PegaWorld iNspire 2024: Breaking Free: OP Financial Group's Captivating Journey Toward a Customer-centric Marketing Organization

Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining this session. Um, we're going to be talking about, uh, ops captivating journey towards a customer centric marketing organization. Uh, I've had the privilege of working with the OP team over a couple of years now, and it has been a fascinating journey and a very, uh, inspirational one. Um, to tell the story, I'd like to welcome Paul Solman, who is the head of, uh, senior process design for customer engagement at OP. So over to you, Paul. Thank you. Miranda, I just got promoted, apparently. So, uh, my name is Paul Solman, a process owner.

I've been involved with the Pega CDH for for a number of years now. Oh, one thing important. This one. So today, uh, I won't bore you too much about OP financial Group, but just a little bit. Uh, then we are talking about a little bit of our project target state and key focus areas, and look at where we are now, some numbers and what we have learned. So the most interesting part is coming, uh, and then talk about a little bit about the finding balance between the program and, and emerging new process that comes along with CDH. And to wrap up with a few key takeaways and of course, your questions. Uh, OP financial group, Finnish based uh largest financial service group in Finland, over 2 million owner customers. And now you're going to ask, what is owner customer?

Well, we are a central cooperative. We have over 100 cooperative banks. And where I work in Central Cooperative for retail banking, corporate banking and insurance. Over 13,000 employees and market share is pretty hefty. Home loans, meaning mortgages 39%. We are a big player in Finland. Uh, let me check it out if I can. I forgot to ask. The laser pointer.

Is it the green one, sir? In the back? No. Uh, let's move on then. A few things really important for you to understand before looking into our journey in more detail. Uh, we are organized in tribes, as many of you also are, and the marketing teams are distributed among many different tribes. So we are organizationally distributing these teams. And these individual tribes are they have their own KPIs, budgets. And within the one tribe, of course, there's a tribe lead many business leads.

And in this context, there might be one marketing team or many. Opium mobile app. This is something that we're really proud of. Over 1.6 million monthly active users. That's a pretty hefty number. In Finland, there is 6.5 million people, 55 million monthly sign ins. So a place where we can really contact our people and present the NBA's. When we started the program many years ago and even prior. In marketing, we had this target state we wanted to predict customers needs and offer.

The right recommendation is the right channel at the right time. We would, of course, optimize marketing and sales constantly to ensure value, both for the customer and for OP. This might be something that many of you can relate what this actually is, but to many, even within OP, it needs a little bit of explanation. What does this mean? Therefore, we have four key focus areas that we are focusing on, one being cultural change and supporting structure, which is actually the this presentation is mostly about it omnichannel omnichannel Approach. So we don't want to just push one channel. We want to truly be omnichannel, data driven processes and broad and diverse content library. The focus here is in themselves are all interconnected. So to be precise, there should be line drawn parallel, horizontal and criss cross.

I don't know what to say that in English, but these are the key focus areas that I want you to remember, because during this presentation I will refer to one of the many of these. But mostly it's about the cultural change and supporting structure. Uh, we've been now live, I believe, 28 months, two and a half years, something like that. And we have now over 250 actions live and they are all. I only count only those that are always on action. So there aren't too many of those aren't, you know, campaign based starting from week one, ending at week three. They're always on and 80% of them are running through arbitration using adaptive models. We have currently ten Pega CDH, users of which have have been using the system for quite a while, but have are really risen. So they're really juniors in the beginning of their own journey.

We have seven channels integrated, uh, which being op mobile app, our website, and then we have this uh, which is like a secure inbox within our mobile app or website. We count that as a third one because it serves a different purpose than the sort of like the banners and and the usual marketing stuff. Then we have, uh, SMS email that counts as five, and then we have two, uh, branch or sales clerk related ones. They're really recent. I won't talk about them here too much. We've been able to decommission three systems. I won't mention the names, but one of them was, uh. We built them ourselves. So what we have learned during this, uh, years preparing for the housing program and during the housing program, the most important thing is that, uh, robust governance model is really, really important.

