This document discusses designing a results-driven digital strategy for corporations. It argues that digital strategies are now a top priority for strategic planning as disruptive digital business models become the new normal. A digital strategy can transform a company by joining business, operations, and technology around a shared digital vision. A key part of a digital strategy is improving digital customer experience maturity by deeply understanding customer needs and journeys. However, achieving high digital customer experience is challenging as it requires constant change and adaptation to how customers interact with new technologies. Personalization is also increasingly important, such as using data analytics to provide personalized offers and advice to customers in real-time. A digital strategy must be omnichannel but will likely prioritize mobile experiences as they

1. Customers and Corporations’Digital
Journeys are just Beginning…
Designing a Results Driven
Digital Strategy
By Fabio Mittelstaedt
June 2017
DefineDigitalVision
Change
Mobile
App’s
Wireframe
Build Cross-
-Functional
Team Improve
Digital
Customer
Experience
Do Proof
of Concept
with
Customers
Designing a Results Driven
Digital Strategy

2. Point of View - 2
Designing a Results Driven Digital Strategy
T
he common question
in the market regard-
ing digital strategy is if
leading corporations
and multinationals re-
ally need or “must have it”. However,
disruptive emerging business models
using digital first approach are a very
clear message for the C-Level that it
is not hype, it is rapidly becoming the
new normal.
Remember all the innovative tech-
nologies of the last two decades
that seemed fragmented and more
appealing for punctual process
improvements and gains in isolated
areas like sales, marketing, supply
chain etc? CRM, BI, Big Data, Analyt-
ics, Mobility, Cloud, AI, Robotics,
Telematics, VR, AR are only a few
examples.
It happens that the new generation
driving open innovation, collabora-
tive models and a fascinating new
wave of startups, FinTech, InsurTech
and other niches in different indus-
tries, could finally connect the dots
using all these available technologies
in a simple, integrated and seamless
way.
And how they did it? Simply
reimagining or reinventing
Customer’s Experiences with a
holistic view of what is called to-
day “Customer Journey”, mean-
ing all the phases of a customer
interaction with a brand, product
or service in order to fulfill his
needs, from the moment zero of
motivation passing through re-
search and comparative analysis
of options in multiple channels
or touchpoints (digital and physi-
cal), purchasing and relationship
and customer service post-sales.
Initially, disruptors attacked one
strong pain point or customer
need and tried to build the ideal
customer experience, the customer’s
dream realized without the con-
straints that large corporations and
regulators tend to ignore or label
as not feasible. Do an international
money transfer with a few clicks
paying a small fee, starting a mobile
video call with a specialist doctor as
a on-the-shelf service without having
a health plan or previous appoint-
ment, buying an auto insurance via
mobile in less than two minutes that
charge you for miles driven and give
you back up to 50% of premium if
you don’t have any incident are a
proof that new game changing digital
models are highly desired and ap-
preciated by customers, and came to
stay.
Disintermediation, unbundling
products with digital challengers and
simplifying customer experience are
topics that most financial institutions
learned to respect, developing simi-
lar solutions, partnerships, accelerat-
ing startups (with or without venture
capital) and even acquiring players.
Others are building their own Digital
Innovation Labs.
Bank of America recently announced
the coming launch of “erica”, a new
Digital Assistant combining Artificial
Intelligence, predictive analytics and
cognitive messaging capabilities via
voice command or text to make pay-
ments, check balances and savings,
pay bills, transfer money etc. Their
bet is that this mobile platform,
one of the first aiming to attend the
retail banking focusing on mass and
affluent segments, instead of wealth
customers and investment capital
markets, can establish a risk-taking
innovation built by a huge market
leader, not a FinTech competitor.
This shows that Digital Strategy is
already a Top Priority in the strategic
planning agenda in some industries
and that executive committees
already understood that it is much
more than pure technology and
systems, even if a company is not a
tech native and deliver services or
any type of goods or B2B, digital can
be the catalyst to transform and join
business strategy, operations and
technology in one single shared vi-
sion across the company.
Digital Customer Experience
Maturity
Once that Digital Strategy became
extremely relevant in everyday busi-
ness, Banks and Retailers overall
are struggling to achieve Customer
“Digital can be the catalyst to transform
and join business strategy, operations and
technology in one single shared vision
across the company.”
“Unlike a mathematical
formula that gives you
certainty about the final
result, Digital CX is totally
about uncertainty and
constant change, because it
is anchored on customer’s
mind, how it interacts with
new technologies, products
and services.”
“Unlike a mathematical
formula that gives you
certainty about the final
result, Digital CX is totally
about uncertainty and
constant change, because it
is anchored on customer’s
mind, how it interacts with
new technologies, products
and services.”

