Driving Sustainable Transformation at Arvest Bank with Laura Merling

Laura Merling: 00:00:00

Because if you're gonna change how we approach our

Laura Merling: 00:00:02

customers and we're going to start with this customer centric

Laura Merling: 00:00:05

versus product we're not going to lead with do you need a

Laura Merling: 00:00:08

credit card? We're gonna lead with how can we help you? You

Laura Merling: 00:00:11

know, what do you need to grow your business or what do you

Laura Merling: 00:00:15

need to help you with your your personal life?

Brent Williams: 00:00:18

Welcome to the be epic podcast, brought to you

Brent Williams: 00:00:21

by the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of

Brent Williams: 00:00:24

Arkansas. I'm your host Brent Williams. Together, we'll

Brent Williams: 00:00:28

explore the dynamic landscape of business and uncover the

Brent Williams: 00:00:31

strategies, insights and stories that drive business today. Well,

Brent Williams: 00:00:37

today I have with me Laura Merling. Laura is the Chief

Brent Williams: 00:00:41

Transformation and Operations Officer at Arvest Bank. Laura,

Brent Williams: 00:00:45

thanks for joining me today.

Laura Merling: 00:00:46

Oh, thank you for the invitation. I was looking

Laura Merling: 00:00:48

forward to it.

Brent Williams: 00:00:49

Me too. I'm looking forward to this

Brent Williams: 00:00:50

conversation. You and I have gotten to know each other over

Brent Williams: 00:00:53

the last year or so and you've been in this role at Arvest now

Brent Williams: 00:00:57

for about 18 months?

Laura Merling: 00:00:59

Ah it'll to be two years next month. Okay.

Laura Merling: 00:01:03

Well, I know. It does. It went by really, really fast. That

Laura Merling: 00:01:09

must mean I'm enjoying it.

Brent Williams: 00:01:10

That's right. That's right. Well, you know, I

Brent Williams: 00:01:12

think when you joined Arvest really it sounded like the

Brent Williams: 00:01:16

charge was to lead a multi year large scale, transformation

Brent Williams: 00:01:22

process, digital transformation process some degree, I assume.

Brent Williams: 00:01:26

But maybe before we get into before we get into Arvest and

Brent Williams: 00:01:30

transformation, tell us a little bit about you. Your background

Brent Williams: 00:01:34

is pretty cool. I mean, you've got I know Ford, AT&T, Google,

Brent Williams: 00:01:39

now financial services. Tell us about that journey.

Laura Merling: 00:01:43

Oh, it's a it's a long and sorted journey. It was

Laura Merling: 00:01:46

definitely a windy road meeting, you know, part of is taking

Laura Merling: 00:01:53

advantage of opportunities that come that came along the way.

Laura Merling: 00:01:59

But it's leveraging knowledge and experience of what I learned

Laura Merling: 00:02:03

in the previous role. And so it was taking, hey, I've learned

Laura Merling: 00:02:10

XYZ at one company, how do I now take and apply that to that one

Laura Merling: 00:02:14

that was probably a little bit of a stretch was doing, you

Laura Merling: 00:02:16

know, AT&T autonomous vehicles, however, but when you think so

Laura Merling: 00:02:22

AT&T is connectivity, right? And so then when you think well,

Laura Merling: 00:02:26

connected cars are kind of the foundation for autonomous

Laura Merling: 00:02:29

vehicles. And then where's the revenue really coming from in

Laura Merling: 00:02:33

self driving cars? It's not really the car because it's kind

Laura Merling: 00:02:37

of expensive, the revenue is actually in the services that

Laura Merling: 00:02:39

surround it and the digital capabilities. So it's taking

Laura Merling: 00:02:42

what you know, and say, Well, how can I apply that to another

Laura Merling: 00:02:45

industry?

Brent Williams: 00:02:47

That makes sense.

Laura Merling: 00:02:48

I think I've oversimplified it, but that's

Laura Merling: 00:02:50

no, it's all very accidental. It was definitely not planned that.

