How we form teams and build processes for creating digital banking products

    It is customary to speak negatively of work in the IT departments of banks. It is believed that a normal person is unbearably bored there, that subordination leaves no freedom, and no one needs skills acquired in banks. There is also an opinion that IT in banks is guys over 40, with long hair and longing for the times of Nirvana. In general, they say different things.

    We talked about how things are going in the digital products division of Alfa Bank, as well as plans for the future, with Alena Bocharova, director of retail products at Alfa Bank.

    About the essence of projects and customer focus


    - We do not “come up with” projects and products. We do not do services for the sake of services. We are now in the paradigm of a customer-oriented approach. Speaking humanly, we go from the needs of people. “What happened before?” You ask. We will not be tempting that one way or another, earlier products and services in Russia were created, for the most part, based on the interests of business.

    A few years ago, starting with Sense, we started a different path: not to convey value to the client, but to create it based on its values. It would seem an obvious story, but it became a revolution in the creation of digital products. Very soon we will introduce one of these products “for people” and “from people”.

    How did this approach affect the mobile banking that we are creating? Today we are going to personalize the mobile with the help of the entire bank. A mobile bank should become an entity much larger than just “an application where you can see the balance and pay for Internet and mobile communications”.

    We are implementing the concept of “to do”, in the common people “tudushka”. The ability to create a to-do-list in which the user will be able to plan things important for him, his regular affairs, such as paying for housing and communal services, kindergarten, OSAGO, rent, paying off mortgages and others. A kind of finance calendar. There are a number of solutions that will help our clients with recommendations based on their financial behavior.

    We recently realized that we are against the patterns inside. The templates, in principle, come from a certain wretchedness of the existing infrastructure (and in this case we are talking not only about banks, but also about the surrounding system in general). Templates appeared as an attempt to make life easier for a client. For example, on average, a man 35-40 years old, with a family, up to 40 payments per month. He lives in the paradigm of the fact that endlessly pays for something, fills, and nothing can be forgotten. The templates were some kind of solution to this problem.

    The concept of to do makes the whole process smarter, more flexible, and, of course, effective, in terms of saving time (and time today, as we know, is the most expensive that is) and in terms of efficiency (this is about “do not forget ”And“ on time ”).

    An important task in this concept is to make it possible for a person to say “This is what I want to do myself, I didn’t think about it, but this is also cool, thank you, and then let the operator start the payment”.

    The future of banking is an adaptation for each client directly. We do not go to the marketplace, we go to the creation of a personalized Universe of the client, in which we take into account all aspects of his life, things that are important to him.

    An extremely important goal along this path is to learn in such a way that the client is always on hand and always on time. Do not go to him when you do not need. It is becoming increasingly difficult for people every day to exist in the world of “caring for them” from all kinds of businesses. Our idea here is simple - any of our actions / advice to the client should be useful. And this KPI is pretty simple to calculate and verify. If all the hints were used, then everything is fine. If not, it means that some hints, tips and recommendations are superfluous, which means that we have not completed it.

    About competitors


    - One of our competitive advantages is often considered a rather informal style of team building. I don’t think that the fact of building a team the way it is done with us is already a full reason for pride, each player has his own goals.

    The process is built on purpose, and not vice versa.

    If we single out something that is actually an important difference, it is culture (based on people, including those who come to us from competitors). We are more patient, we give employees the opportunity to organize themselves in teams - independently, without a go-ahead from above and making lists of who should work with whom and with whom.

    We managed to build processes in such a way that people can choose their own people and build productive relationships.

    The second element is that we have very strong leaders. These people know how to make cool analysts out of analysts, how to take a junior developer to a new level. They also know how to see talents and abilities. For example, to see that a person in a communication or testing team can become a very effective product as an oouner, help a person go this way and, in fact, retrain.

    The third point is the value of the employee and his time for work with us is quite high. Now we employ about 260-300 people. The main goal is stability.

    The fourth is about freedom and respect for the individual. There are clear requirements for the goals and their achievement. But we are for people to dream and have the opportunity to realize their dreams. Sometimes in the minds of children some fantastic things are born. Setting a goal, it is not particularly important for us how a person comes to it. Yes, we will support if a person lacks his own strengths, some knowledge or skills, but we will never grab a spoon from a person so that he “eats more correctly”.