3. Point of View - 3
Experience Maturity, recognizing
that the real treasury behind it is in
understanding customer’s dreams,
ambitions, aspirations and daily
habits and attitudes. And that all off
it is transparent in the path to digital
journeys, in the traces that they
leave in the web, mobile apps, social
networks and in the sometimes
under explored in-house consumer
data warehouse.
You just need a structured analytics
engine and a cross-functional team
of motivated strategists, UX design
thinkers and Departmental Experts
to reveal and envision what should
be the enhanced digital customer ex-
perience for all segments, from baby
boomers to millennials and genera-
tion Z. And for sure, do not forget
the most important thing here, talk
directly to your customers, despite of
all your survey investments with the
best research institutes.
But creating, measuring and compar-
ing Digital CX Maturity is not like any
regular business challenge. Corpora-
tions, Consulting Firms and Research
Institutes are trying to rationalize
it through different methodolo-
gies. The only issue is that unlike
a mathematical formula that gives
you certainty about the final result,
Digital CX is totally about uncertainty
and constant change, because it is
anchored on customer’s mind, how
it interacts with new technologies,
products and services.
The relevance about analyzing Digital
CX Maturity from different perspec-
tives: Customer’s Eyes, Competi-
tion Benchmarking and New Digital
Comers is that it can be an effective
method to quickly test and learn and
bring practical insights for improve-
ment in specific processes and cus-
tomer journeys that your team didn’t
notice before.
Some time ago, Fjord developed
the “Love Index”, which aims to
understand and identify how much
people’s experience define the affin-
ity with a product, service, company
or brand and provide actionable
insights for improving the design
of digital CX by mapping how much
an experience is Fun, Relevant,
Engaging, Social and Helpful.
Forrester delivered the “Cus-
tomer Experience Index” (CX
Index™), willing to help Digital
Chief Officers and CX profes-
sionals understand the ups and
downs of CX quality over time
in 18 industries. Consumers are
asked how each brand or prod-
uct is selected based on three
dimensions: enjoyable, easy and
meets needs.
Despite methodologies, the real
question is: “what digital really
means for your business strategy
and for every single customer
that your company is trying to
capture or retain?”
Generic strategies or broad
customer segments do not work
anymore, we are living the new era
of real time personalization.
Personalization is the new
name of the game
Digital experts are using new expres-
sions to try to distinct the natural
“Digital Customer” from the more
resistant segments that slowly ex-
periment the benefits of life digitali-
zation, from how I use my cash, how
I manage macro decisions in my life
and how I make the small everyday
choices, what has been called micro-
moments and how they can create
natural personalization and customer
intelligence to the daily experiences
that really matters. It means that if
I am searching for a new car in the
web and if I just checked my avail-
able credit in my mobile banking
app, I can receive an instant pre-ap-
proved auto loan offer for that BMW
that I was dreaming off in a dealer
near to my location, all in real time.
And that your food requests through
voice command for AI ChatBots like
Siri, Alexa, Jarvis or Google Assistant
can be crossed with data from wear-
ables like Jawbone body media and
fitness trackers and next time you
try to order a meal online, you will
receive a personalized diet advice
about the type of food, proteins and
calories that you should eat in order
to have a balance in your nutrition
and health.
But what this kind of thing has to
do with digital banking and finan-
cial services? Everything. Your daily
habits in life and how you manage
your money are fully connected.
And digital is the link that is building
the bridges for a more integrated
experience. Ideally in a near future
I shouldn’t need thousand different
apps for shopping, payment, learn-
ing, travelling etc. The one-stop-shop
is not a new concept, but only now
we have available all the digital,
analytics, mobility, omnichannel and
artificial intelligence capabilities that
will make it possible.
Your mobile Banking platform
becomes an intelligent and per-
sonalized retail marketplace for all
customer needs, integrating several
providers with secure APIs in the
Banking as a Service platform. This
complete Mobile Banking Mall would
be frictionless, meaning that there
is no data duplication, it is pre-
populated in the background every
time you want to buy a new service
from another financial services
partner sharing this open platform,
generating revenues for incumbent
Banks and FinTech Startups. A Digital
Win-Win.

4. Point of View - 4
Designing a Results Driven Digital Strategy
Big data collects data from your
financial history, social networks,
last purchased products, preferred
channels, demographic data, fam-
ily household profile, geolocation
and can use predictive analytics to
model your personal context in the
customer life cycle. Thus, Artificial In-
telligence just built your persona and
now can instantly send you personal-
ized offers.
That could go from an investment
advice coming from a robot advisor
to an insurance product to a cheaper
air flight ticket for a frequent travel
that you do monthly to visit your
parents in another state.
Moven’s Mobile banking app, is a
very well know digital case, but not
everybody knows that besides all
basic personal financial management
features (very similar to Simple and
GuiaBolso) depending on the analy-
sis of your spending behavior, Moven
can automatically increase your
savings volume sending you simple
personalized recommendations via
a specialized debit card linked with
your app.
Case: BBVA, Personalized Mobile
Videos
Personalization in Digital banking
does not mean the apps features
only, but using digital and customer
data analytics to generate higher
adoption and contribution margin
on products online. BBVA and Allianz
are using Uses Personalized Mobile
Video to Drive Pensions and Digital
Banking with Idomoo. They created
a Future Self video from the perspec-
tive of their future retired customer.
The videos are further customized
to each individual viewer, showing
them the specific amount that they
currently contribute, how much they
can save if they increase the average
contribution, their rates and end of
term savings they could see based
on their current financial status and
activity what would be the monthly
pension income after retirement. In
the same digital platform, just swap-
ping a bar in the mobile bank app,
customers could adjust their pension
plans for best future cost vs benefit.
In the case of BBVA, 40% of target
customers (selected automatically
via analytics campaign engine) saw
the personalized video, resulting in a
78% increase in retirement savings.
Regarding mobile banking personal-
ization, there are many aspects that
do not add too much value for cus-
tomer engagement like design
and photo personalization or
basic things like using geoloca-
tion to find the nearest ATM.
What is really interesting about
personalization is when a bank
use three things in a smart way:
intelligent data analytics person-
alization, real time automated
personalized advice and artificial
intelligence managing it all and
interacting with the customer in
a less robot style and more hu-
man appeal.
Case: Tangerine Bank, Personal
Finance Summary
For the first aspect Tangerine
Bank (previously ING Direct, a Retail
Bank from Toronto, Canada and
part of the Scotia Bank group) has
a very nice way to show customer’s
financial data summary in one small
screen, showing what you have,
what you owe, interest earned and
fees saved since you became a client
and the rest is the typical informa-
tion that most mobile banks have.