Brent Williams: 00:02:54

Most of our journeys aren't, right? But it

Brent Williams: 00:02:57

looks like you've had a lot of fun, like in a lot of varied

Brent Williams: 00:03:00

experiences, which, you know, now in financial services at

Brent Williams: 00:03:05

Arvest Bank. I assume all of those experiences have prepared

Brent Williams: 00:03:11

you pretty well for this role.

Laura Merling: 00:03:13

Yes, I think so. There's, you know, there's

Laura Merling: 00:03:16

always things you the reason, you also do it is there are the

Laura Merling: 00:03:19

things you want to learn and can learn by going into into a new

Laura Merling: 00:03:23

industry. And that's what's exciting about it. I think I'm

Laura Merling: 00:03:26

a, I'm a continuous learner. And it's just something I like to

Laura Merling: 00:03:30

do. But I mean, the things along along the way that you learn,

Laura Merling: 00:03:35

you know, it was interesting, I looked back AT&T was 2012. And

Laura Merling: 00:03:41

at the time, I thought AT&T was really behind digitally, like,

Laura Merling: 00:03:45

hey, you're trying to do what online? And what do you mean,

Laura Merling: 00:03:48

your customers can't do, you know, XYZ online. And I looked

Laura Merling: 00:03:52

back now, and I'm like, oh, they were actually pretty advanced,

Laura Merling: 00:03:55

in terms of level of maturity. And the things that that I

Laura Merling: 00:04:00

learned there was the foundation, you know, just

Laura Merling: 00:04:03

before ATT was Alcatel Lucent, which was another, they provided

Laura Merling: 00:04:07

telecom infrastructure to AT&T. And those two were kind of my

Laura Merling: 00:04:13

first foray out of being in the software industry. And so going

Laura Merling: 00:04:18

from software to the customer side, and now being on the

Laura Merling: 00:04:21

customer side, saying how do you apply all these great things?

Laura Merling: 00:04:25

All these great technologies, how do you actually make them

Laura Merling: 00:04:26

useful inside of a corporation? And so for me, that was that was

Laura Merling: 00:04:31

kind of the exciting thing is taking what I had learned in a

Laura Merling: 00:04:34

software world and bringing it to an end customer, and then

Laura Merling: 00:04:38

taking that on my journey forward. So AT&T, my biggest

Laura Merling: 00:04:41

probably takeaway was, how to do metrics around one it was a

Laura Merling: 00:04:46

large scale transformation as well. Now their target was, you

Laura Merling: 00:04:49

know, 2020 being 80% digital, so everything that you do with the

Laura Merling: 00:04:54

company, every step every process in the company being

Laura Merling: 00:04:57

digital um, and so a multi year journey, how do you approach it?

Laura Merling: 00:05:03

What are the steps you take? And then also how do you measure

Laura Merling: 00:05:06

outcomes that you measure success. AT&T, I can tell you

Laura Merling: 00:05:10

down to the button, you clicked on a screen, how much money we

Laura Merling: 00:05:13

saved, to every phone call that was made and how much money it

Laura Merling: 00:05:17

costs. So it was really measured at a detailed level, which was

Laura Merling: 00:05:22

an interesting way to understand metrics and outcomes and how you

Laura Merling: 00:05:25

want to, you want to look at transformation, which I then

Laura Merling: 00:05:29

brought to the next place, which was Ford Motor Company.

Brent Williams: 00:05:35

And I assume you've sort of continued to

Brent Williams: 00:05:37

refine that, and I don't want to get into that process on that by

Brent Williams: 00:05:40

pillars. Maybe maybe first a little bit about our best bank.

Brent Williams: 00:05:46

So living in Northwest Arkansas, of course, I'm pretty familiar

Brent Williams: 00:05:50

with Arvest Bank. And, you know, I've heard you refer to Arvest

Brent Williams: 00:05:56

Bank as seeking to be a community bank of the future,

Brent Williams: 00:06:00

maybe kind of just tell us a little bit about Arvest where

Brent Williams: 00:06:03

Arvest is going the footprint and those kinds of things.

