Assignment#5 – The Case Of DBS Bank

The case is about DBS bank, one of the largest Asian banks, reacting and

responding to digital threats and opportunities by taking up digital business

technique for which DBS has intensely invested in innovation and embraced radical

changes to restructure the whole business digitally. The thrusts of the digital

transformation strategy include the patch up of its own innovation and Operations

Entity, the improvement of the sizeable digital platform, influence of technology to

redesign the internal incubation, and additionally the client encounter and outside

banding together in looking for new digital development. DBS' journey of rewiring the

structure highlights the key abilities that an association needs to have so that it can

seek digital business strategy.

1. Analyze the competitive position of DBS prior to its digital

transformation. What are the motivations behind the digital

transformation of DBS? Answer this is the context of Porter's five forces

and Treacy & Wiersma's value disciplines.

In context of Porter’s Five Forces:

The Competition in the banking industry is growing furiously because of the

fact that the banking industry has developed from something beyond then

customary saving money exercises, and any firm that contends with the

center capabilities of saving money in the financial industry are considered

rivalry. Moreover, DBS has fanned into zones that are outside of conventional

managing an account, presenting itself to rivalry from different firms that could

conceivably be viewed as financial institutions. DBS's three primary territories

of focus are institutional banking, consumer banking, and wealth

management, which are the areas outside banking that surely ensures the

competition from various financial institutions. It will also decrease the hold of

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 Assignment#5 – The Case Of DBS Bank

the firm on the market because of the fact that things are getting more

digitalized, which is eventually leading the different financial institutions to

provide more and more products and services. In traditional banking system

danger from the new participant in the market was low due to high

capitalization unlike now due to digitalization new participant in the financial

industry can also be danger to the old firms with innovative and digitalized

technological solutions and it can be noticed from the examples given in the

case for threat from new entrant such as Paypal, WeBank and Alipay these

were the non-traditional player making inroads to the banking space but in

case of DBS, it has reduce its threat significantly by digitalizing and innovating

itself.

In context of Treacy and Wiersma’s value discipline:

DBS is seeking after perfection and turning into the top most banks for Asian

consumer. This value discipline is not an entire patch up of DBS's personality.

In any case, the new vision and systems being executed are approaches to

remain consistent with DBS's character of perfection and customer focus,

while coordinating development, turning into a digitalized firm, and a pioneer

in the banking industry. The new vision and methodologies adjust to its new

working model and unique esteem, teach by concentrating on utilizing

innovation to enhance customer touchpoints. The objective is to accomplish

customer closeness, operational excellence, and product leadership through

its core value discipline by executing the new methodologies identified with

development and innovation to become the "Asian Bank of Choice”. This is

critical on the grounds that the business is changing to a digitalized situation

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 Assignment#5 – The Case Of DBS Bank

and customer profiles are requesting distinctive products from the various

financial institutions including DBS.

2. Using Christensen's classification of change, is DBS pursuing

sustaining or disruptive innovation?

Sustaining Innovation- refers to modest changes to existing products and

services. These are enhancements that keep a business competitive, such as

new product features and service improvements.

Disruptive innovation- refers to an innovation transforms an existing market

or sector by introducing simplicity, convenience, accessibility, and affordability

where complication and high cost are the status quo.

In the case it can be noticed that DBS is putting resources into approaches to

make items more basic, less expensive, and helpful, offering a totally new

incentivized offer from the traditional banking. DBS is endeavoring to break

free from its opposition utilizing Big Data, innovation development by doing

digitalization, separated customer touch focuses, redesign, and

experimentation to change the premise of competition and not upgrading the

present estimations of execution. Therefore DBS is pursuing disruptive

innovation.

3. What are the key thrusts of DBS’ digital transformation strategy? What

technology investments is DBS making? What radical organizational

changes is DBS instituting?