5. Point of View - 5
Case: Finie, AI Digital Powered
Banking with Natural Language
And there is a mobile innovation
that intends to join the three points
mentioned before: Finie (meaning
Financial Genie), which is an AI App
for Digital Bank Account. Created
by professors at the University of
Michigan who assembled a small
start-up named Clinc, Finie is a voice-
powered AI platform based on deep
neural networks, an innovative way
to interact with a banking account
using natural language queries (as
opposed to a very limited set of
rule-based commands as most rob
advisors in the market do). This is a
game changing AI technology, more
advanced than Siri and Alexa for
instance.
And what else is different about Finie
comparing to other AI platforms?
Finie is a Banking expert! Its remark-
able natural language processing
engine has specifically trained its ap-
plications with a deeper knowledge
of the financial and banking industry.
Finie is like a fast machine learning,
expanding knowledge and improving
results with every interaction.
Instead of being limited to robotic
boring commands such as, “Show
me my credit card balance”, you
can freely talk to Finie in your own
words asking for instance: “Do I have
enough money to travel to Caribe
next holiday with my family for one
week, spending around US$ 8,000?”
or “Did I spend more on groceries
this month than last?”
Finie is integrated within a banks’
mobile banking application, acting as
“a voice-activated intelligent person-
al assistant” that is able to answer
financial questions unique to each
individual user, offering personalized
spending advice.
This new level of digital banking per-
sonalization may take digital custom-
er experience to a totally different
quality and satisfaction high stan-
dard. A few Banks in Canada like ATB
Financial and Royal Bank of Canada
are trying it, but with the more basic
AI platforms. ATB launched the digi-
tal assistant “Pepper” which pretty
much a customer service robot, since
it does not make transactions. Royal
Bank of Canada Canada’s is offer-
ing e-transfers for its customers via
voice-command
with Siri, Apple’s
virtual assistant.
Case: L’Oréal,
Digital Beauty
Personalization
integrated with
m-Commerce
Going outside
financial services
world, there is a
digital personaliza-
tion innovation
in beauty prod-
ucts retail that I
particularly like because the idea
is simple, the customer need was
latent but nobody could implement
a so user friendly and intelligent
digital platform before: the Make
Up Genius from L’Oréal, launched by
2015. It is an augmented reality app
which allows customers to virtually
try on 4,500 of the cosmetic brand’s
catalogue of products using their
smartphone or tablet.
The Makeup Genius applies bronzer,
eyeshadow, lip gloss, and eyeliner
in real time using facial recognition
technology, enabling the virtual
make up to stay in place as you move
your face. The technology captures
64 facial data points and 100 differ-
ent facial expressions to accurately
place the make up. The app scans
your face, and then allows you to try
out different products or entire make
up looks.
Depending on the context and event:
going to a marriage during the day or
a night dinner or party, the app can
recommend and apply instantly dif-
ferent looks in your virtual face. You
can then save your selfie, share it on
social media, and the app automati-
cally select the products needed for
your make up, add to your mobile
basket, you pay directly through the
app and receive it at home. It means
“really” a seamless and integrated
digital customer experience.
And one lesson learned for seasoned
executives should be: pay attention
to digital best cases from different
industries that do not belong to
your comfort zone. You need to be
creative and open mind when talking
about digital innovation and try to
adapt the best of each idea and join
the pieces in a new original innova-
tion that will work for you market
context and type of customer.
The new digital salesforce models
launched by products industry are a
good example that could be adapted
to rationalize costs with huge struc-
tures of sales representatives in the
financial services industry.
Digital Experience is
omnichannel, but Mobile
will Prevail
When defining a digital strategy,
omnichannel is much more than an
operational decision. Ideally a Bank
should put available 100% of all func-
tionalities, products and services in
digital channels, while keeping them
connected with traditional channels,
allowing customers to go forward
and back through channels without
struggling and have to restart the

6. Point of View - 6
Designing a Results Driven Digital Strategy
process when switching touchpoints.
Citi Card’s Digital Lead, Alice Milligan,
recently declared that made around
85% of services available on mobile
app so far, and will hopefully move
quickly to 100%.
But the main point here is that we
can’t choose what channels cus-
tomers will use in their non-linear
journey. Depending on the indus-
try, digital channels can handle the
full experience from research and
purchase to aftersales service or play
the typical role of decision support
and the purchase will be done on
physical channels, like the car buying
experience. A research from Google
and Luth says that even before going
to a car dealer, customers explore
from 6 to 14 brands online, do on
average 139 google searches, see
14 youtube videos with technical
details about the desired car in sites
like cars.com and more. 71% of these
online activities are performed on
mobile. In addition to that more than
60% of customers use the digital car
configurator tool and more than 40%
simulate auto finance online. Only
after all this digital research, or in
between, customer visit car dealers
in order to do the test drive, negoti-
ate and close the deal.
This seems complex, right? As a mat-
ter of fact, native digital customers
already do it intuitively. That is why
mapping and improving a customer
journey is something that you can’t
do only with common sense inside
your company.
Coming back to Banks, it is easy to
notice that they offer multiple chan-
nels, from branch to social network,
call center, chat, video call, e-mail,
apps, ATM and others. Definitely it is
a very rare situation when you really
start experiencing true omnichannel
integration.
Take as an example what every bank
is trying to do now: implement a
fully digital new checking account
opening experience. After FinTech
players like mBank, IGaranti and
others showed the treasure map,
most leading banks put this available
with steps and technologies that are
becoming a standard like digital sign-
in, face recognition, photo capture
and OCR documents, fingerprint
login etc. And most of these apps are
really great.
The reality is, if you have any issue
post-digital account opening and
contact another channel, typically
there is no context transfer and
customer’s interactions detail his-
tory with data transposed from one
platform to another. That is why
“Your daily habits in life and how you
manage your money are fully connected.
Digital is the link that is building the bridges
for a more integrated experience.
Your mobile Banking becomes an intelligent
and personalized retail marketplace for all
customer needs, integrating several providers
with secure APIs in the Banking as a Service
platform. A complete Mobile Banking Mall.”

7. Point of View - 7
backoffice and customer service are
the most complicated Achilles’ heel
when integrating omnichannel and
delivering new end-to-end digital
banking journeys.
The good news is that there is a lot
of digital technology available to
improve this experience and more
flexible business models disrupt-
ing the market, taking advantage of
business inefficiencies of established
market leaders.
This is the case of Lemonade, a New
York-based insurer for homeowners
and renters. It looks like a peer-to-
peer insurer, this is because they
disintermediated the market by
eliminating brokers from the process,
what made the InsurTech community
call them the “Uber of Insurance”.
They use a artificial intelligence bot
named Maya, that interacts with cus-
tomers through chat, with the value
proposition to get insured through
mobile in 90 seconds and in case of
claims, pay customer on average in
3 minutes. No stress, when you start
a claim in the app, you just answer
a few questions and record a video
telling the details about the incident
and a few minutes later the money is
in your account.
An article published by March 2017
at The Economist web site, described
a real customer claim and told the
science behind it: “Late last year a
customer called Brandon claimed
for a stolen coat. He answered a few
questions on the app and recorded
a report on his iPhone. Three sec-
onds later his claim was paid—a
world record, says Lemonade. In
those three seconds “A.I. Jim”, the
firm’s claims bot, reviewed the claim,
cross-checked it with the policy, ran
18 anti-fraud algorithms, approved
it, sent payment instructions to the
bank and informed Brandon.”
Another good case of linking mobile
app and other channels seamless
in the customer journey is cardless
ATM withdrawal, not thinking only
about the convenience when you
forget your debit card at home, but
also aiming a less risk and quick
operation without identity theft
situation. The discussion here is not
if ATMs will die or survive, it is about
giving real functional technological
examples of omnichannel, consider-
ing that this topic sometimes is too
much theoretical.
In the last months, many Banks and
Credit Card Companies announced
cardless ATM withdrawal, but one of
the first to develop it was Akbank,
from Turkey, using beacons (tiny
Bluetooth 4.0-based devices).
Wells Fargo is going one step ahead
of competition in this area. Their in-
novation team is close to launch the
mobile capability to use Apple Pay to
withdraw cash from ATMs without a
card (5,000 NFC enabled ATMs out of
its 13,000 total network). After you
click on Apple Pay app you will just
need to enter your card PIN to finish
the transaction. Simple like that.
In all these examples, there is
something in common, even in a
omnichannel scenario, digital mobile
is always taking the lead as main
platform. It is absolutely clear and
natural for any Digital Strategist that
omnichannel integration is a key
element of customer success’ path.
“Mobile-First Approach and Apps are the first
thought when teams start a project to digitize
customer journeys. By 2016 more than 90% of
time spent on mobile was in apps and only 10%
on browser, and daily web consumption per user
is getting almost equal in the mobile and laptop.”
“Mobile-First Approach and Apps are the first
thought when teams start a project to digitize
customer journeys. By 2016 more than 90% of
time spent on mobile was in apps and only 10%
on browser, and daily web consumption per user
is getting almost equal in the mobile and laptop.”