Laura Merling: 00:06:06

So started out as a community bank, it's always

Laura Merling: 00:06:10

been a community bank started about 60 years ago, by Sam

Laura Merling: 00:06:14

Walton. And I think what's interesting is, so we don't want

Laura Merling: 00:06:19

to it's not that we we didn't, we never went away from being a

Laura Merling: 00:06:22

community bank. But we want to continue to be a community bank

Laura Merling: 00:06:25

in a digital world, which I think is a an interesting you

Laura Merling: 00:06:28

know you think about community, where does community happen?

Laura Merling: 00:06:31

Does it happen in the neighborhood square? Or does it

Laura Merling: 00:06:33

happen online? And if they find who you are, and what you're

Laura Merling: 00:06:36

doing the answer is, yes. Right? It's both. And so, you know,

Laura Merling: 00:06:41

what does that transformation mean for us? So we're in we're

Laura Merling: 00:06:44

about a mid sized bank. So we like to be called a community

Laura Merling: 00:06:47

bank, because we're focused on on serving the community. But if

Laura Merling: 00:06:51

you talk to the regulators, we're a midsize bank, okay.

Brent Williams: 00:06:56

And that's usually how regulators gonna

Brent Williams: 00:06:58

make that determination.

Laura Merling: 00:06:59

Exactly, it's based on on asset size. And so

Laura Merling: 00:07:04

but, we're in four states. So we have Arkansas, Oklahoma,

Laura Merling: 00:07:08

Missouri, and Kansas as our kind of four state footprint. Within

Laura Merling: 00:07:13

those we aren't across the whole state, we're in a subset of

Laura Merling: 00:07:16

those states. But definitely serve those states. We also have

Laura Merling: 00:07:21

some things that we do that are nationwide. So we have a

Laura Merling: 00:07:25

mortgage, we do mortgage servicing, that's nationwide, we

Laura Merling: 00:07:29

have another service that we do, which is automotive lending,

Laura Merling: 00:07:34

that is beyond the four state so we have a new things that we do

Laura Merling: 00:07:38

that stretch beyond the four state footprint, and those are

Laura Merling: 00:07:41

all done digitally already today.

Brent Williams: 00:07:43

Well, I noticed, you know, speaking of Arvest as

Brent Williams: 00:07:46

seeking to serve the community, I noticed not too long ago, an

Brent Williams: 00:07:50

announcement about maybe different like industries or

Brent Williams: 00:07:53

verticals, if you will, within a community that you're really

Brent Williams: 00:07:56

focused on serving or serving maybe more holistically.

Laura Merling: 00:08:01

Yeah. So when we think about a community bank,

Laura Merling: 00:08:05

and what does it mean to be a community bank in the future? We

Laura Merling: 00:08:08

started by saying, well, what is a community bank today? Right?

Laura Merling: 00:08:10

It's about relationships. And so we don't want to lose the

Laura Merling: 00:08:13

relationship piece of being a community bank. It's really at

Laura Merling: 00:08:16

the core of who Arvest is, and has always been and wants to

Laura Merling: 00:08:20

continue to be. And so then we'd said, if we take that as the

Laura Merling: 00:08:25

foundation, or the or the, the individuals, the companies and

Laura Merling: 00:08:32

the nonprofits that serve the community, and how do we think

Laura Merling: 00:08:36

about that. So when you start to think you think it's everything

Laura Merling: 00:08:39

from skilled trade, to agriculture, to health care. And

Laura Merling: 00:08:45

so what we did is we started with two of those entities and

Laura Merling: 00:08:48

said, okay, we're gonna take healthcare and agriculture, we

Laura Merling: 00:08:51

have a lot of experience in serving those communities and as

Laura Merling: 00:08:55

companies, and what can we do to bring more value to them? How

Laura Merling: 00:09:01

can we help them succeed in the community, both as a business,

Laura Merling: 00:09:06

but their employees that can make up the community? And so it

Laura Merling: 00:09:10

was really starting with those two. What are the services that

Laura Merling: 00:09:14

we can provide to them, and make sure that we get more focused in

Laura Merling: 00:09:19

the areas of value that we bring to them as a as a bank. We don't

Laura Merling: 00:09:23

want to just be a bank, we want to be a partner. And what does

Laura Merling: 00:09:27

that mean to be a partner?

