How SaaS and generative AI are positively impacting 'experience thinking'

How SaaS and generative AI are positively impacting ‘experience thinking’

Written by Dave Wallace
23rd June 2023

Money20/20 in Amsterdam was buzzing this year. There seemed to be an incredible energy.

SaaS and generative AI are compelling the industry to concentrate on what users see and do

It was my first time at the event, and I found myself reminiscing on what would have been the nascent financial technology industry when I started my career and concluded that a Money19/99 would have been much smaller and could probably have fit in one of the more extensive stands at this year’s event (hey Monika, I am talking about you!).

Broadly speaking, innovation, when it happens, is focused on people or processes. Wandering around the exhibition halls, I was very struck by those exhibiting. Most, if not all, were tools businesses. Fintech is focused on process innovation. Across the customer lifecycle, processes have been digitised and optimised to the point where all the tools exist for any finance company, from a start-up to the oldest heritage business, to be digital. Most of this innovation has focused on value extraction.

It has been spoken about so often, but to repeat once more: digital transformation has been almost entirely focused on helping the industry reduce costs, create better efficiencies and ensure shareholder value.

Where’s the innovation centred on people?

Maybe it’s because of my background, but one of my frustrations over the years has been the almost total dominance of technology-as-a-focus in digital transformation programmes. Honestly, the user (customer) experience has always felt like an afterthought. I get it. We are not strictly technologists. But our job has always been to make technology less technical for the end user. And I think that is worthy and important and actually has helped ensure the industry is pointed in the right direction.

However, a wind of change is blowing. The emergence of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model is changing the focus of the industry. I am increasingly hearing about the importance of user and customer experience from technologists. From conference keynotes to fireside chats, “experience” is heralded as the differentiator and primary focus for every financial business.

The other major trend to mention is generative AI. Less than a year after ChatGPT-3.5 was launched, GAI significantly impacts how the industry thinks and discusses priorities and focus, leading to a greater emphasis on experience.

At Money20/20, I was lucky enough to hear a few luminaries from the banking industry speak about its effect. In discussion with Jeff Tijssen, Emily Turner from Citi said, “This is the most important technology of my career. The potential across the business side and our technology teams will essentially allow for digitalisation at a pace and cost much faster and cheaper than anything we’ve seen before. This is different.”

In another panel hosted by Nvidia’s Malcolm DeMayo, Chalapathy Neti from Swift said, “I have been doing AI for the last 30+ years in speech, image and natural language understanding and have a PhD in neural networks. Where we are with ChatGPT and GPT-4 is mind-boggling, even for me. This is a truly transformative moment in technology.”

Why are SaaS and generative AI compelling the industry to concentrate their thinking on what users see and do?

The two most significant factors are speed and cost.

Taking speed to start with, both SaaS and generative AI have hit the fast-forward button in the industry. Everything can be achieved much faster. The consequence is that the focus of a project or programme can be what happens after the project has been completed rather than on the project itself.

For the last 30 years, I have watched transformational programmes being run that have taken so long that by the time a project launches, everyone is so exhausted and hates the project so much that they give up on the outcome itself. More than 80% of the effort went into implementation, the remainder in running the solution itself. An example is analytics. I watched a client implement a web analytics tool that took several years. The procurement process alone lasted months. By the time the tool had been implemented, the project team had moved on, and no one was left to do any analysis.

I recently spoke to Charlie Clark, who works for a SaaS analytics firm called Panintelligence. He explained that an on-premises solution that would have previously taken years to implement can now take days, weeks or sometimes, at the most, a few months. This means a business can be up and running and optimising its digital channels in the blink of an eye! The impact is that the 80:20 has been reversed in terms of effort, with the vast majority of effort being expended in the running of the solution.

Both technologies have also dramatically lowered the cost of entry.

SaaS allows much flexibility, so companies can invest in trialling products and services without investing heavily in infrastructure. Finally, the prices for MVPs and POCs are low enough to make proper design thinking and agile processes work effectively. Regarding ChatGPT, at Money20/20, Annerie Vreugdenhil from ABN Amro mentioned a trial in the bank’s customer services department. They have been able to get a Large Language Model (LLM) to extract insights from various data lakes that its customer service representatives have been able to use on calls with customers. The trial was cheap and implemented incredibly rapidly.

As one of the pioneers of digital experience in financial services, I feel like our moment might have finally arrived. Let’s see, though. I know old habits are hard to break.

About the author

Dave Wallace is a user experience and marketing professional who has spent the last 25 years helping financial services companies design, launch and evolve digital customer experiences.