When introducing new software, allow ample time for staff retraining, says transformation lead Laura Merling. Credit: Arvest Bank When Arvest, a regional bank operating in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, hired Laura Merling as chief transformation and operations officer in 2021, one of the first things she changed was its digital transformation plan. The 60-year-old bank, formed from the successive mergers of 14 regional banks, was planning to launch a neobank, an online-only service with national ambitions, as a way to ensure its future growth. When Merling arrived in October 2021, Arvest had already begun the transformation process: conducting the first in a series of annual “Driving Change” surveys of staff attitudes and experimenting with the new core banking software around which it planned to build the new bank. But there were challenges. “Everybody was creating a retail neobank,” says Merling. That made for a competitive market in which the cost of acquiring a new customer was around $1,000. “You’d spend all your money on customer acquisition and not on building infrastructure,” she says. On top of that, there was a degree of resistance — or at least indifference — to change within the company. Merling summarized the internal […]
K&X Design and Investment Technology, LLC
Invest The Invisible Impact
K&X Design and Investment Technology, LLC
Invest The Invisible Impact
