Because I am an eternal optimist, I will list the pros first:

Revenue: The revenue advantages are two-fold. Firstly, small sections of work are completed per iteration. These can already be made available and sold while the project continues. This ensures prompt and steady release cycles. Secondly, developers make prompt changes as requested by product owners. These changes won’t have a huge impact on the base line of the project, as they are handled before developing continues.

Customer satisfaction: Agile inspires active participation from all parties and consistent evaluation of the product. This happens while the developers work. Users or product owners request modifications during development, rather than when everything is done.

Cost Control: The definite time allocation per user story enables a fixed cost even though the product’s requirements may change. The product and features are variables, rather than the budget.

Flexibility: The agile development team expects changes and welcomes them. Not only does it guarantee fulfilled requirements, but meets the approval of the product owner. Instead of having a fixed time line, the team moves the focus onto customer satisfaction.

Product evolution: Because of the constant involvement of the product owners and the entire team, the product grows into the right direction. It ensures that the meets customer expectations and industry regulations, engages the latest technology and encourages learning among all.

Team spirit: Most people enjoy the active collaboration, assistance and group effort in Agile teams. The satisfaction of delivering a working product is immense. It encourages the team spurs it on to greater heights.

And here are the cons:

User commitment: The user (or product owner) of the completed software is very involved in the development cycle. This close collaboration ensures that expectations are met or at least managed. While this works really well, it is quite taxing on the user. When expectations are not met, the sprint/project failed according to Agile. So it is very important for the user to be really committed. This includes:

• communicating requirements / expectations
• meeting with the team on a regular basis
• finding solutions

Changing requirements: In an Agile environment change is welcome throughout the project. This should be a positive point, but there are some negative spin-offs. One of these is scope creep that could cause a never-ending project. Another is a lack of certainty. Changing requirements involve removing user stories from the backlog. This in turn means that the user is not 100% certain of the functionality that will actually be delivered at the end of the project.

Testing: In Agile, testing happens during the development cycle. Not everybody sees this as a good idea. There are two reasons for this. One is that a tester is needed throughout the project, instead of just at the end. The other is that functionality often re-tested more than twice as the different increments of software come together to form a whole. This may make testing extravagant and uneconomical.

Development team: Lastly, some agile teams find developing in Agile very intense. They are expected to achieve a 100% sprint pass rate. The constantly repeating iterations may be exhausting and unattainable for some. So it is important to find a suitable pace for the team.

In the next blog post, we are looking at doing agile in a virtual team… we have first-hand experience here!

A digital onboarding system is the best way to achieve this. The client can go through the well laid out and carefully designed process in the comfort of his/her environment, while leisurely browsing through company profiles and product offerings. Financial institutions will find themselves empowered to take control, and build a relationship with the customer from initial registration to welcome kits and subsequent cross-sell and up-sell activities.

The road to success

Building a digital onboarding system is not an easy task. From the onset, financial institutions need a true, extensive view of their clients to enhance their experience throughout the organisation. An efficient customer strategy to winning the hearts and minds of our clients is essential and not a complex thing to achieve, as most customers just want to feel that they are valued and wanted.

Besides the customer strategy, financial institutions need to invest in a suitable IT system, as the absence thereof has become a major roadblock leading to operational breaks in the client onboarding flow according to the ‘Efficient client onboarding’ whitepaper published on www.cognizant.com.

The next step in building a successful digital onboarding solution lies in good data. Matching and merging existing data into comprehensive records and ensuring that new data is true and complete will offer the insight required to improve customer loyalty and lifespan value. The wealth of information that can be obtained is only priceless when it is accurate and can be transformed into business intelligence.

Shifting the focus

While the central focus of a digital onboarding solution is to give customers a satisfying experience and so ensuring retention, there is a far greater value in it for financial institutions. The effectiveness of sales and targeted marketing campaigns is increased dramatically as they know their clients so well that they can offer the products and services best matched to their needs. This in turn leads to increased effectiveness through customer profiling and more revenue through cross-marketing.

Another aspect that is gained is improved risk management and governance, especially when taking the governmental reporting and disclosure requirements into consideration. It is vital for financial institutions to know their customers and to centralize and maintain high data quality with rigorous validation standards.

Next week we will look at client onboarding using social media…