Brent Williams: 00:09:29

And I guess that means refract refining products

Brent Williams: 00:09:33

and services, building new products, integrating products

Brent Williams: 00:09:36

is it all the above?

Laura Merling: 00:09:37

It's all of the above. So it's understanding you

Laura Merling: 00:09:42

know, so in our in our footprint, where we are some of

Laura Merling: 00:09:47

the key areas that we serve are row crop, right beef cattle and

Laura Merling: 00:09:53

then our side cow calf operations, and poultry. And so

Laura Merling: 00:09:58

when you think about that, well wouldn't each of those customers

Laura Merling: 00:10:02

in our market need you know row crop is very different from

Laura Merling: 00:10:05

poultry in terms of what they need to operate and run their

Laura Merling: 00:10:09

business and how they might want a partnership and what that

Laura Merling: 00:10:11

means. On the healthcare side, you have small physicians

Laura Merling: 00:10:16

offices, you know, if I'm one or two, you know, physician office,

Laura Merling: 00:10:24

I might need CFO in a box right?

Brent Williams: 00:10:28

Yeah,

Laura Merling: 00:10:29

If I'm row crop, I might need a leasing platform.

Laura Merling: 00:10:34

Because I might lease my land out. So it's really figuring out

Laura Merling: 00:10:38

what it is, and then where do we add value to that partnership?

Laura Merling: 00:10:42

Or to that relationship?

Brent Williams: 00:10:44

Okay, that makes that total sense.

Laura Merling: 00:10:45

Does that help?

Brent Williams: 00:10:46

It does. And I just when I saw it and heard

Brent Williams: 00:10:49

about it, I thought it made so much sense, you know, to focus

Brent Williams: 00:10:52

on those areas that really are pillars of the communities that

Brent Williams: 00:10:57

we all live in I guess.

Laura Merling: 00:10:58

And those are, those are centers of excellence.

Laura Merling: 00:11:00

So what we're doing with those is they will partner with each

Laura Merling: 00:11:03

Well, so you've been with Arvest almost two years, and hired to

Laura Merling: 00:11:04

of the bank markets. So rather than having everybody have to

Laura Merling: 00:11:08

hire experts, Now some will we still want experts where it

Laura Merling: 00:11:11

makes sense. But how do they help with policies, process

Laura Merling: 00:11:15

products, what are all the things that they can do to help

Laura Merling: 00:11:18

bring, so they're gonna have industry expertise, themselves,

Laura Merling: 00:11:22

and we have some interesting, so the the gentleman that we just

Laura Merling: 00:11:26

hired to run healthcare also happens to own a farm, a fifth

Laura Merling: 00:11:30

generation family farm. So but then so does the person that

Laura Merling: 00:11:33

runs our food value chain also is on the seventh generation

Laura Merling: 00:11:37

family farm. So we've actually found it's been an interesting

Laura Merling: 00:11:41

dynamic between the two of them, and what what they can bring

Laura Merling: 00:11:44

together to help serve our customers.

Laura Merling: 00:11:55

lead transformation. So maybe kind of walk me back over the

Laura Merling: 00:11:59

last couple of years as you as you stepped in this industry as

Laura Merling: 00:12:03

you stepped into Arvest. And as soon as you stepped into this

Laura Merling: 00:12:06

community, like what are some of the other things in that

Laura Merling: 00:12:09

learning process that stand out?