8. Point of View - 8
Designing a Results Driven Digital Strategy
There are significant signals that digital channels are gaining preference and that the internet access through Desktop
and Laptop is losing share for the Mobile platform. That is why Mobile-First Approach and Apps are the first thought
when teams start a project to digitize customer journeys. By 2016 more than 90% of time spent on mobile was in
apps and only 10% on browser, according to Flurry and comScore.
Daily web consumption per user is getting almost equal in the mobile and laptop in emerging markets like China
(3h03m mobile, 3h29m laptop) and Brazil (4h48m mobile, 5h36m laptop), while in mature markets web access via
laptop continues much higher. France shows only 1h32 minutes of daily web access on mobile and the triple in laptop
(3h57m). Surprisingly, mobile web access in USA is close to half of the volume in Brazil, with 2h37 minutes.
By 2017, mobile banking may reach incredible 60% of usage in Asia Pacific and 54% in Latin America. Europe and
North America, despite the fact that they are regions with strong mobile banking technology R&D investments, will
show an average range from 42% to 45% of mobile usage. One possible explanation is that both continents have
older aging inhabitants, more resistant to innovative technologies. Millenials share of population are much larger in
emerging markets for instance, and all surveys shows that they are the early adopters and promoters of new digital
banking technologies, along with generation X.
44
45
42
54
60
32
38
43
43
52
Africa/Middle East
North America
Europe
Latin America
Asia Pacific
Mobile Banking Basic Services Usage and Intention By Region
2016 Actual 2017 Forecast
Source: The Nielsen Mobile Shopping, Banking & Payments Survey 2016, analysis Fabio Mittelstaedt.
Mobile
Banking
Adoption
Growth will be
higher in Asia
Pacific and
Latin America
as a trend for
next years,
strongly
pushed by
emerging
markets like
India,
Singapore,
China, Brazil,
Argentina and
Colombia.
2.37
1.32
3.03
4.484.48
3.57
3.29
5.36
USA France China Brazil
Web consumption per user via Mobile and Laptop (Hours per Day)
Mobile Laptop
Source: Statista Digital Market Outlook, April 2017, analysis Fabio Mittelstaedt.

9. Point of View - 9
52% of millennials will be doing payments through mobile banking by 2017, with 47% from generation X. These
are really aggressive numbers, considering that many innovative payment apps from FinTech Startups and even
incumbents, still have security issues to be solved in the mobile architecture, which is relatively new comparing to
other systems like web and branch front office solutions. Here some of the key motivations is the offer of more user
friendly and simple apps and lower fees. Above all, younger digital users like to experiment and have no attachments
or loyalty with financial services providers. They just use it because they like the experience and there is no bureau-
cracy in new Digital “FinTech like” models.
The current usage and future intention to use mobile apps for financial services and personal finance management is
a trend that is not going to decline anytime like in a product lifetime curve that people learn in marketing and admin-
istration courses, because it is changing people lifestyle and making it easier and more dynamic. This trend is becom-
ing a solid reality that is being materialized (or saying better digitized) in the last 8 or 10 years. Proof of that is the
incredible number of finance mobile apps available at Apple Store by March 2017: 49,060 apps, and with the poten-
tial power to consolidate apps from other industries and segments as cash and daily life needs converge naturally, as
you need to buy and pay for goods and services. We will show in this point of view one of the best examples of this
digital converge with “Ant Financial / Alipay’s Digital Strategy Case”.
Building a Strategic Digital
Customer Experience Road-
map
The first step to build your Digital CX
Roadmap is to forget about technol-
ogy. The temptation to use the most
advanced and appealing digital and
mobile technologies shouldn’t be
part of your Experience Strategy
upfront. Super Sex Digital Features
like Location Based Services, Aug-
mented Reality, Artificial Intelligence
Avatar, Smart Robo Advisors for In-
vestments, Gamification… All of this
can used, if they make sense for the
storyline of your customer and for
the value proposition that your busi-
ness strategy is aiming to achieve
and design.
Start from the basics, talk to your
customer, apply user experience
research techniques, do the typi-
cal design thinking workshops with
a multidisciplinary team, and test
hypothesis again with your customer,
even before prototype and minimum
viable product phase.
Try to understand the non-linear
path of CX in the omnichannel
environment and do exercises to
simplify the experience and create
shortcuts in the value chain, using
digital innovations, existing and new
ones to be developed. That is when
big data analytics show its power,
because the customer won’t tell you
everything, but you can consolidate
behaviors of common segments and
prioritize some personas that make
sense for your business and your ap-
plication design.
And don’t underestimate backoffice
processes. Sometimes digitizing a
process may be more important to a
lean experience than a sophisticated
personal finance management dash-
board, and can make the difference
in critical moments as purchase and
customer service, when trying to fix
a pain point in the customer journey.
Put a limit in the complexity of your

