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Originally published in BAI Executive Report
For a long time now, banks have understood that omnichannel matters. You don’t need another industry report to tell you that your customers expect to start a process in one channel and finish it in another without friction. What’s been missing isn’t awareness, it’s the infrastructure to actually deliver on the promise.
And consumers aren’t waiting around…
Trillions of dollars have flowed out of traditional checking accounts and into digital-only competitors, who captured 44% of new checking accounts last year. Nearly half of Gen Z and millennials say their primary banking relationship is likely to shift to a provider that feels more intuitive, personal, and agile.
This isn’t because they have more channels, it’s about how those channels work together. Data and automation are doing the heavy lifting to make every interaction feel effortless and personal. Your bank can deliver that same experience. But you’ll need to rethink how you’re putting data and automation to work.
Building a Data Foundation Your Omnichannel Strategy Can Actually Run On
One of the patterns we continue to see is how banks have the data, but it’s scattered, siloed, or locked inside systems that weren’t designed to work together. When that’s the case, omnichannel becomes far more complicated than it needs to be. But a solution is not out of reach, and there are some practical steps you can start taking now to help.
- Start by creating a data community
A data community is not just your IT team. It’s your back-office operations, lenders, marketers, and branch staff actually talking to each other about what they’re seeing—the drop-off points, the customer behaviors, the trends that show up on the front lines before they ever show up in a report.
This kind of shared awareness dramatically improves your omnichannel execution. You start to understand why certain journeys succeed, where customers get confused, and how different demographics prefer to engage.
- Give that community a shared language
This next step is about clarity. A data dictionary simply means everyone uses the same definition for the same metric across the bank.
When the definition of “engagement” varies from system to system, your customer insights, outreach, and analytics drift with it. A shared language brings the entire institution back in sync, giving you a consistent foundation for personalization, targeting, and measurement.
It seems simple but has a major impact.
- Turn your data into timely intelligence
Once your people are aligned and your metrics speak the same language, it’s time to make your data work.
For too long, the industry has lived on after-the-fact reporting. By the time a dashboard tells you what happened last month, the customer has already made the decision you were hoping to influence.
This is where technology finally enters the conversation. A true data intelligence layer replaces reactive reporting with dynamic, timely visibility across the customer lifecycle.
Suddenly, you’re not guessing at intent, waiting for a file transfer, toggling between systems to piece a story together. You’re watching a connected picture of behavior unfold across every channel:
- Someone starts a loan application online, hesitates, and abandons it. Your team knows in the moment, not when it’s too late.
- A long-time account holder shows early signs of inactivity. Proactive engagement can keep them active and reduce attrition.
- A borrower begins to show early signs of payment stress. You can adjust outreach before it becomes delinquency.
Using Data To Power Automation and Automation To Elevate Your People
Timely intelligence tells your team what is happening, but information alone doesn’t change the customer experience. Action does. Many banks hit the next wall here: Your teams see the signals, but acting on them still requires manual effort, workflows, and follow-up.
This is where automation earns its place in the conversation. It doesn’t replace the banker.
It removes the busy work that prevents your bankers from doing their best work.
Think about what happens today:
- A customer abandons a loan application, and someone has to notice it, pull the list, and follow up.
- A borrower’s payment behavior starts to shift, but collections doesn’t find out for weeks.
- A product renewal date approaches, and reminders go out too late to make an impact.
- A customer shows buying signals, but marketing and lending never see the same picture at the same time.
But when your operation is powered by automation, you see those signals quickly, and they trigger action. Outreach happens instantly, in the customer’s preferred channel. Journeys adjust dynamically based on behavior, not static workflows. And your staff steps in only where human judgment or relationship-building moves the needle, not to rework files or chase incomplete processes.
It’s All About Connection
An effective omnichannel strategy connects your bank to your customers consistently across every channel. Achieving that requires the same level of connection between your banking technology, data, and workflows.
When you get it right, you close the gap between what customers expect and what your systems currently allow. And that impact is felt across the entire customer lifecycle: acquisition becomes easier, onboarding becomes smoother, everyday banking becomes more intuitive, lending becomes more proactive, and collections and recovery become more effective.