Laura Merling: 00:12:10

Oh, there's so many. One was just Arvest itself is a unique

Laura Merling: 00:12:14

company. And it's, it's interesting, because everybody

Laura Merling: 00:12:17

Yeah. No, it's just an interesting, I guess, nuance to

Laura Merling: 00:12:17

will say that during the interview process, we have

Laura Merling: 00:12:21

amazing people here, we have normally nice people. I have to

Laura Merling: 00:12:25

say, no offense to all the other places that I've worked, they

Laura Merling: 00:12:29

have great people, but Arvest, the folks, people are just

Laura Merling: 00:12:32

really nice. They are very people oriented people. It's

Laura Merling: 00:12:36

just a really fun welcoming environment. And everybody's

Laura Merling: 00:12:40

there to try to help each other. And it just is a I've really

Laura Merling: 00:12:44

enjoyed that. So that stood out just in the company. One of the

Laura Merling: 00:12:48

things that that I learned is I've done a lot of different

Laura Merling: 00:12:52

industries that are all regulated, right? So the

Laura Merling: 00:12:55

difference is that I've learned with financial services is

Laura Merling: 00:12:59

regulatory is part of what you do day to day and ingrained and

Laura Merling: 00:13:03

embedded in everything that you do, whether it be deposits or

Laura Merling: 00:13:07

lending. So whether we're giving you a bank account, a checking

Laura Merling: 00:13:11

and savings account, or whether we're giving you a commercial

Laura Merling: 00:13:15

loan, it's in every part of what we do. And that was to me for an

Laura Merling: 00:13:19

interesting learning to think about, okay, how do we, when I

Laura Merling: 00:13:23

think about transformation, I never had people from the chief

Laura Merling: 00:13:27

risk officer's office sitting in every meeting, we now have that

Laura Merling: 00:13:31

person sitting in every meeting, we have someone from risk and

Laura Merling: 00:13:35

compliance, who sits in every one of our discussions about our

Laura Merling: 00:13:39

product roadmap, our technology roadmap, what we're thinking

Laura Merling: 00:13:43

about doing from a transformation, like setting up

Laura Merling: 00:13:47

the Centers of Excellence they're in all of those

Laura Merling: 00:13:50

discussions. So that's one learning. And one, one change. I

Laura Merling: 00:13:54

don't know if that's the type of learning you're looking for.

Laura Merling: 00:14:01

the industry as you're stepping in to the transformation. And I

Laura Merling: 00:14:06

also wonder, like, you know, alright, so day one of a job

Laura Merling: 00:14:11

like that, you know, how do you start thinking about the process

Laura Merling: 00:14:14

because it is very much about a process.

Laura Merling: 00:14:17

It, it is about a process. So one is just understanding and

Laura Merling: 00:14:23

learning the landscape of the bank.

Brent Williams: 00:14:25

Okay.

Laura Merling: 00:14:27

What does it do? You know what I've you know all

Laura Merling: 00:14:30

the the services that Arvest has to offer, there's a lot of them.

Laura Merling: 00:14:33

So how do you understand them? Not just who runs them, but but

Laura Merling: 00:14:38

how does, how the customers use them? How do they think about

Laura Merling: 00:14:41

them? What are the different levers that we use in the bank,

Laura Merling: 00:14:46

to run the bank? Just really kind of understanding who makes

Laura Merling: 00:14:50

up the bank understanding the different markets that we're in

Laura Merling: 00:14:54

because every market has different needs. Understanding

Laura Merling: 00:14:58

right what each of the markets serves and what our market looks

Laura Merling: 00:15:02

like. That's just foundational. And that's kind of throughout

Laura Merling: 00:15:05

everything that you do. But back to one of the things that I kind

Laura Merling: 00:15:09

of took away from my work at AT&T was setting up a framework

Laura Merling: 00:15:13

for how I would think about transformation. What did I learn

Laura Merling: 00:15:17

there? How do I think about taking that forward? And it's,

Laura Merling: 00:15:22

it's crazy, but it's a 90 day framework. And that framework

Laura Merling: 00:15:27

starts with, who do we want to be when we grow up?

Brent Williams: 00:15:30

Okay.

