Establishing a strong digital foundation for a 150-year-old building society with business process re-engineering and RPA

Banking and financial services organisations have been at the forefront of digital transformation. The success rate, however, has been uneven. Digital transformation discussions are often hijacked by conversations around the latest technologies and ignore the building blocks on which these technologies must rest. Moreover, initiatives that are not rooted in the organisational vision and that lack a well-thought-out framework are likely to miss their goals. Yorkshire Building Society (YBS), a 150-year-old organisation based in the UK, took measured steps to embrace digital as a way to reaffirm its commitment to its core businesses of mortgage and savings. The challenging market conditions, largely owing to disruptions caused by FinTechs, led YBS on this path. High dependence on paper-based processes made the business slow, adding unnecessary layers of complexity. YBS wanted to inject agility and efficiency into its operations with digitisation and process automation and lay the groundwork for transformation. The YBS story shows how a deep understanding of business challenges must influence the choice of technology and the approach to transformation. A successful framework must be structured around the critical building blocks and leverage the interplay of technology with process, people and culture to create cumulative outcomes. Here are a few takeaways from the case study: • Customer, and not technology, should be placed at the heart of digital transformation. • Business process re-engineering and robotic process automation (RPA) must go hand in hand for greater outcomes. • Small step changes can become a force multiplier as processes are automated and the foundation for speed and agility is established.