Attracting Millennials Requires Slick Tools
How enterprise software can attract millennials and impact your company culture
The background
On the Banno team at Jack Henry & Associates, we’re building a modern platform for financial institutions (banks and credit unions). It’s a single system that lets financial institutions serve the complete needs of their digital users.
One portion of our platform is focused on the needs of our customer’s end-users (consumers). This software aims to help people with their financial goals and bank the way they want to bank. This is where our native mobile banking app comes into play.
Another focus of our platform are admin tools. The often neglected…back office…enterprise software that allows banks and credit unions to work smarter and provide better customer service.
I think about the admin side (enterprise software) a lot. It’s the sole focus for myself, a product manager, and my product design partner, Josh Sadler. Together, we define and design the enterprise software that financial institutions need in order to provide exceptional customer service. Whether it’s increasing an end-user’s remote deposit capture limit, deactivating a lost device, responding to a help desk ticket, or opening a new account… everything we think about revolves around empowering financial institutions to help people faster, better and with more empathy.
In fintech (financial technology), the media loves to write about B2C software. From the latest mobile banking apps to a new channel for P2P payments. This type of software typically follows the latest design trends and makes it easy for a bank to say “my customers would love this.” In some ways, consumer products tend to get all the love and B2B software is an afterthought. Well, no more. Banks shouldn’t be left behind and they deserve useful, usable and desirable software, too!
I believe enterprise software goes beyond making employees productive and more efficient. I believe enterprise software has the power to change an institution’s vision, values, assumptions, beliefs and habits. But above all, I believe that enterprise software can impact a company’s culture, which is something that is pre-existing in the institution’s genetic code; not something that employees bring with them.
These beliefs assume that enterprise software really matters to the people who use it. But how do we know? Do people really care about enterprise software? Let’s find out.
Do people care about enterprise software?
I set out to learn what people think about enterprise software; the tools they use to do what they do. I sent a four question survey to my colleagues. I also posted the survey on Twitter. I received 78 responses. Below is a copy of the survey and its results.
The tools you use to do what you do
In the below questions, the word “tools” refers to the software and products you use to do your job (e.g. Photoshop, Slack, Trello, Salesforce, ZenDesk, Evernote, Invision, Reflector, GoToMeeting, Basecamp)
People care about their tools
The third question in the survey provides a nice summary of how important enterprise software is to the people who use it. 86% of respondents would give up money in order to use the tools they want to use. I guess enterprise software matters. And it matters a lot.
Attracting good talent into the workforce
Now that I know that people care about the tools they use, I wanted to explore the impact enterprise software could have on recruitment.
Imagine this scenario…
There’s a digital-savvy business and marketing major coming out of college. She’s smart and is going to make it far in the corporate world. She can’t remember ever not owning an iPhone and made her entire way through college without ever opening Microsoft Office. Hello Google Docs!
Would she come work for your company? Maybe, maybe not. If, however, your company is utilizing great software and is able to position itself as a modern business operating with a startup-state-of-mind, this fresh grad may think twice.
If you’re a recent graduate, you’d expect to use software that looks, feels and functions like the tools you’ve grown up with–Twitter, Google Docs and Dropbox. If you go into a corporate environment with anything less, you may end up leaving within a year. The pay may be fine and the people are nice, but life’s too short to not use great software. If you just spent four years in college using beautiful, modern, and often free, software, why would you take a step backwards? If anything, the software you’re about to use to start your career should be a step forward and help you unlock your potential as an individual.
As a product manager working in fintech, the above scenario is one element that drives me to build what we build. Call me crazy, but I believe our enterprise software can actually impact the type of people considering going to work for a bank.
Beyond attracting millennials, there are other benefits to building great enterprise software.
The rewards of building enterprise software
Enterprise software can build trust between departments and mitigate micromanagement. It can also empower problem-solving and encourage an ethos of always doing what’s right. Enterprise software has the opportunity to give people the tools they need to make informed decisions, trust the data they’re viewing and solve customer problems as humans, not scripts.
Great enterprise software not only impacts a company’s way of thinking and their way of working, it also impacts their culture. If your company uses enterprise software that encourages transparency, opt-in communication, collaboration, responsiveness and empathy, these traits should carry over to your company DNA. I’ll dive into these ideas more next time, but for now, know this–the tools you use as a company should represent your beliefs and the way you think.
In future posts, I’ll take a closer look at how great enterprise software can:
- Create a desirable culture
- Provide enormous workplace efficiencies
Although mentioned for context, the views expressed in this article are mine and not necessarily the views of Jack Henry & Associates.
