DIGITALISATION FOR THE CUSTOMERS OF TOMORROW
DI
MONETA MONEY BANK: IGITAL TRANSFORMATION FOR THE NEW BANKING CUSTOMER WRIT TEN BY
DA LE BENTON PRODUCED BY
JA MES PEPPER
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THROUGH A FAST-PACING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION, MONETA MONEY BANK EMBRACES TECHNOLOGY FOR THE CUSTOMERS OF TOMORROW
T
echnology continues
how technology is truly disrupt-
to define and redefine
ing the way the financial industry
the modern world and
works with and exceeds its
industry sectors have to invest to not only keep up with the
customer expectations. “The very role of the CIO is
rapidly evolving marketplace,
changing dramatically,” he says.
but to stay ahead of the curve.
“It’s moved away from focusing
This is certainly the driving force
on cost-effective solutions and
behind an ambitious company-
executing historical processes to
wide digital transformation of the
become far more aligned and
Czech Republic-based MONETA
integral to the business.
Money Bank. Spearheading this
“It’s about understanding, end
digital transformation in terms of
to end, what customers’ needs
information technologies is
are and executing that more
Vladimir Klein, Chief Informa-
collaboratively with the business.
tion Officer (CIO).
The traditional borders between
Having worked for a number of technology-based service delivery
black box IT and business do not exist anymore.”
organisations throughout an
No transformational journey,
extensive career, Klein has vast
especially one defined by technol-
experience and understanding of
ogy, can ever truly end. It has to
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continuously evolve with the along-
ture and adopting an agile way of
side technologies and customers.
working simultaneously, Klein feels this
MONETA has set a target for 40% of
has proven key in maintaining opera-
its all core products to be distributed
tional clarity.
online or digitally through a number of channels by 2020.
“You have to have more of an entrepreneurial way of thinking and
A transformation of this size and
have an agile mindset towards develop-
scope is not without its challenges,
ing software or solutions,” he says.
and for an organisation that has been
“With the proper IT strategy behind us it
operating for two decades the biggest
becomes far easier to understand
challenge is complex architecture.
where to move, how to move and how
“If you don’t have proper architec-
to get people on board for changes. On
ture in place then you cannot develop
our transformation journey we decided
at any real pace,” says Klein. “The
to focus on 5 areas – Agile way of
same with automation: you cannot
working, Cloud, Automation, application
automate without agile architecture
replacements and Data”
and so we decided to develop and digitise in parallel.”
With a digital transformation, one could be forgiven for focusing entirely
In both developing the IT infrastruc-
on the technologies and the solutions
E X E C U T I V E P R OF IL E
Vladimir Klein Senior executive with 25 years experiences in Information technology, banking and telecommunications. Vladimir Klein has been working in several countries, in different local or international managerial positions. He executed several transformational changes in his career in the area of M&A, outsourcing, digital and agile, cloud implementations, organizational restructuring, cost cuttings and core applications migration.
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08
“ It’s about understanding end to end what customers’ needs are and executing that more collaboratively with the business. The traditional borders between black box IT and business do not exist anymore” — Vladimir Klein, Chief Information Officer
09
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driving the digitisation – but a tool is just a tool unless it’s in the hands of the right person. MONETA invests heavily in its development strategy to ensure that its people can help execute and deliver the best possible service to the end customer, whilst ensuring those same people are empowered and buy into this transformational journey. This proves crucial in the changing of cultural mindsets as the company shifts towards an agile, innovative way of working and this is where Klein can not only call on his own experience in the industry but also external partners to understand how to implement change to enable greater efficiency. “We’ve started rolling out agile workshops and brought in external coaches and partners to share knowledge and best practice,” he says. “We have looked at how other companies have done it and we share that with our people in order for everyone to truly understand their role in pushing the company forward.” Klein admits that this in itself is a challenge as this new approach to working, one that will see each person define their own work and their own place in MONETA´s journey, can be met with some resistance and fear. This is where workshops and a strong sense of internal communication play a central role. Klein also empowers staff to make their own decisions. “Naturally for some people it’s very difficult because historically speaking, management will
“ You have to have more of an entrepreneurial way of thinking and have an agile mindset towards developing software or solutions” — Vladimir Klein, Chief Information Officer
make the final decision. I say: ‘you decide but try and think like a manager’,” he says. “This is where we combine communications, learning and workshops, and give them external support in order to seamlessly move forward together as a business.” A major part of MONETA’s transformation is moving towards cloud services which will drive a more agile way of working and in turn create a significantly more flexible business. To this end, MONETA is migrating significant amount of its legacy infrastructure over to a data centre. As part of this migration, Klein will oversee the integration of tens of physical w w w.mon et a . cz
applications to a cloud-based platform. As Klein notes, MONETA is a bank
“In replacing our entire legacy integration platform, we selected Mitra
and not a developer and so the
quite simply because we did not have
company relies on a key strategic
the right level of competence to do it in
technology partner to assist and
house,” says Klein. “They brought us
support the company throughout this
competence and they provided us with
transition. MONETA has called upon
crucial support and implementation
the services of AWS for infrastructure
work. Going back to the complexity of
cloud, for automation products of
this migration, we have over 4500
RedHat and other open source tools
interfaces across all applications
like for example Jenkins or JUnit. As
which had to be integrated.