Laura Merling: 00:15:31

You have to figure it out. And you can't

Laura Merling: 00:15:33

solve that in 90 days.

Brent Williams: 00:15:34

And these are sort of the questions you're

Brent Williams: 00:15:36

asking yourself?

Laura Merling: 00:15:36

These are the questions.

Laura Merling: 00:15:37

Yeah. So you have to understand who we are, to

Brent Williams: 00:15:37

Okay.

Brent Williams: 00:15:40

know where we where you want to go. How do you leverage, there's

Brent Williams: 00:15:44

a great, I got an opportunity to work with someone at Ford that

Brent Williams: 00:15:48

that helped me refine this a little bit. And his name is

Brent Williams: 00:15:51

Roger Martin. And he wrote a book called, well, how to win is

Brent Williams: 00:15:57

what it's called, but it's where they how to win, I got a chance

Brent Williams: 00:15:59

to work with Roger Martin. Really amazing. Yes, it was very

Brent Williams: 00:16:03

cool. really pushed, how do you how do you think about framing

Brent Williams: 00:16:08

it? But it's, it's where do you want to go as a business is

Brent Williams: 00:16:12

along, though where to play? how to win kind of framework and

Brent Williams: 00:16:14

construct that takes time to do that. So it's where do you want

Brent Williams: 00:16:19

to be as a business? The second one is understanding the

Brent Williams: 00:16:22

customer base. So five pillars, pillar two is Do you know who

Brent Williams: 00:16:25

your customer is? And in that, do you really know who your

Brent Williams: 00:16:29

customer is? We always talk about it. But the thing that I

Brent Williams: 00:16:33

learned at Ford, which was really interesting was, you

Brent Williams: 00:16:37

know, we were building autonomous vehicles. And we were

Brent Williams: 00:16:40

looking at what what would they get used for? Will you use it to

Brent Williams: 00:16:43

move people? Or will you use it to move goods, and we would

Brent Williams: 00:16:45

probably use it to move both. But we were looking at using it

Brent Williams: 00:16:49

to move goods. One of the things that was really interesting was,

Brent Williams: 00:16:54

there's a big difference between the way a customer looks at

Brent Williams: 00:16:57

getting a package delivered to them. And the way that the

Brent Williams: 00:17:00

company doing the delivery looks at delivering the package. So I

Brent Williams: 00:17:03

think we all know that because we've gotten the box all

Brent Williams: 00:17:05

crumpled up at our doorstep.

Brent Williams: 00:17:06

Yeah,

Laura Merling: 00:17:07

But but it's, you know, if you're the customer,

Laura Merling: 00:17:11

you're thinking, Am I do I want it today? Or do I want to

Laura Merling: 00:17:15

tomorrow? Do I want it delivered to me? Or do I want it delivered

Laura Merling: 00:17:20

to my doorstep? Am I am I going to be home? Am I going to be

Laura Merling: 00:17:23

away? Like? Where all those things? If you are the company

Laura Merling: 00:17:26

delivering it, you're thinking I? Is it? Does it need to be

Laura Merling: 00:17:32

refrigerated? Or does it not? Is this long haul or local? Like,

Laura Merling: 00:17:38

am I going across country? Or am I going down the street. So very

Laura Merling: 00:17:41

different in terms of how we all think about it. And so what

Laura Merling: 00:17:46

happens is most companies tend to think of it from their view

Laura Merling: 00:17:49

of how they need to get the package to you, versus how you

Laura Merling: 00:17:53

how you want to receive the package. And if you can flip it

Laura Merling: 00:17:57

and think about it from the lens of how they want to receive the

Laura Merling: 00:17:59

package. You can redesign what it is that you're doing and make

Laura Merling: 00:18:04

it more customer first and customer friendly.

Brent Williams: 00:18:07

I assume you know, when you join an

Brent Williams: 00:18:09

organization, you know we've been if I've been in an

Brent Williams: 00:18:12

organization for 15 or 20 years, I think I know who my customer

Brent Williams: 00:18:16

is. But I'm sure there's always surprises for the organization,

Brent Williams: 00:18:22

as you really start to dig in, how do you bring a fresh look to

Brent Williams: 00:18:27

a company on who their customer is?