10. Point of View - 10
Designing a Results Driven Digital Strategy
UX strategy, a few products, a few
clicks and a killer design that facili-
tate customer’s interaction making
intuitive screens and buttons, just
like Steve Jobs envisioned when
inspired the programmers to create
the Mac interface, yes old school of
design still works a lot…
But the real test of success is when
the empathy with the customer
is achieved and in your next focus
group you listen testimonials like:
“it seems that they guessed what I
wanted, easy and fast, without push-
ing products that I don’t want”.
At this point of the CX Strategic
Blueprint, the CMO, CDO and CIO are
probably satisfied with the prelimi-
nary results of the initial sprints of
your agile development. And then
the CFO asks about the projected
ROI, Revenues Generation, Estimated
Customer Acquisition Curve in the
first year of operation, Costs Amor-
tization, Potential Churn and other
important quantitative and financial
elements to sustain the business
case, that is the value creation part,
for the customer and for the busi-
ness, it must be a Digital Win-Win in
the Customer Experience and Bal-
ance Sheet.
The “Digital Strategy Roadmap”
explain in a simple way the basic
steps to build and implement your
strategy in a high-level vision. This
model is complemented next in this
point of view with the “Digital Strat-
egy Framework”, that brings further
detail organized by structural points
that should be evaluated when de-
signing your digital strategy.
The Roadmap steps are based on the
most advanced techniques of open
innovation, design thinking, agile,
scrum and traditional strategy and
management consulting methodolo-
gies.
The steps are intuitive and not nec-
essarily sequential: understanding
the digital market context, the com-
petitive scenario (including disrup-
tive startups and FinTech), technol-
ogy trends etc makes total sense
when starting any digital project.
But your digital team may choose to
start from the step 2, which is map-
ping digital customer needs and pain
points and trying to transform them
in strong hypothesis for value cre-
ation opportunities and innovative
business models, that is step 3.
Or you could jump from customer
assessment directly to the design
thinking customer journey vision-
ing (step 4) and only after that think
about revenue models and how your
digital idea has the potential to be-
come the next US$ 1 billion unicorn.
The Digital Transformation Strategy
(step 5) is a broad step, because here
you need to have more than the stra-
tegic vision at this point: a structured
business case, sales projections and
all the operational, technological,
human and cultural changes needed
to make the transformation happen,
and before that, engage the board
and the all company with the digital
vision.
The agile implementation (step 6),
based on quick sprints and test &
learn is self-explanatory. Using open
innovation working model, APIs,
intense collaboration of cross-func-
tional teams to create a continuous
digital innovation cycle.
And finally, the Agile Project Man-

11. Point of View - 11
agement is a gradual evolutionary
concept, totally based on lessons
learned in large digital transforma-
tion projects. For instance, in a lead-
ing Bank, I have spent a significant
time first preparing the field, what I
call Digital Building Blocks, in order
to make the organization ready to
develop the most advanced digital
innovation ideas. In some customer
journeys it means basic things like
digitizing processes, going paper-
less, integrating digital channels
with branches’ front end and other
actions.
Some organizations like Deutsche
Bank are many steps ahead of that,
and already established their own in-
novation lab and made several waves
of internal transformation to make
their digital strategy a real success.
A Digital Roadmap requires flexibility
and agility. You need to constantly
learn and adapt your digital strategy,
and be bold in your digital thinking,
allowing mistakes and understand-
ing that quickly test, try and improve
can lead you to a huge success very
soon, if you go fast. So it is not about
finishing a great Digital Strategy
Roadmap and in the next day starting
developing a revolutionary mobile
app that will change your business.
Even small startups commonly don’t
do it this way. Imagine big corpora-
tions that have their cash cow and
star products that generate great
profits for decades. It is always a
phased approach, going forward and
back again, and educating employees
with a different digital mentality, like
if everyday you challenged yourself
to create a new business or replace
your own product portfolio.
Digital Transformation
is about Reinventing the
Business
Typically, most large incumbent
Banks launch fancy new mobile apps,
but ignore completely the toughest
customer pain points, that would re-
quire a strong change management
effort in the governance model, com-
pany culture, core banking and CRM
systems, internal processes, paper
elimination, digitalization and auto-
mation, backoffice workflow rules,
new training for branches, salesforce
reorganization and even revision of
contact center outsourcing contracts.
It means that digital transformation
can’t be a cosmetic change in the
design of your digital channels and
investing heavily in digital marketing
and mass advertising to convince
your customer that you are the best
digital bank.
Must be a new attitude, culture and
rethink strategically the business
model, value proposition, revenues
model, core costs, segmentation,
product portfolio and the new profile
of your needed digital talent work-
force. Smart Bots don’t implement
digital roadmaps.
FinTech and InsurTech Startups do
not have a millionaire cash flow
and a broad customer base and the
terabytes of big data about customer
behavior as leading financial institu-
tions possess, but they bring two
lost assets in large corporations:
simplicity and true customer
centricity.
“A Digital Roadmap
requires flexibility and
agility. You need to
constantly learn and
adapt your digital
strategy, and be bold in
your digital thinking,
allowing mistakes and
understanding that
quickly test, try and
improve can lead you
to a huge success very
soon, if you go fast.”