part of the Integration layer replacement,
“In my experience of similar transfor-
MONETA decided to cooperate with
mations at previous companies it’s
Mitra, a party which has many experi-
taken more than one year to make
ences in WSO2 integration platform.
some real headway. With the support of
Mitra, we’re doing it in few months.” Ultimately, MONETA’s transformation
banking solutions. All of these developments are defined by one clear goal: to
is driven by the customer, and as
enable the most efficient and seamless
technology has evolved over the last
banking experience for customers.
two decades so too has the customer.
“Many customers today just want to
Through the advent of mobile payments,
do everything for themselves through
customers are more demanding than
tablets and mobile phones. They
ever before and for an organisation like
simply do not want to spend time by
MONETA it is crucial to stay ahead of
coming into a branch or contacting a
that demand in order to continue to
call centre. It is crucial that we are able
deliver and exceed expectations.
to handle their requests also fully
To this end, the company devel-
online,” says Klein. “That’s what our
oped an award-winning mobile
mobile app Smart Banka has been
banking application Smart Banka and
able to answer. Through it we can offer
is significantly revamping its online
the customer exactly what they need
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anytime and from anywhere, but most importantly they can access it intuitively with no complications. Right now, we are looking to bring our web banking service to that same level.” Klein highlights the agile way of working again as key to being ready for this demand. This transformation has destroyed the historical barriers between IT and the wider business and brought about a more collaborative business, one that is better prepared to match this evolving landscape. The company has implemented daily stand-up meetings and sprints for all agile squads and moved away from a historical focus on long term delivery in order to make incremental steps on smaller things today and therefore be ready for tomorrow. Key to this is instant customers feedback. “Customers can leave feedback in our Smart Banka app which we take directly to the backlog proposals and discussions with our teams and this is then taken into implementation,” says Klein. “The key points from the customer are directly implemented faster than ever before. “We even conduct research through our brokers. We do this by giving them a laptop or a tablet and they themselves give us feedback if they like it or don’t like it so they can sell our product. It’s all about understanding the end-to-end customer experience.” Klein entered MONETA back in December 2017 but even less than 12 months into this journey he can already point
€400mn Approximate revenue
1994
Year founded
3000+ Approximate number of employees
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to significant success, be it through the mobile application, new customer portal or the migration own data centre to the hosted data centre and integration of AWS cloud into bank environment. Organizational changes were successfully executed in April this year to fit better to business value streams and cloud. Looking towards the future, Klein identifies ambitions to advance agile way of working to all IT Development staff and migrate next applications into AWS cloud with possibility to close a second data centre. Next his focus remains very much on legacy application replacements as migration of card system to the partner cloud and migration and implementation of new web banking. “It’s about making our online banking solutions clearer for our customers, as well as opening it up and expanding it to our wider customer portfolio,” he says. “Banking is complex and there are certain elements surrounding interest rates and the different types of customer. What we want to be able to do is remove some of that complexity and make banking with MONETA simpler, easy and clearer for every single one of our customers.”
“ Banking is complex and there are certain elements surrounding interest rates and the different types of customer. What we want to be able to do is remove some of that complexity and make banking with MONETA simpler, easy and clearer for every single one of our customers” — Vladimir Klein, Chief Information Officer
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