Laura Merling: 00:18:29

Well, the easy part is the fact that you don't

Laura Merling: 00:18:31

know the industry.

Brent Williams: 00:18:33

So a fresh set of eyes,

Laura Merling: 00:18:34

A fresh set of eyes is one good way. A lot of

Laura Merling: 00:18:38

people will do NPS net promoter score, which is do you like me?

Laura Merling: 00:18:42

Absolutely that customer centric perspective works no matter what

Laura Merling: 00:18:43

Will you recommend me? Yeah, we did a vulnerability study, which

Laura Merling: 00:18:47

is completely the opposite. What are the rocks of your shoes?

Laura Merling: 00:18:50

What are the things that are going to drive you away from us

Laura Merling: 00:18:52

like what do been like about what we do? So we did that? A

Laura Merling: 00:18:56

little bit that. But it's also going out and talking to

Laura Merling: 00:18:58

customers and understanding who they are so standing in the

Laura Merling: 00:19:02

lobby of a branch and talking to customers or in asking them

Laura Merling: 00:19:07

questions. And it's really figuring out who they are from

Laura Merling: 00:19:10

that perspective. And what are they trying to do? You know,

Laura Merling: 00:19:13

it's it's kind of stepping back and looking at it through just a

Laura Merling: 00:19:17

different lens of looking at it as who you are as a person not

Laura Merling: 00:19:20

what financial services do you meet? If we look at it through

Laura Merling: 00:19:23

the Do you need a loan? Do you need a credit card? That's not

Laura Merling: 00:19:27

helping you when you're who you are, how you want to live, how

Laura Merling: 00:19:31

you want to run your business. I think it's that taking that

Laura Merling: 00:19:34

perspective will really change the answers that you get for

Laura Merling: 00:19:39

what you might offer.

Laura Merling: 00:19:44

the industry is.

Laura Merling: 00:19:45

It does, it does.

Brent Williams: 00:19:47

So customer understanding the customer's

Brent Williams: 00:19:49

pillar two, yep, how about three?

Laura Merling: 00:19:51

So pillar three was probably the I started

Laura Merling: 00:19:55

within the first 30 days, just because it takes a while which

Laura Merling: 00:19:59

pillar three is really doing a technology assessment. So the

Laura Merling: 00:20:05

transformation that Arvest hired me to do. While some of that is

Laura Merling: 00:20:09

technology, it's really about transforming the bank, how do we

Laura Merling: 00:20:11

make sure we're set up for where, you know, the world

Laura Merling: 00:20:14

changed during COVID? That won't start to change before COVID and

Laura Merling: 00:20:17

continues to change? And it's it's technology is everywhere,

Laura Merling: 00:20:21

right? Think about how fast people started using Gen AI?

