Financial institutions tech powered growth

The stage is set for traditional financial services firms to take a leap forward in marketing technology.

An increased emphasis on privacy and data regulations provides financial services the chance to catch up to digital natives. CMOs must embrace a customer-centric strategy to drive differentiating customer experiences, invest in modern marketing technology stacks, leverage first-party customer data, and enable data-driven decisioning.

Capgemini commissioned a study by Forrester Consulting to compare the current state of marketing technology maturity at financial services and technology organizations. This study evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of financial services and technology organizations on a martech maturity model across 24 key capabilities within five categories: strategy, process, technology, data, and organization and determine a roadmap towards marketing technology maturity.

Here are the key highlights from the research:

1- STRATEGY: IMPROVE CUSTOMER-CENTRICITY

While many high-tech firms make customer-centricity a focus of their marketing strategies, traditional financial services firms are still very product-centric in their marketing mindsets, organization, and strategies. Forrester research finds that few financial services firms take a customer-centric orientation; just 7% of financial services companies were customer-obsessed in 2021.

TECH FIRMS ARE MORE LIKELY THAN FS ONES TO ALIGN THEIR TECH ROADMAP TO THEIR CUSTOMER STRATEGY
59% OF LARGE FINANCIAL SERVICES^# COMPANIES RESPONDED SAYING THEIR MARTECH ROADMAP ONLY SOMEWHAT ALIGNS OR LESS TO THEIR CUSTOMER STRATEGY.

2- DATA: INVEST TO BE MORE INSIGHTS-DRIVEN

Clean, current, and complete customer data that provides the insights needed to help a firm be customer-led, will improve customer relationships, and drive personalized marketing experiences. However, the study shows that financial services firms need improvement around data (e.g., collection, analysis, measurement, and insight activation). Conversely, digital-native companies are already more insights-driven in their strategies and program execution.

DIGITAL NATIVE COMPANIES ARE BETTER AT DATA MANAGEMENT AND PERSONALIZATION
ONLY 36% OF LARGE FINANCIAL SERVICES^# COMPANIES SAY THEY PERSONALIZE PROGRAMS BASED ON REAL-TIME DATA, COMPARED TO 51% OF TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES*.

3- TECHNOLOGY: MODERNIZE THE MARTECH STACK

Marketing technology modernization will be key to improving digital customer relationships for financial services firms. Both financial services firms and high-tech firms consider technology to be the greatest barrier to their current success and an area of great opportunity. Large financial services firms are saddled with technology debt and are lagging behind high-techs in using technological investments to accomplish key marketing and business goals.

AUTOMATION IMPROVES SCALE, SPEED, ACCURACY OF CUSTOMER PROGRAMS AND MARKETING PROCESSES
AUTOMATION IS A TOP PRIORITY FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES FIRMS, BUT THAT THERE IS A LOT OF RED TAPE THAT NEEDS TO BE NAVIGATED TO EFFECTIVELY IMPLEMENT AUTOMATION IMPROVEMENTS.

Don’t put off the pivot to customer-centricity

Adopt adaptive planning to react quickly to market change, make product development customer-led and invest in real-time customer data and modernizing your martech stack with a unified platform.

^# Large Financial Services: 5000+ employees

* Base: 218 VP and C-level marketing decision-makers at financial services and high-tech enterprises

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