This is Joren

WHAT’S THIS ABOUT?

Digitisation, digitalisation & customer experience are top of mind for every bank these days. In Belgium KBC has been setting the tone for private mobile banking with KBC Touch for the past few years. To help continue this trend in corporate banking KBC reached out to Clockwork. We helped to concretise their digital strategy and explore what digital corporate banking with a human touch would look like in a world where privacy takes center stage and fintechs are reshaping the playing field.

MY ROLE?

As Clockwork’s digital strategy lead I coordinated a 3-person team throughout this 5-month-long project. I was responsible for:

Project approach
Project & team management
Workshop templates
Workshop facilitation
Processing & presentation of insights
Strategy & roadmap definition

KBC CORPORATE?

With 11 million clients and 42 thousand employees spread over 1500 branches across 10 countries, KBC is firmly nested amongst Belgium’s leading banks. KBC’s Corporate department is focused on supporting the (inter)national endeavours of the top Belgian companies from a financial point of view.

THE PROCESS?

KBC Corporate prided itself (and still does) on its more personal and customer-centric approach compared to its competitors: KBC understood that the corporate banking business is built on personal relationships. We at Clockwork in turn believed that a successful (digital) strategy can only be achieved by involving the impacted people.  Because of this we designed an approach that focused heavily on the involvement of both KBC Corporate customers, employees and KBC's senior management.

WHY? WHAT? WHO FOR?

First order of business: gathering as much information about KBC Corporate and their clients as possible. We wanted to understand both KBC's strategic goals and what they believed to be their customers' requirements so we could hit the ground running whilst keeping track of what's important for KBC.

KNOW YOUR CUSTOMERS

Our workshops with KBC's corporate customers were the beating heart of this project. By asking 3 questions "How do you value your relationship with banks?", "What goes well/wrong in your interaction with banks?" & "What could banks do that they don't do yet?" we got to understand their perspective and gathered some bold quotes along the way.

GETTING EVERYONE ON BOARD

Because the individual needs of corporate clients can vary wildly and we couldn’t fit workshops with all of KBC’s customers in the timeframe of this project, we turned to KBC's very own relationship managers to extrapolate our insights. Not only that, but we invited them to help ideate about possible solutions to our findings.

PYB: PICK YOUR BATTLES

Finally we helped KBC Corporate's Policy Department to seal the deal on their digital strategy. We leveraged everything we learned during this project to weigh all of our proposed initiatives in terms of their possible impact and required effort.

CONNECTING THE DOTS

In the end we delivered a concrete digital strategy in the form of an actionable roadmap, based on the actual needs and expectations of KBC Corporate's clientele.  This roadmap wasn’t the be-all and end-all, but it was a more precise starting point backed by invaluable customer insights.

WHAT DID KBC HAVE TO SAY?

Clockwork helped KBC Corporate Banking to refine our digital strategy into a concrete roadmap, validated by our customers. The speed with which the team familiarised themselves with the corporate banking subject matter was astounding. They really helped us to put the ‘personal dimension’ we value at KBC into our digital strategy. All of this resulted in an impressive result that will keep us busy for months to come.

Jo Vander Stuyft
General Manager KBC Corporate Banking Policy