Background
As ING local branches often rely on their own IT systems, guaranteeing a unified user experience to all customers and on all digital devices can be quite a challenge. With time the need for a state-of-the-art, unified platform became even more pressing, especially with the introduction of the PSDII directive, requiring banks to make their system accessible to third parties.
“It dawned on us that developer experience was just as important as customer experience will be later on.”
Solution
The answer is Touchpoint - a multiple component, plug-able platform, allowing all ING branches, customers and third party users to connect and collaborate like never before. Its main modules are designed to strengthen security, gather all agreements in one place, supply the developers with advanced pre-built components and, last but not least, allow the bank to connect and combine services in ways that were not possible before.
Throughout the project, Flock. was involved in harmonising customer experience, i.e. developing the components themselves as well as field work. We visited ING’s foreign branches and tried to win individual developers over to switching from their trusted technologies (Vue, Angular, Full React) to the unified Touchpoint based on Web Components.
In the course of the project it became clear that, when introducing a new system, developer experience was just as important as customer experience will be later on. If the components are not straightforward and easy to use from the start, the local developers will be extremely unwilling to switch, making the whole project a fiasco. While building tools for the developers as the developer was a particularly interesting experience, convincing them to actually use the system was a separate project in itself. It required splendid communication skills and quite a diplomatic talent to make it work - but we managed. Touchpoint is up and running in all ING branches and users across the countries enjoy a unified experience on all of their digital devices. As to the benefits for the operations, the new platform substantially improved flexibility, reusability and scalability, reduced time-to-market and simplified the roll-out of global solutions, making it a great foundation for the future of ING.
