Equity Bank : New Mobile Assessment Answer

It has been a complaint by customers, the long queues experienced in the banking halls, are very frustrating and it leads to customers spending a lot of time while doing transactions. The customers also use lots of resources to reach the banks, like fuel. As   a result this financial institution, is dedicated to introduce a new mobile app solution, that will allow over 100million of its customers, to access banking services on their mobile phones, the new product is expected to move the banking services from paper work to internet and mobile based transaction. This paper endeavors to examine use of TRIZ (Theory of inventive problems) the problem in this context being the long queues experienced by customers in the banks, and how DFSS can be used in executing the new product mobile banking for the bank. The purpose of this project is to eliminate long queues in the bank (TRIZ) by introducing new product mobile banking(DFSS).    

Introducing the new mobile banking solution will, will tend to reduce the number of customers visiting the banks to complete bank transaction, this will also improve service delivery to the customers, since customers will serve themselves via the technology. Queues will greatly reduce and banking will be transformed from where you go into something you do. The focus will not be on customer service, but more on the systems serving the customers. Introduction of mobile banking will reduce the bank’s operative costs like the number of employees serving customers, and the stationery that was used when customers are purchasing products and services.

As result of the bank embracing the mobile banking services and solution, the number of walk ins in the bank will greatly reduce, the image about the bank will be improved, this will also be observed as good principle by the regulators (Choudhry, 2012) Employing mobile banking measures is expected to reduce the cost of production at the branches level at 80% and the queues are greatly expected to reduce, the banking halls by 50%.

Before execution of mobile banking system, it is expected that Equity bank will record the number of customers accessing the branches in a given day and there will be compare the statistics after the new mobile banking service has been introduced across all countries in operation.

Project Plan

For the project to become reality the bank will use an already existing network company and in this context happens to be the Airtel company, the company has 40% of its infrastructure unused, and thus the bank will set up mobile virtual network service (mvno) on Aitrel infrastructure. After the organization has laid the infrastructure, it will test the service through its staff, who will give feedback on the service while accessing loans and transfer of money. The organization will develop a questionnaire submitted via emails to all of its employees who are expected, to give a feedback on the experienced received, the challenges experienced by the employees such as delay of money transfer, will greatly help the institution in redesign of the products a very important aspect in product cycle (Niemann et al, 2008). Once the product has been redesigned it is the duty of the organization to come up with a backup plan, in case the system backfires like using its own network to avail services concurrently. After the redesign of mobile banking, the organization will offer sim cards to access the service to the family members and relatives of the staff, ensure that they are enrolled to the system and allow a few transactions, observe the trends on the systems and finally make it public to customers, on availability of the product.

During the project implementation, time frame is very important, the organization will test the product during mid-month when less customers are accessing banking facilities to test the reliability when transactions are few and during end month when more people are accessing facilities, to test robust nature of the systems.

Some of the major challenges the organization is expected to encounter during the mobile banking introduction are a poor network coverage, by the network company which will affect the testing and pretesting phases. Being a relatively new product in the world, it is expected that the subscribers will have a problem in accessing key features, before embracing it well from the sim card manual provided. The product will greatly help the banks operation even with introduction of new product through the mobile banking, it will only need a new feature to be introduced in on the menu. For instance, If the organization is introducing a new loan facility to agricultural customers, it will need to send an SMS to all its profiled customers and ask them to check it out in the menu.

Solutions

The mobile banking service is designed to meet all the operation services at the bank, the question behind the design is security of customer’s transactions, it is the responsibility of the bank to guard customer’s sim cards by introducing a onetime pin that can only be submitted to the customer’s mobile phone, and in case mobile phone is stolen or misplaced, the organization should device a duress signal through its customer care platform, preventing further loss to the customers.

Comparison of loans uptake by customers through traditional queue system and current mobile banking systems will enable the organization to increase the loans limits for the customers and thus increase the volumes released to the market, for more profitability.

Integration

The organization is expected to do mass media communication to the customers about the new product that is being proposed in the market, through mass media customer awareness is very fast (Schramm and Roberts, 1971). It will also incorporate aspect like radio and advertising to reach out customers who prefer listening to radio, other than watching TV. In the integration period, the customers that are used to the traditional banking system will continue lining in the banks though there will be a desk marketing the mobile banking service, ushering customers to embrace the new technology giving an emphasis; customers can access the service through mobile banking without leaving their premises of operations.

To make the integration a reality, the bank should cause queues in the banks intentionally, this can be done via closing some cashier’s tills, tills closure and marketing of the new system, will highly push the customers to adopt the new system.

Costing

While implementing a new banking solution for the bank, the organization is expected to set out the budget for the implementation, cost of the places where by core teams are meeting for the project execution and analysis, cost of the transport of high ranking officials might change during the entire period. As a result of the bank embracing the new technological system, there is a lease fee to be paid for the leased space through Airtel network, the engineers who might move from their home countries for project realization, they need to be paid for the service and well accommodated, a cost that the organization incurs.

Validation

For the validation of the process, the organization needs to acquire licenses from the communication commission in host countries, giving a detailed information on their business operation with the intentions behind the new product. This will ensure the company is subjected to fair competition and the service for the customer is safeguarded, preventing issues like sabotage by the hosting network company and bad publicity about their service. The organization needs to test the mobile banking service speed and reliability through customers that are conducting a few banking transactions in comparison to customers making numerous production, the customers perception in the new advancement will highly help, customers perception highly helps in product development of a product or service (Haque and Ahmed, 2013).

Testing will happen by sending messages, to a number of customers asking them to transact on a certain service and watch how fast the system will complete the transactions in focus.

Conclusion

The paper begins with introduction of Equity bank a financial service provider, with some footprint in East and Central Africa, biggest company in Africa by customer base, the company has been greatly affected by long queues of customers in the banking halls. Ion discussion is the main purpose of the paper which, endeavors to examine use of TRIZ (Theory of inventive problems) the problem in this context being the long queues experienced by customers in the banks, and how DFSS can be used in executing the new product mobile banking for the bank. The purpose of this project is to eliminate long queues in the bank (TRIZ) by introducing new product mobile banking(DFSS). The benefits expected as well as outcomes of eliminating the queues have been analyzed, it gives a project plan and methodology in problem solving, analysis of the new product like its robustness and reliability, solution and integration of the new product, aspect like the cost and factors to consider during the budget allocation and last but not least is the project validation whereby in this project customers have been greatly used in testing and validating the product.

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www.equitybankgroup.com

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