Digital sales transformation in PKO Bank Polski

Tomasz Ampuła
Published 20 Aug, 2020

The reason why PKO Bank Polski has come through digital sales transformation

PKO Bank Polski has been the largest, oldest, and most recognized bank in Poland for a hundred years. This longstanding legacy also posed a challenge for the institution. Since its inception, the bank primarily focused on selling banking products through its branches. While it’s true that many banks operated this way in the past, the world has since evolved, ushering in the digital revolution. However, even as fully online banks emerged in the Polish market, PKO Bank Polski continued to conduct most of its sales through branches.

In 2010, PKO Bank Polski began implementing its digital transformation strategy, aiming to make the bank more accessible to its customers through digital channels. This transformation was further emphasized in the bank’s long-term strategy for 2016-2020, one of the key pillars of which was distribution excellence, meaning accessibility anytime and anywhere. This pillar was described as “Modernizing the network and ensuring consistent customer experience across contact channels as a way of achieving customer satisfaction and maximizing sales interaction.”

The cooperation between PKO Bank Polski and Consdata was initiated with the goal of maximizing sales interactions. In 2016, the bank directly addressed its customers, stating, “We want to make it possible for you to buy our products in a consistent and most convenient way, whether through the internet, mobile channels, or a traditional branch." To achieve this, the bank recognized the need for another strong pillar in its strategy: operational efficiency, which was closely tied to process optimization and defined as “faster and paperless."

In 2017, the bank launched the SMARTOP project, focusing on the digitization of sales and service processes, enhancing the role of remote channels, and drastically reducing paper consumption. The bank’s management was aware that developing such sales processes would take months or even years, as it was crucial to design different processes and implement them across various channels, each with its own technological infrastructure, whether for electronic banking or mobile applications.

This was when Consdata became involved with PKO Bank Polski to implement its digital sales transformation strategy. The bank selected us to collaborate on creating the client’s onboarding process, specifically the process of opening a bank account. Consdata was chosen for this project partly due to its previous implementation successes with banks such as mBank.

An example of a form on a desktop display

An example of a form on a desktop display

Onboarding in PKO Bank Polski

The first phase of cooperation between Consdata and PKO Bank Polski resulted in a double success. Firstly, the onboarding process was successfully launched for both electronic banking and the mobile channel. More importantly, the bank’s employees realized that omnichannel sales were truly achievable. They began to trust the capabilities of the Eximee platform, which unified the development and implementation of the sales process across all distribution channels. This was an even greater success than the onboarding implementation itself. From that point on, distribution channels were no longer a barrier for the bank, and the entire process of digital sales transformation at PKO Bank Polski, with Consdata’s involvement, gained significant momentum.

Next phases of collaboration with PKO Bank Polski

Once PKO Bank Polski was convinced that consistent sales processes could be successfully launched across different channels, the bank decided to prepare additional sales processes on the Eximee platform. Over two years of collaboration, in addition to personal account openings, the bank also launched processes for:

  • opening accounts for SMEs
  • cash loan sales
  • motor insurance sales

With a tool in place to design and publish sales processes across various channels, the bank decided to take things a step further. They developed an internal procedure to transfer data from the Eximee platform about abandoned processes to the call center for follow-up, aiming to recover sales.

GRAFIKA

Process developed on the Eximee platform

Process developed on the Eximee platform

Successful sales digitisation in PKO Bank Polski

We appreciate the fact that the platform enables the sale of insurance in electronic channels and includes many modern solutions to help our customers benefit from the insurance companies’ offers.
Marcin Dzienniak
Director of Digital to Banker Application Development Department at PKO Bank Polski

One of the clear successes of using the Eximee platform was its financial impact. In 2019, the bank exceeded its cash loan sales target by 400%. The solutions provided by Consdata played a significant role in boosting total sales and financial results from onilne channels. PKO Bank Polski proudly highlighted these achievements during the conference where it unveiled its strategy for 2020-2022.

Project in numbers:

  • 400% faster completion of the sales plan
  • 90% of sales processes available in online channels
  • 600% increase in the share of cash loan sales in online channels (5% 1Q 2017 vs 28& 3Q 2019)
  • 1 900 000 new retail  customers acquired – increase by 21% (3Q 2016 vs 3Q 2019)
  • 53% less paper consumption (2016 vs 2019)
  • Retail

Authors

Tomasz Ampuła
Product Owner & Digital Transformation Expert
Helps banks optimize product sales and after-sales service. Specializes in corporate banking and omnichannel.