The key thrusts of DBS can be listed down starting with the digital

transformation that was instilled emphatically by CEO in DBS. The CEO was

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 Assignment#5 – The Case Of DBS Bank

of the view to make all things digitalized and He supported and encouraged all

the official of the bank for innovation and digitalization. The improvement of

administration for cutting edge change was in like manner intentionally

tumbled down the hierarchy of leadership to amass the change arrange. A

new group was formed called T&O by merging technology division and

operation division. The reason for forming this group was that it could include

business values through innovations with their business counterparts to

support the range of banking applications expected to bolster their different

operations. A new core banking system was deployed across 12 Countries

which allowed greater flexibility in catering to a different country – specific

preferences or different product packing features. A wealth management

platform was formed for integrating retail banking and private banking

functionalities. DBS establish a Customer experience council, which was

chaired by CEO. The purpose was to provide good customer service by

creating digitally enabled customer service. DBS built up an Innovation

Council led by the CEO to give a devoted concentrate on utilizing digital

technologies. It employed a Chief Innovation Officer to lead Innovation Office,

arrange the different development endeavors in DBS and institutionalize on a

typical system for advancement. This has led to a rewiring of the association

and to accomplish these radical association changes DBS spends the vast

majority of its capital toward the back end, making adaptable arrangements,

utilizes information to drive choices and enterprise collaboration.

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 Assignment#5 – The Case Of DBS Bank

4. How effective is DBS in transforming itself in the digital era? What are

the metrics you would use to test the success of the transformations?

DBS was transforming itself very successfully and it can be seen starting with

DBS invested heavily to build its technology infrastructure which gave DBS

the ability to rapidly scale up and down its digital infrastructure and was

effectively able to capture the value of digitization. DBS set up a customer

experience council. The intention was to foster a mind-set shift that would go

beyond developing a culture of customer service excellence to creating a

culture of customer a culture of digitally enabling new customer experience

and they were successful in doing so by increasing bank connectivity to

customers. The metric that will be suitable for measuring the transformation is

the customer experience index where companies prioritize the investment and

try continuously improve the customer experience which is what DBS is doing

right now.

5. What are the critical success factors that help to transform business

executives from “technology idiots” to “digital warriors”? Use evidence

from the case to support your arguments.

DBS was able to successfully transform its business executive from

“technology idiots” to “digital warriors” because of DBS heavily invested on

operational excellence. It has merged technology and operation division into a

new group called technology and innovation (T&O). The first priority of this

group was to rationalize and standardize the technology and operational

platform and this brought digital thinking among the executive. The evidence

for this can be seen in the case where DBS conducted innovation training

workshops for staff and then DBS was also hiring people on the basis of

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 Assignment#5 – The Case Of DBS Bank

strong innovation potential. DBS complied and circulated innovation stories to

boost staff confidence and this help business executives transform from

“technology idiots” to “digital warriors”.

6. Going forward, what should be the next steps in DBS’ digitization

strategy? Where should the bank direct its technology investment

dollars? Answer this in the context of Weinman's digital disciplines.

In my view the next step of DBS’ digitization should be digitalize customer

touchpoints which would enable DBS to stay ahead in competition and this

could be done providing services in digitized way to customer for example

customer for checking their account balance and withdraw money from their

account they need to go either to the bank or to the ATM but DBS can provide

technology to check there balance by providing day to day balance through

email and email could be send by end of each day or they can also setup a

platform where customer can simply check there balance by sending a text

message to the bank. Another thing that DBS can do is to build products that

target the large customer market and should eliminate its product which don’t

cover the large customer market. Free its resources from those products and

make the use of those resources on building on product which target large

customer market.

7. How can DBS stay at the forefront of banking innovation to become the

"Asian Bank of Choice" of the future? See the table below for

Christensen's list of strategic responses possible for incumbent firms in

dynamic industries. Which choice is best for DBS?

DBS to be ahead in the competition and market it needs to be innovative for

that DBS needs to be place assets into ways to deal with making things more

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essential, more affordable, and supportive, offering an absolutely new

boosted system from the traditional banking. DBS should come up with

something which is a disruptive innovation and have no substitutes. DBS

should put its emphasis on to find new ways of engagement and for that I

think the Strategic response of Co-opting would be the best for DBS.

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