12. Designing a Results Driven Digital Strategy
Point of View - 12
Results & Insights: Continu-
ously Improving Experience
If in your digital strategy you had to
choose one first priority KPI, certain-
ly it should be something new and
broad like “digital customer journey
success”, meaning that along all the
journey and steps interacting with a
brand, how the typical most stress-
ful pain points simply disappear in
the design of your enhanced digital
experience, and as a result of that
you do not need to call the contact
center, do not need to go to a branch
and do not need to email your bank-
ing account manager to handle the
top list of issues affecting customer
satisfaction in the sales and after-
sales stages of the relationship with
a financial service provider.
Example of Best Digital Mobile Ex-
perience: Blocking a Credit or Debit
Card
One of the most common examples
is the urgent need to block a credit
or debit card, when minutes can
make a difference when you lost
your card or when it has been stolen.
Imagine you are travelling for vaca-
tions with the family and your card
was theft. Great probability that you
do not have a laptop close to your
hands, but almost 100% chance
that your smartphone is with you.
This way, the mobile app experience
should be the focus of any Bank for
this critical task. Santander Mobile
App, for instance, offer one of the
most simple and intuitive experienc-
es to block a card: you just login with
fingerprint, click on cards and then
on block card. Three clicks with no
screen scroll, no unnecessary infor-
mation, data fields are all pre-popu-
lated in the background and the call
to action buttons and icons are clear
and easy to find in the screen. The
same is not true for other Competi-
tor Banks offering the same function-
ality in their mobile app. The main
issues noticed in these other banks
are multiple screens, buttons and
process is not clear in the application
and when you finally find the right
place after trial and error, a lot of
information is requested like details
explaining why you are blocking your
card, security questions, if you wish
or not to receive another card etc.
“Mobile Banking Sell? Or it is
just about a better experience?”
At this point, validating your Digital
Dashboard with the Steering Com-
mittee, probably the CSO and CFO
may have done the same question:
“Mobile Banking Sells? Or it is just
about a better experience?” The les-
sons learned so far in Digital Trans-
formation Projects implementation
is that digital shoppers conversion
rates that typically vary from1% to
5%, can jump from 7% to 10% if you
develop an intelligent offering en-
gine, including cross-sale and up-sale
capabilities lever-
aged by analytics
and next best
offer, what I call
“smart digital
revenues model”,
where the goal
is to generate
cash in cycles from microments in
the daily life like personalized digital
offers of food, consumer goods,
apparel, electronics, services, travel
and entertainment up to changes in
your life cycle that drives you to buy
a car, an insurance or think about a
pension plan for the future.
Conversion rates in digital platforms
must be high in order to sustain the
business case for ongoing invest-
ments. This is result of at least
three elements: creating innovative
models, delivering them in a power-

13. Point of View - 13
ful digital & omnichannel experi-
ence and bringing to the customer’s
awareness an attractive value propo-
sition, that goes beyond pure pricing
discounts, establishing a positive
relationship with the brand.
Understanding the new all day con-
nected on multiple devices reality is
something that is not responsibility
of design thinkers and marketers
only, but of all executives, because
they allow you to enter in customer’s
digital life through the front door.
Thinner light Ultrabooks, the latest
iPhone or Samsung Galaxy or a re-
versible tablet/notebook. The device
doesn’t matter so much. Screens of
all these devices are getting bigger,
since user research
experience shows
that customers
need to see high
quality product
images, videos, in-
tuitive screens and
easy simulations
and secure environ-
ment to enter pay-
ment information.
If your mobile app
delivers all these
features, conversion
rates can increase by 20% or higher.
If you add analytics intelligence, per-
sonal and context based interactions,
it can move up to 60% or more, tak-
ing your conversion rate from 3%-5%
range to 7%-10%.
This is valid for large corporations
going digital. Sure, for startups and
FinTech the metrics are different:
number of app downloads, people
using the app and making transac-
tions on the digital platform. Other
KPI’s like average value spent online
continue the same. This is the output
of innovation, not the input or mo-
tivators that can explain why some
digital players become unicorns and
others not. The level of disruption
in the digital business model, easi-
ness of digital customer experience,
lower prices and fees due to disin-
termediation and lower overhead,
are some common factors, but can’t
summarize all the key digital success
elements.
Case: Ant Financial / Alipay’s Digital
Strategy
The largest FinTech Unicorn by 2017
is Ant Financial (controlled by Ali-
baba Executive Chairman Jack Ma),
valued at US$ 60 Billion, owner of
Alipay, which manages almost 60% of
all China’s payments through digital
channels and that have many other
integrated digital ventures like the
mobile bank called “MyBank”.
And coming back to original ques-
tion: Why Ant Financial / Alipay is
the most succesfull unicorn in the
world?
The answer is not just because they
are based in China, where is located
the largest population in the world:
1.4 Billion (but sure it helped them
to get 450 million users, being in-
clusive both for the average citizen,
unbanked, and for the small and
medium enterprises). It is because
Ant Financial / Alipay is extremely
customer centric in the heart of their
digital strategy and financial services
strategy.
Their vision and ambition was to
build an entire digital ecosystem to
cover all Chinese Customer’s Finan-
cial Needs, and also all other every-
day habits where you need cash or a
robust digital wallet, as some define
in the market. Or a “Lifestyle app”, as
Alipay define itself. And the position-
ing slogan makes sense, because
they are much more than a Digital
Wallet.
If you look at Apple iTunes’Alipay
page at https://itunes.apple.com/
us/app/alipay-makes-life-easy/
id333206289?mt=8, it is impressive
to see the list features that the Digi-
tal Platform deliver to users:
1. Send/Receive money from your
peers;
2. Transfer money to friends or split
the bill at your favorite restaurant;
3. Card free payment at millions of
merchants;
4. Top up your mobile phone and pay
your utility bills;
5. Place and track orders in Taobao
and TMall;
6. Order food from local restaurants
or book a taxi;
7. Manage your money with wealth
management products;
8. Free off-site cross-bank transfer /
credit card repayment and loans;
9. Scan & Pay – Scan & use the QR
code to pay at your local stores;
10. Book Air/Rail/Movie Tickets, at
ease;
11. Enjoy hundreds of discounts and
promotions from various merchants;
12. Group account facility to manage
expenses within family and friends
circle;
13. Donate/Participate in walkathons
along with your friends.

