option to outsource the bank/credit union’s customer support function if we want to route our users calls?

Core:

·     Do you have an integration to our core vendor?

·     How many clients do you have that are currently on our core?

·     What type of interface do you have; real-time, batch or comingled?

·     What type of middleware do we need for the integration between you and our core to work?

·     How long have you been integrated with our core?

·     Do you support our Statement/Imaging providers?

·     Which operations are supported through your platform?

Integrations

·     If we want to integrate to a third-party vendor that you don’t support today, how do you handle that?

·      What is your process for building custom integrations?

·     If we work with a third party today and want to continue working with them, would you be able to have that interface built by the time we would go live on your platform?

·     What integrations for (insert desired function) do you support today?

Implementation

·     If we signed a contract tomorrow, how long would we have to wait to get our conversion project started?

·     How long does a typical conversion take?

·     How much time for testing do you leave when developing an implementation plan?

·     Who will make up our implementation team?

·     What roles do you recommend we have within the bank/credit union to help manage this project?

·     What is expected of our team during the implementation process?

·     Do you offer end user facing marketing materials to help facilitate a successful transition for our customers/members?

·     Who can we hold accountable for a successful, timely implementation? (It should be an executive)

·     How do you bill for implementation fees- is it all due upfront or do you have a split model?

Be upfront about your needs and expectations of your new partner. Let them know what your goals are, and the timeframe in which you plan to meet those goals. Share any concerns and fears about making a change and work together determine a gameplan for your success.

To be sure, choosing a new digital banking vendor is a huge decision with enormous impact and having open, candid dialogue from the beginning is paramount in starting a successful relationship.