Uh, we made the estimate of our current state back in 2020, I made the conclusion that if we didn't have centralized operations, governance or collaboration, we probably wouldn't make it so it would take too much of a time to to get that far where we are now. So on the right there. Pretty crowded slide, but on the right there that is our governance model. And the strategic level is our group level governance forum, which, uh, all of the business leads from all of the concerning tribes are in there. And then we have below it. So more of more of a tactical level leadership forum, which consists of all of the team leads of all of the digital sales and marketing teams. And below them we have two centralized teams, one being operative there, most of the CDH users currently. And then we have this centralized development team. And really what the thing I would really like, by the way, this picture being drawn, that the business life would be next to the centralized teams there because they are they are absolutely important in governing and running the processes.

Of course, the digital sales and marketing teams provide use cases, content and of course, business knowledge to the centralized teams. Um, so essentially what this is, this is a mixture of virtual and structural. So the one, the two top ones, the one on red, they are the virtual level sitting on top of the tribe structure. And then, of course, the business lines and the digital sales and marketing teams. And of course, the centralized teams are actually in tribes. The centralized teams are in customer engagement area within one tribe where I am from also. How we got here is a short story and here it is. It all started in 2019. And to mention that the vision actually was existing prior to this one, but 2019 we noticed that if we want to drive towards the vision, reminding ourselves of the key focus areas, one being the cultural change and the supporting structure we had to had have a acceptance from all of the tribes in order for us to succeed.

So we started on that one. Even though there are years here, they are just only like giving you a little bit of reference of the of the timeline. But it doesn't mean that we're communicating about the target state with the with the tribe leads for one year. No, no, no, it doesn't mean that. But just to give you a little bit of idea how it goes. So step one tribe leads. Accept the vision. Good. Step two we started our RFP selecting the vendor.

And on in that phase, we invited a lot of the digital sales and marketing team, team leads and even some of the team members to be part of this His RFP. So step two engage widely among all important parties regarding marketing. So finally 21 investment decision was made. Pega CDH one. Good luck. And important thing. Also, as we've been investigating all of this, what is really important? We knew that we had to have this centralized governance existing even prior when we start this project and the governance forum was established. Pretty much exactly three years ago.

So happy birthday governance forum. And then, uh, the project started. It took us a 3 to 4 months to get the first channel live, which was opening mobile app. And then the baby steps started. And you know what I've learned from Pega CDH project? That it's really difficult to predict what's going to happen because it's so drastically different than the traditional marketing automation project or operations. So there are so many different concepts you have to understand and maybe redefine, test things, try out, fail, do it again. So. That 2022 gradually you start to understand what is this process like.

And approximately middle of the 2022, the second piece, the second level Tactical Leadership Forum, was established. We didn't need it in the beginning because there weren't too many things to govern. Or I mean, if you have one action live, what to discuss with among the team leads not to too many things. Um. Last year was something of a all of the bits and pieces were in place of the governance model. And you start to see that maybe, maybe something is not quite right. You start to see, uh, a need for improvements. So we've noticed that even though I think personally that we've managed to get the real solid governance model, but still there are stuff that needs to be fine tuned and maybe, maybe even added to the governance model. So let me go quickly back.

If if there's only one thing you can take on this presentation, it would be that you have to be ready, somewhat ready to start your CDH project. Or if you already started, then it's time to rewind a little bit and focus on the governance. If you're having troubles, maybe you don't, but we expected that that there might be challenges and difficult situations regarding, let's say, prioritization of of different, uh, development topics, uh, maybe conflicts between business areas, teams. One thing you should remember, uh, now that you saw our timeline there and the end result, It's quite clear that starting to use CDH enabling it. It's simply not just a tech project, it's a cultural change. Change management, whatever you want to call it. You need to change people how they act, what they do, and it takes time. The reason why I selected this slide, because this was the exact slide that was used in 2019 when communicating with all the tribe leads. There was this one.