14. Designing a Results Driven Digital Strategy
Point of View - 14
For instance, an incumbent Bank
wants to deliver a new Mobile Wal-
let for Millenials or Digital Checking
Account for Mass Segment. In order
to deliver a full digital experience
in the Customer’s standpoint on
the opening account / onboarding
journey, many changes must hap-
pen, from eliminating paper con-
tracts and physical signatures, to
automating backoffice routines and
doing customer data analytics in real
time. In the meantime, the bank will
probably need to review the role,
profile (and eventually the sizing) of
salesforce and front office advisors at
branch and call center.
In the end of the day, to obtain the
best cost reduction while reengi-
neering processes and creating new
digital experience models outside
for customers and workflows inside
for employees, it is unavoidable to
combine advanced digital technology
and analytics with structural changes
Despite all these exciting features,
Alipay’s Design and Digital Customer
Experience is highly friendly, easy to
use and effective for all types of cus-
tomers. Probably they have the most
impressive social payments network
globally. And also, the most practical
digital payments solution for un-
banked and low-income users.
Another integration that Alipay did
and is amazing is between their giant
e-Commerce platform composed
of Alibaba and Marketplace Mobile
App Taobao, facilitating the shopping
experience. Taobao’s social media
features in some aspects are bringing
innovation lessons for the estab-
lished leader Facebook. Keep people
connected and buying is the dream
of every retailer in the world. But
despite their aggressive online sales
strategy, Alipay didn’t forget the
physical shopping experience: you
can use the QR Code Reader feature
in Alipay’s app and instantly read a
code and pay a product, enabling a
frictionless customer journey.
The range of Alipay allows Ant
Financial to capture an incredible
amount of customer data. This data
is not static as a trophy in a data
center. They really have a Big Data
Strategy and can generate actionable
insights with a very specific goal,
engage customers online, creating a
phenomenon that digital experts are
labeling as “social media commerce”.
And how it works?
They analyze customer’s online buy-
ing patterns, which means millions of
data points and automatically invite
users, during their navigation online
in the web and mobile platforms, to
join custom interest groups, which
from special algorithms, suggest
higher affinity topics according to
each individual’s profile, much more
than a segmentation.
While exchanging views and opin-
ions about products and brands, this
social experience makes shopping
more frequent and engaging. The re-
sult is fantastic leading to an average
7 visits/day/user to Taobao’s mobile
commerce app. The average ticket
per unique user/year is greater than
US$ 1,200.
And in order to enable the health
and credibility of its financial ser-
vices and eCommerce apps growth,
Ant Financial developed too the
first credit agency in China, named
“Sesame Credit”, which an intel-
ligent automated credit-scoring
that leverages big data (online and
offline), purchasing history, social
media presence and digital customer
behavior to build a strong analytics
machine that provides the group the
capability to make credit available
to Chinese Consumers and Small
Entrepreneurs.
Higher Revenues and Customer Satis-
faction are undoubtedly the most de-
sired targets of digital strategy proj-
ects. On the other hand, we should
not forget cost reduction, with an
important parameter: reduce costs
while increasing satisfaction and
revenues, what implies in profound
changes in corporations’ businesses
and processes.
“Digital Strategy is
not only about
digitizing processes
and customer
journeys, it is about
creating a more lean
and efficient
operating model,
that reflects a
new culture
of doing business.”

15. Point of View - 15
in the organization and high levels of
automation. The combined ben-
efits, considering direct and indirect
levers, can be extremely attractive,
going from 5% to 35% reduction,
depending on your strategic plan and
execution.
So, Digital Strategy is not only about
digitizing processes and customer
journeys, it is about creating a more
lean and efficient operating model,
that reflects a new culture of doing
business.
Digital Strategy Framework,
Imperatives for Success
Frameworks are not always easy
to understand and are more com-
mon for complicated technology
architecture schemes. The point is
that Digital Strategy is something
that stays in between business and
technology, and should be always
customer driven, otherwise nobody
will use your digital platform, only
NASA scientists.
There are many methodologies and
recipes to develop a digital strategy,
what sometimes generate different
visions. If you are a Product Manager
or a UX Design Lead or a Scrum Mas-
ter or simply the Client that bought
the Digital Project, there is a great
probability that despite the fact that
you organized a multi-disciplinary
team and they are working together
in the same war room, thousands of
different paths and views are pos-
sible.
That is why in this Digital Strategy
Framework the simple thing was to
put together key pillars and impera-
tives for success that are common
to most successful corporate digital
strategy projects. You may not need
to use it all, and depending on the in-
dustry and strategic market context,
customer needs, competition and
level of disruption from challengers,
you will have to combine distinct
building blocks in phased roadmaps.
It is summarized in 6 value levers:
1. Vision;
2. Prototype;
3. Capabilities;
4. Leadership (and Digital Tal-
ents overall);
5. Channels;
6. Support.
This framework complements the
“Digital Strategy Roadmap” model,
previously explained, which brought
a phased step by step approach.

16. Designing a Results Driven Digital Strategy
Point of View - 16
Some final thoughts with imperatives
for success about Designing a Results
Driven Digital Strategy:
1. Start your Digital Strategy
always with the Customer
perspective, be open to hear
and change from a product
feature and pain point up to
the entire business model;
2. Use Big Data and predictive
analytics to anticipate and
envision future customer
needs and create real inno-
vation that is a combination
of rich insights;
3. Don’t rush to go after the
most complex digital innova-
tion like embedding AI on
your mobile app, first make
sure that you are delivering
a consistent Digital Customer
Journey;
4. Agile methodologies aside,
do not forget to make the
time investment to gener-
ate your Digital Strategy
Roadmap and engage all the
organization with the same
vision, otherwise your plan
may be too tactical and with
a narrow vision;
5. More important than tech-
nology, think first how you
will attract the best digital
talent and transform all your
workforce and C-Level on
Digital First Thinkers and
Executers;
6. In the beginning of your
Digital Strategy implementa-
tion, make sure that you will
simultaneously do the quick
wins to gain the organiza-
tion’s confidence and at
same time deliver digital
cost reduction to internally
fund your big Digital Innova-
tion Bets. It means that your
organization will be more
efficient, with a lean oper-
ating model, high levels of
automation and new digital
revenues streams sustaining
business growth;
7. Put a big target around
digital personalization of-
fering through mobile and
omnichannel. The Digital
winners will be who use ana-
lytics and real time context
to make personalized offers
and specialized advisory
to Customers and also B2B
Clients;
8. Do not underestimate the
level of effort and energy
that you will have to put in
change management for
the backoffice and customer
service support areas, most
new digital business models
do not rise or do not get cus-
tomer’s adoption because
the digital experience in only
good in the appearance, but
many service and logistics
dissatisfaction points con-
tinue to exist;
9. Integration is the hardest
technological challenge
that you will face to execute
with mastery your digital
strategy. If you are a leading
incumbent, this is 100% true.
Integrate new digital chan-
nels with traditional chan-
nels, integrate core banking
Digital
Imperatives
for Success

