Wells Fargo has a global team of information technology and security professionals executing an engineering-led customer-centric IT strategy. They also provide the company’s global customers 24/7 banking access through branch, digital, ATM, and other channels. They’re united on one mission when it comes to technology.
And that mission is a simple one explains Amit Thawani, Chief Information Officer (CIO) for Consumer Data & Engagement Platforms (CDEP) at Wells Fargo: “All tech employees at Wells Fargo are tasked with working towards delivering stable, secure, scalable, and innovative services at speed that delight and satisfy our customers while unleashing the skills potential of our employees.”
Technology Strategy
At the heart of Wells Fargo’s vision for the company’s future is using technology to deliver solutions. Furthermore, they provide best-in-class financial services to its 69 million customers. Indeed, Wells Fargo is well versed in personalising customer experience to deliver innovation.
“Our strategy has two pillars,” explains Thawani. “The trusted operator and the business co-creator. A technology shop can only be trusted if it offers stability, and with that security is first and foremost. Everything to do with the technology has to have the right skills to support it. And then how can you them build on this foundation for technology to co-create with your business partners? Next, we have to talk about scalability. Can the tech shop scalable to support business needs? Are you able to generate the speed at which the business would like to go forward with new propositions? And most important is satisfaction. Is business considering technology as their partner to the level where they really feel satisfied with the outcomes of technology?”
This is the core of a technology strategy across Wells Fargo that’s designed to align a generic consumer technology strategy for all lines of service – from consumer and commercial to investment banking and wealth management.
The ecosystem mission
“My team has a specific mission here,” adds Thawani. “We have a vision for CDEP (Consumer Data and Engagement Platform) – this ecosystem will provide integrated omni-channel, personalised, and data-driven solutions to enhance client acquisition and retention while deepening relationships to further enable banker productivity. This covers the entire spectrum where we have customers and bankers who would benefit from the technology we are working to develop.”
Consumer Data & Engagement Platform (CDEP)
Investing in CDEP to manage data in one place and improve overall customer engagement is important for Wells Fargo. “Data is sensitive, and we need to be very responsible in the way we deal with it,” adds Thawani. “Our ambition was clear. To build an analytics platform fuelled by reliable data from hundreds of systems of record. We wanted to be 100% sure of the data’s lineage.”
“A large majority of consumer banking data has been ingested into this platform already,” reveals Thawani. “We have built hundreds of traits based on different business rules. Optimising our data pipeline has seen a significant increase in speed and efficiency over the past year. The plan is to go even further because the right quality of data at the right time is vital.”
Integrating data in real time for offers and targeted marketing necessitates an omni-channel approach he says. “This is key when our customers are connecting through a mobile app, internet banking, walking into our branches or accessing one of our ATMs. The customer engagement engine is a pipe which connects to the channel. The whole data pipeline ingesting all this information into the customer engagement engine is coming from the analytics platform.”
