Mid Term test Time 1 hours 15 mts Max Marks
20
Elective: Digital Strategy
Note: Only Class notes, not any printed material is allowed.
Attempt all questions in both sections:
Section 1
Read DBS Bank Case study and answer following question: Total Marks 8
What actions DBS bank has taken to implement each of 6 digital strategy areas : Customer,
Business model, Data as asset, Operation Optimization, Culture, Platform, Cloud as service.
Elaborate each with examples given in case study
Case Study:
How DBS Bank Built a Digital-Ready Culture
One of Asia’s largest banks, Singapore-based DBS, has undergone a radical turnaround
As recently as 2009, DBS was ranked last of the region’s top five players in customer exp
Customers joked that DBS stood for “damn bloody slow.” But, by 2013, through a constant focus
reducing process failures and improving speed and customer turnaround time, DBS ranked first
customer experience among the same group.
But that was just the beginning. As we learned in our discussions with company leaders over the
senior executives envisaged DBS as a leading digital company, not just a leading bank. Achieving
audacious goal would require further improvements in the company’s technology platforms and
development processes. DBS also needed to foster a digital culture, improving its innovativeness
alienating its best customers or risking regulatory lapses.
CEO Piyush Gupta and CIO David Gledhill started promoting the idea of DBS as a 22,000-perso
They visited major digital players globally to understand their corporate cultures and then define
values and practices to change the DBS culture. They wanted the existing customer focus to become
driven customer obsession. The company analyzed 250 customer and employee journeys to identify
issues and then built analytic models to improve those processes and enhance employee perform
instance, by modeling demand in its ATM network, which, the company says, handled more
transfer month than any other bank in the world, DBS ensured that its ATMs never ran out of cash.
A model developed to predict salesperson turnover proved to be 85% accurate, allowing executives
intervene and have a conversation with the bank’s top salespeople before they decided to leave.
DBS leaders also encouraged ideation and experimentation at all levels. They urged employees t0
identify ways to remove millions of hours of customer wait time. Strategy workshops, daily briefings,
start exchanges, and a variety of other supports drove more than 1,000 experiments, many of which
products or improved services. The bank also redefined internal processes to build agility in IT and
product development teams. IT staff and business product owners now work closely together to
develop, test, and refine products, increasing the speed and quality of product launches. The
company removed more than 250 million hours of annual customer wait time and more than a
million home employee wait time.
In addition, leaders strove to build a learning organization where every worker can engage in
continual self improvement. Online and classroom training courses were expanded. Experiential
learning opportunity such as hackathons, job shadowing, and immersion experiences helped
employees gain greater understanding of DBS itself. Collaboration platforms, pop-up classes,
innovation fellowships, “learning days,” fast-paced Pecha Kucha sessions (essentially rapid-fire
presentations), and other methods peer-to-peer mentoring. Theme weeks, learning hours, reading
clubs, and other gatherings help learning a ritual.
DBS has made great strides toward becoming a digital master. It rapidly launches digital innovation
meet a variety of voiced or unvoiced customer needs. Its customers are quickly shifting to cashless
processes. New products, such as a gamified mobile app to help parents teach children about saving,
both test market opportunities and connect customers more closely to the bank.
Another unforeseen opportunity emerged from the many process improvements identified by email
Automation and process changes had reduced costs significantly, but two processes — customer
identity verification — still required employee actions. In India, DBS used chatbots and the country’s
biometric identity system, along with product simplification and some partnering to create a digital bank
that requires virtually no intervention from DBS employee. At near-zero marginal cost, the digital
processes make it possible to serve hundreds of millions of poor Indians who could not be served
by traditional banking processes.
Section II Total Marks 12
Each right answer will carry 4 marks
1. Write 4 key imperatives of forth industrial revolutions, elaborated by Prof Klaus in his
book Forth Industrial revolution
2. Explain Platform architecture and explain role of each layer with examples.
3. For building data as asset, describe framework for achieving same.