17. Point of View - 17
systems, integrate different
data marts to enable digital
analytics and many other
aspects. Before investing a
lot of time and money on
this odyssey of integration,
consider the possibility to
rethink from scratch your
old IT Architecture (that
works pretty well but is not
a competitive advantage for
the future) into a completely
new “Digital Architecture”.
Define graduals cycles of
change tied to benefits for
the business through digital
innovation. And meanwhile,
while the architecture
transformation is happening
maybe you will need assem-
ble temporary digital units
for new businesses, other-
wise you could stop innova-
tion process. An example of
that are incumbents launch-
ing digital neobanks with
independent structure and
cost centers. Sure, without
a minimum integration with
core systems nothing works,
but some technological flex-
ibility is crucial to make not
just your IT department, but
the entire company an agile
machine;
10. Find the right equilibrium
between risk management,
cybersecurity and simple and
seamless customer experi-
ence of your digital platform.
If you increase too much the
security measures on mobile
apps, you may reduce fraud
risk, but make the experi-
ence hard for users. Fast
sign-in through biometrics,
voice or face recognition are
a good example. Even today
the mobile app of some
incumbent banks requires
several steps, tokens and
passwords to access your
mobile banking app. For
every transaction, the same
concept may apply, with two
or three clicks maximum and
no screen scroll, a customer
should finish an action on
mobile. That is why it is so
important that experts in
cybersecurity, compliance,
regulations and legal par-
ticipate in digital cross-func-
tional teams in all key digital
innovation projects and agile
teams;
11. Pricing and Fees are a very
important issue of your
Digital Business Model.
Many incumbents launched
Digital Mobile Banking apps
with exactly the same pric-
ing structure from standard
business model and physical
channels. The point is not
about doing a price war with
startups and FinTech, that
have lower structural costs,
but using all the key ele-
ments of digital like analytics
and artificial intelligence to
increase your share of wal-
let through more effective
digital cross-sale, up-sale
and new models like digital
subscription, on demand
services and others, enabling
you to have a digital pricing
intelligence and flexibility;
12. Measure the success of Digi-
tal Customer Journeys and
how they will bring higher
profits to the stakeholders
is highly difficulty, turn your
digital ROI measure into a
top priority, automate KPI’s
analysis in real time building
a robust Digital Dashboard;
13. Define a hybrid digital orga-
nization, with a dream team
of cross-functional experts
and executives fully dedi-
cated to digital transforma-
tion and a matrix structure
with focal points for digital in
all areas of the organization,
unifying common goals and
objectives. For those more
aggressive on digital invest-
ment, you may think about
establishing your own inno-
vation lab or design center;
14. Make innovation and bench-
marking an obsession in your
company, you need to be
aggressively agile mapping
innovation in the market,
adapting and creating your
own digital innovation, with
a dynamic go to market lead
time, keeping you one step
ahead of competition. And
don’t forget to look at Digital
Innovation lessons cross-
industry. There are always
some aspects that you can
incorporate in your own in-
novation model;
15. Foster open innovation and
increase your value network
constantly. It is not just
opening APIs or sharing cus-
tomer data like some bank-
ing regulations in Europe are
defining, but letting business
partners participate actively
in the digital innovation
cycles and sprints. Remem-
ber, this includes your cus-
tomers providing you direct
feedback, not just through
research institutes;
16. Develop new analytics risk
score models for your digital
innovation models in bank-
ing, retail and any other rev-
enues based business online.
In some markets, selective
FinTech players are testing
more broad risk models
that include not just stan-
dard quantitative data from
credit institutions, includ-
ing secondary demographic
data, online behavior, social
media habits and network,
purchase history etc. The
Chinese FinTech Unicorn Ant
Financial is one Company
doing this more complete
and flexible scoring analysis
with the ultimate goal to
be more inclusive for target
segments like the unbanked
and millennials starting their
careers. On demand services
that do not require signing
annual contracts with loy-
alty restriction are another
solution that Startups are
bringing to change the risk

18. Designing a Results Driven Digital Strategy
Point of View - 18
score paradigm. A good
example is the Oscar Digital
Health Platform, which allow
customers that do not have a
health plan to buy separated
services like a mobile video
call with a specialized doctor
without previous appoint-
ment, you just pay online
with your credit or pre-paid
card or other tools like pay-
pal, and you get the immedi-
ate service. You can later pay
for a complementary face to
face appointment with the
doctor if needed and do the
required health exams, using
the online appointment tool;
17. CRM and analytics are not
optional items in your Digital
Strategy. For instance, a Mo-
bile Banking app without any
analytics intelligence is just
one more channel. Analytics
gives you the capability to
recognize individual cus-
tomer’s profile and needs,
do personalized offers in the
right moment for the right
model and pricing, provide
services in a more intimate
way, knowing the history and
personality of your cus-
tomer. Analytics together
with CRM will make your
digital platform a live organ-
ism that learn everyday like
a machine learning system,
not something static, and
will bring effectiveness for
your customer’s acquisition,
cross-sell & up-sell, reten-
tion and loyalty strategies.
And finally, big data real time
streaming analytics (not just
predictive analytics) is a key
component to make this
CRM + Analytics equation
work with perfection, giving
you the ability to anticipate
customer needs and act right
when opportunities happen,
instead of analysis based on
past behaviors, which are
good to minimize customer
churn, but not so adequate
for the speed of the digital
customer;
18. Complementing the point
above you need to have a
super expert digital market-
ing team in order to make
your digital strategy effec-
tive. This team will not do
the marketing advertising in
the old way, putting all your
eggs in TV Media. FinTech
players were naturally forced
to become masters in digital
marketing, because they did
not have budget for mass ad-
vertising. And they got mil-
lions of downloads and new
digital customers this way.
So, your new digital mar-
keting team need to build
and use proficiently capa-
bilities like SEO, online Lead
Management, Social Media
Marketing, Personalized
Push Mobile Offers, Location
Based Services, Campaign
analytics and others, with a
focus on marketing ROI. Do
not delegate all this change
and responsibilities for
your Advertising or Digital
Agency, you need to have an
in-house digital marketing
governance body;
19. Your Company should have
a Venture Capital and M&A
mindset. Digital innovation is
spread in the market, in the
Small & Medium Enterprises,
early stage Startups, that
competitor that you never
paid too much attention,
smart ideas from emerging
markets and more. Keep an
strategic eye on all Digital
players and rapidly make
decisions about investing,
acquiring, accelerating, in-
cubating or just establishing
strategic alliances strength-
ening your ecosystem. This
can speed up your rhythm of
digital innovation and future
growth of your business.

19. Point of View - 19
Author: Fabio Mittelstaedt
Innovation and Digital Strategist
June 2017