It was actually totally blank text there. And just another slide to explain why is just the tech project. Powerful message still valid today? Uh. One thing we noticed in the beginning, as we were not too many in the art project. It takes a lot of time to communicate. A lot of time. A lot of time taken to convincing people, explaining people what is CDH? What is the how does the design work in in CDH?

Or maybe even at some times people are didn't recognize all of the systems involved in this area. So we created this educational program supporting the vision and supporting actually ourselves, the people working in the centralized teams. Not to be overburdened with the need of communicating all over the place and every day, many times a day. Uh, so keep it simple. Our educational program consists of few modules generic information targeted to align everyone with the vision and anything needed to support it. It's like very basic stuff. A lot of the things I'm talking here are in it. What's it about? What are the key focus areas?

What does it mean? How how how does your governance governance model look like? Basic stuff. And this is important because in all the companies, our company, every now and then someone leaves, then comes along, another new person comes along and we don't have time to communicate and contact everybody. So we have this in place. And the one, the another really important one is, is the there. So, like the explanation of how Pega CDH works. Basic knowledge. What is the propensities and values and levers and whatever.

And even some of the concepts within CDH engagement policies. One example. And actually this is this is a this particular module is I think, uh, of course the aligning with the vision, it's probably the most important one. And then there's this basic knowledge of systems, you know, get to know get to know a little bit about the systems and of course system user uh section there which include CDH users, but also in our case Optimizely users or part of the content. Is there not all of the content or email provider? How does it work? Who uses it? Stuff like that. KPI reporting quite obvious one.

And data related training is the latest add on there. So we noticed that data related issues pop up fairly regularly, if not daily, many times a week. So why didn't we get this data? Where it come from? Where should it come from? And what's the importance of data? Really important, of course. Um. My favorite topic is here, uh, when you start your RTIM program, selected CDH or maybe some other, some other, uh, system, uh, in the beginning.

There's the old process, and then suddenly there pops up this new process, which is totally different. And in the beginning, there's no need really to manage the new process. It's only to learn the new process. But when the time goes on, as in case, as in our case, let's say six months or something like that, then there are there are so many actions, so many things going on. Uh, maybe the operative users are noticing many, many improvement actions that should be taking place, either being technical meaning development stuff or process development. Many things can emerge and you should be able to simultaneously manage the new process, run the old one, and run your Maantic transition. That can be a struggle if you are, as in our case, only limited number of people. Quite a few, frankly. Frankly.

So that can be a real struggle. And then the management is accepting the third one because you've been communicating the vision. Fancy stuff, 1 to 1 real time something for everyone. And you have to have time to explore these new concepts. They're not exactly the same as running the new process as you know it. But the third one is, uh, developing the new process to the next level towards the vision. And this has been a struggle, uh, mainly due to, uh, many of us in the program being involved, at least two of them at any given time, and some of them, even at some times having to run the old process using the old marketing automation system. This can be truly a burden and a struggle, but you have to manage it somehow. And if I'm if I'm totally honest, the one we had to maybe delay a bit is the third one because the first one you can't.

Management expects you to ramp down the system as quickly as possible. Get the benefits out of this new Pega CDH the second one, there's nothing. You just have to manage it somehow. It might be something related with, uh. Maybe risk management or something like that. Keeping the process descriptions fairly accurate, which is actually my job, not my favorite job, but you have to do it. Uh, I can't recall which session sessions. I saw something similar than this, but I saw at least two two of the customers explaining the same thing, so. It must be something that's happening all around your customers.

Pega people. Uh, key takeaways. Um. Of course, as I showed you, it's really, really important to engage early and wide and especially wide because eventually all of the people working with the process are going to be faced face to face with the vision and the drastic change that that they're going to face, transitioning from the old marketing automation ways into new. And I must say, it's been personally and I can see from from many, many people in our writing program that it's a, it can be a bit of a struggle to learn from the, from the old ways. Unlearning is difficult and you have to do it constantly, week after week, month after month. Um, as you saw earlier, the three packages you have to somehow manage lead the whole thing. Uh, take into consideration all of these. And if not, if there's a time that you can't really put much effort into the exploring the new concepts or way of doing or or maybe adopting new, new things that you heard today that CTO or Pega is providing us.