    There is still a very important point. Personally, it is important for me that those who work in my teams are happy not only inside the office, but also outside it. Therefore, we respect the time that a person should spend with his family. We do not rob families, again, we return to the idea that today the most expensive thing is time. If the family of my guys is happy, then they begin to love what a person is doing inside the office. Love and support. It is very important.

    Perfect bank


    - Here it is necessary to immediately note one main thing.

    Everyone lacks one understanding: to describe the ideal state is nonsense. How many people - so many opinions. A person can visit different situations, so here and now we can’t come up with everything at once, you can’t talk like that.

    Most likely, we will come to the conclusion that customers will win thanks to one main request. The client, entrusting his funds to the bank, in addition to reliability, first of all requires one - “Bank, just be invisible, but be where I am. Work and don't give me any problems. ”

    The faster everyone turns to face the client (instead of a known place), the faster the banks will become those who do not interfere with the client. And the competition will move from the sphere of production speed of new features and the release of new updates to the service sector.

    Commands and Powers


    - The most difficult thing is always people. Everything else can be solved quickly. Some process to rebuild, some to change. I noticed that we are all talking about the fact that we have come to a new reality - big data, machine learning, neural networks, etc. It all changes, but people do not. People, for the most part, are very inert.

    Now I have a lot of talk with the guys about the credentials. People often believe that in order to do something great, they need authority. And I'm trying to tell you that authority in the new reality is a very ephemeral substance. Today they are. Tomorrow they have changed. The day after tomorrow they are gone. I am sure that it is not necessary to give “authority”, but to create opportunities.

    When you are an expert in your area of ​​responsibility (and you are an expert, if you receive an SMS twice a month about salary receipts), then you can do almost everything you can to achieve the goal for which you were hired. This is unlikely to be an “abuse of authority”, no matter what you do, in any case, I don’t remember that. I don’t remember situations when a person passionately and professionally went to his goal, sometimes not fitting into the usual banking world, and it would turn out that he “exceeded his authority”. If actions fit into the culture and into the framework of general human adequacy.

    Frames are in the heads, not in the powers.

    The leader’s job is to give, help, explain, show examples, expand the scope. Again, create opportunities. Opportunities for users, for the development of their people, for the growth of their service or product.

    What can be considered an achievement is viable, self-developing teams. Sometimes teams come to us (that is, a product, a tester, a scrum-master, designers, developers, analysts) and take on one team a common KPI.

    I'm really proud of that. People trust each other so much in terms of professionalism and teamwork that they are ready to sign up not for a personal KPI, which depends only on them and their own skills, but on a team.

    New opportunities and new people


    Our guys are very well focused on self-development and improving their skills. Over the past six months, I quite often raised employees and gave them new jobs - they were ready for this.

    Of course, there are always people who use the capabilities of our unit as a career springboard. This is a good line in the resume, and new contacts, and a great opportunity to upgrade skills. But there are fewer such, one might say, such units. For me, the main thing is not why people come to work with you, but why they then stay.

    What would be desirable when changing roles - is that the employees at the same time experience less stress. The very practice of changing places or roles is effective. Of course, at the same time it is quite energy-consuming and complex, but effective.

    I have the conviction that when a person takes a position for a long time, he gradually begins to acquire a certain list of "No." That is, he knows the inner kitchen and some (even hypothetical) problems so well that sometimes he will not undertake any tasks in advance, because he has this “No” in his head. A new person in place in this regard is tabula rasa. He has a task, he goes and tries to do it in all available ways, he does not know all these “No”. If he sewed in one place, he longs for new achievements, he is undermined and does. As a rule, all new ones and those who are on new roles have awl. And the desire for accomplishment, too.

    Some companies sometimes recruit new people just for the sake of new people. This is not so with us, as I said, culture is a very important guarantee of the existence of teams. A large mass of newcomers without this culture can begin to erode it very much, which will bring an imbalance to existing teams. It is very important to make the process environmentally friendly.

    This does not mean that we are not recruiting people, on the contrary, there are many vacancies now. But we can normally gain such a quantity precisely because the backbone of very cool guys has already been formed. We like the culture we created. I like the way teams work and develop. New talented people enrich us. But this is a process that is very conscious with us.

    We try to continue to work in the same rhythm and on the same principles. If you are close to such views on teamwork and values, come to talk to us, see for yourself how it all works, all of a sudden this is exactly what you always dreamed about, and you are the one we have been looking for for so long.

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