So it can be it's a challenge. Training program. Keeping people on board. I think that's really important. But because in the beginning, of course, we did. Uh, well, we call them road shows that we stopped counting after 100. So it was many, many, many road shows that we get the commitment from the tribe leads and then engaging the team leads, getting getting them close, getting to know or learn together, which have kept them in our governance model and operations, um, having the vision clear on their minds. So step by step, it's a journey. Captivating story of OP financial Group on our team program.

And, uh. That's it. But, uh, before we start the questions, we run the. Hold on. Hold your horses. I want to thank, uh. I can see many of you here. I've talked with many of you, and even even our competitors are here, which is always nice, because they wouldn't be here if this would be. Or this wouldn't be noteworthy of of listening.

But it's been great. Uh, us from OP are leaving tonight and leaving a bit early, so might not be able or hopefully not be able to attend the evening as our plane leaves. So thank you all. And Miranda. Thank you Paulie. That was a really, uh, really fascinating kind of run through your transformation journey. So, any questions for Paulie? Can I just ask you to step up to the mic so we can capture both the question and answer. Thank you.

Can you talk a little bit more about how you made the the Pega CDH information available to all of the stakeholders that are part of your governance? It you said you only have ten CDH users, so it sounds like the broader team is not going into Pega to use the UI and the dashboards there. So are you exporting the data out? Are you using other reporting tools? Because that's something we're also thinking about. Thank you. Okay, a few questions there. Um. Not quite sure.

Do you want me to start from the reporting side, or was that the. Maybe you could rephrase it? Yeah. So maybe to be more specific, um, I'm not sure if you use the Strategy Optimizer tools that are available there, they're really great. They tell you about model health and, you know, um, you know, opportunity cost if you were to, you know, not make a change. Um, but those are only available for users in the system. Yeah. And so just wondering how how you share out those insights to make decisions with the broader team. Yeah.

So, um, let me rewind quickly. Yeah. So, uh, the centralized team is really linked to the development team. And many of the roles that you are referring are actually in the development team. So even though these are two different teams that we think that they're one. And regarding the tools. I'm not using the system myself, but just a quick glance. Isn't it so that, uh, auntie is using them in the dev team? Do you know it?

The question was about reporting the Strategy Optimizer. Yeah. So, yeah, some of the tools are used in development team, and the information is passed to the centralized team. And these are constantly communicating with each other. And of course we created reporting uh, some of the reporting, uh, but not all that we need. So we lack the conversion reporting. But of course we can see, you know, CTAs, clicks, whatever. And that is visible to, to all the business lines. And, uh, and the centralized operative team is having Monthlies with the business lines and also other meetings that they're discussing the numbers.

Okay, now we added this one. What happened? Just looking at the through this reporting it. Did this answer. Yeah I just did. Was external reporting you're exporting the Pega Lead out. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. Yes. Hello.

I have one more question, particularly to this page. Can you elaborate a bit more about the role of this tactical leadership forum versus the business lines and those things which are related to digital sales and marketing teams? How do you differentiate and what do you put on this level of the leadership forum? Yeah. Excellent question. So each digital marketing sales team has a one team lead. And that one team lead is a member of the tactical leadership. So. So all of the team leads are regular meeting and making decisions.

I'll give you an example. Uh, in the beginning, when we started, the program started investigating this formula of p times, V times, l times whatever. See. Yeah. So we instantly saw that over using the levers will, uh, get us away from the vision. Over. Using the lever is a bad thing. Therefore, we present it to the governance forum level that we need some sort of strategy when to use it, a strict, uh, let's say strict high level use cases. When could it be used?

Okay, they stamped it. I'm not going to tell you all about them, but one. One particular case which can be Oliva can be applied is a seasonal product, or maybe another one being totally new product. Okay, we have this lever strategy in place, but the decision is not made on the strategic level. They made the framework and they gave it to the tactical leadership level. And there is basically a vote if there is a if someone disagrees, if one team says, hey, now we need to boost something up, there's a vote. And if it's not unanimous or reasonably unanimous, it's not accepted. And I can see in your face that this might be a bit of a struggle in your company. But great question, great question.

Okay. Yeah. Hi, thanks for sharing this. Good to see the journey that you have been on. You mentioned that you went through the RFP process, right to select the Platform the CDH Platform. Could you share what were the top three reasons why you chose Pega CDH over others? If you can share OK. Small adverse advertisement coming, but. We broke down the vision into the key capabilities that we would need, and we could see that there was this one box that we could not fill, and that was the 1 to 1 real time.

Decisioning stuff that we didn't have. So then we went on and searched all the vendors that we could find that could reasonably provide something into that area. And in the end, we chose Pega. CDH. Philip. Come on. He was the one we used to talk a lot about in the beginning. 2019, 2020. So yeah.

No. That's great. So you did a great job. Um, my question would be like, you've painted a great story here, and you specifically were focused on the business transformation, right? And I think that's an important piece. Right. Um, what would be the one thing that you did that you wouldn't do in hindsight, like if there were other people here? Like, what was the one thing you look back because this is a perfect story, but I'm sure you've got something where you're like, I really wish we didn't do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Good question. I won't talk to you after this one, but, uh uh oh. One thing. Let me. Um, I'm going to say something. Uh, just thinking, um. Well, if I had the power, if I was, let's say a tribe leader or a vice president or something like that. The thing that I didn't mention that, uh, we are running currently, our customer communications through Pega starting to transition customer communication process into CDH and trying to do that simultaneously with two different processes with slightly different, you know, manner, because marketing can be always on and to my opinion should be. But customer communication is totally different thing.

So you have to send something out for specific time to specific people. So it's a different thing. So we had to simultaneously understand both of these worlds. Uh, I would have made a decision to delay the transition to customer communication. Don't tell anyone. But yeah, in hindsight, yeah. Yeah. 24.2 is much. More.

Specific. Well, we shall see. We shall see. Yeah. Maybe not. We have a few minutes left here, but, uh, maybe another one would be that, uh, as we saw that this change would be, uh, we would need an actual change in the governance. So we spend a lot of time, maybe a bit too much time running the RFP process, but that's just me. But glad you asked. Never thought of that before.

Thank you for sharing your story. I think in the beginning you said it was mostly about this whole transformation was about cultural change, changing behavior and looking at customer communication. What has changed in behavior? What are people doing differently right now and has it been effective after the transformation was performed? So the question was that what has actually changed? Well, I think it's yeah, I'll refer to this one. So, um. Let's focus on let's slice the picture up. So first the virtual level there.

So what has changed. I think the the biggest thing that has changed that people are, are nowadays speaking I my tribe, my team, people are you know, considering all of us, it's visible. It's visible every day. But it's not something you can measure, but you can see it and feel it and things go much, much more smoother. There, there isn't too much of this. They're not fighting back, let's say in the middle section the the the centralized teams. So what have changed there the most is maybe, uh. Um. Um, if I would ask today from one of our NBA design specialists that used to use our old marketing automation system, I believe that they would say that the old stuff was kind of dumb.

This new, new, new stuff is good. So they have really unlearned from the then good ways into today's good ways. And, uh, about the business lines, uh, and the digital sales and marketing teams, I guess. Well, there are many. So not all of them are at same level. So there's a little bit variance, but I can tell that there are many teams that are really, really on board and enthusiastic and want to some of them actually want to push the third package. Let's explore. Let's do this and that and that. But the middle section, the operations there or development related to it.

Maybe it's data related to something else. It just can't absorb all of the ideas. But I have to say that. The digital sales and marketing are not at the same level. Some are sort of like the top ones, the stars. There are a few. But. But maybe I can say this, that all of them have advanced a lot throughout the years. Time for one.

No. Miranda. Well, thank you again, Pauline. That was fascinating. And thank you, everyone, for coming. Have a great rest of the event. Thank you.