Brent Williams: 00:20:27

Yeah,

Laura Merling: 00:20:27

it went from zero to 100 million users in two

Laura Merling: 00:20:29

months, two months. That's pretty fast adoption of a

Laura Merling: 00:20:34

technology. And so for us, you know, it's where do we want to

Laura Merling: 00:20:39

be as a bank? And how do we still be a community bank,

Laura Merling: 00:20:41

that's technology enabled. And so pillar three is technology

Laura Merling: 00:20:45

assessment. So it was under skin, understanding the

Laura Merling: 00:20:49

landscape of everything that we have at the bank all the

Laura Merling: 00:20:52

underlying technology capabilities, application

Laura Merling: 00:20:56

systems. And that takes a while. And as you might imagine, in any

Laura Merling: 00:21:03

business, any institution that's been around for more than a

Laura Merling: 00:21:07

year, you have legacy technology, I think I talked

Laura Merling: 00:21:11

about it at another conference was the minute you implement the

Laura Merling: 00:21:14

technology, its legacy. And so it's making sure that you're

Laura Merling: 00:21:18

thinking about how you construct things for the future. So you

Laura Merling: 00:21:21

want to know what you have to know where you need to go. And

Laura Merling: 00:21:25

that technology assessment is also what data do we have? And

Laura Merling: 00:21:29

what data can we get out of that technology? You know, what, what

Laura Merling: 00:21:32

data can we get from the systems that we have? And how do we, how

Laura Merling: 00:21:37

we think about that data? Do you really is exhaust from the

Laura Merling: 00:21:41

systems that you use, I hate to say that, but it's an exhaust

Laura Merling: 00:21:43

from the applications and services that that our customers

Laura Merling: 00:21:48

use and our associates to use. And it's important to understand

Laura Merling: 00:21:52

both the technology and where it is, but also to understand the

Laura Merling: 00:21:56

data and what's available, because the best way to serve

Laura Merling: 00:21:59

the customer is to know what they're using and not using

Laura Merling: 00:22:03

because you don't want to continue to offer things that

Laura Merling: 00:22:05

are valuable. Or if like, simple things are, this can sound

Laura Merling: 00:22:12

really crazy. But our mobile check deposit for a while people

Laura Merling: 00:22:15

were having a challenge with mobile check deposit. Well, if

Laura Merling: 00:22:18

we don't look at what we're having a challenge with, you

Laura Merling: 00:22:22

don't know that it was actually we were just giving them an

Laura Merling: 00:22:24

error saying we couldn't deposit it, we weren't giving them an

Laura Merling: 00:22:26

error saying well, you didn't sign the check. It was really

Laura Merling: 00:22:29

just depends on the check, right? So it's making sure that

Laura Merling: 00:22:32

you're being very specific about what the problem is. But you

Laura Merling: 00:22:34

have to know what data you can and what you have access to and

Laura Merling: 00:22:38

not access to, to be able to improve customer service.

Brent Williams: 00:22:42

All right, step four.

Laura Merling: 00:22:44

So step four is defining looking at and metrics.

Laura Merling: 00:22:53

Now Step Four kind of needs to go hand in hand with customer or

Laura Merling: 00:22:58

technology. And then where you want to go kind of step four

Laura Merling: 00:23:00

really is what metrics can you use to define success? And

Laura Merling: 00:23:06

there's longer term metrics, but there's short term metrics. So

Laura Merling: 00:23:09

what we did was we took the vulnerability study that we did,

Laura Merling: 00:23:13

where are the pain points and rocks in the shoes? And how

Laura Merling: 00:23:17

could we set up some quick wins to demonstrate metrics and

Laura Merling: 00:23:21

outcomes? Hey, you know, by improving self service for

Laura Merling: 00:23:28

password reset, we can take 1000 calls a month out of the contact

Laura Merling: 00:23:32

center. Great, that's not just that's 1000 customers, we've

Laura Merling: 00:23:37

made happier. And it's also 1000 less calls to the contact

Laura Merling: 00:23:41

center. So there's two ways to measure that. So it's, it's it's

Laura Merling: 00:23:45

things like that, that we wanted to be able to say, what are the

Laura Merling: 00:23:47

metrics that we can take in the short term? And then long term

Laura Merling: 00:23:51

is we've put together our technology roadmap, as well as

Laura Merling: 00:23:55

our transformation roadmap, like, where do we want the

Laura Merling: 00:23:56

business to be? And how does that tie to technology, we now

Laura Merling: 00:24:01

have big projects that we're working on, that I can tell you

Laura Merling: 00:24:07

over a five year period, here's the investment we're going to

Laura Merling: 00:24:11

make. And here's the outcomes we expect each year either the

Laura Merling: 00:24:14

reduction in cost that we take out of the bank, or increased

Laura Merling: 00:24:20

potential revenue. And so we look at both sides of that coin

Laura Merling: 00:24:25

for the investments that we're making.

Brent Williams: 00:24:27

Okay. And that's sort of your final piece to your

Brent Williams: 00:24:30

framework.

Laura Merling: 00:24:30

And then the last piece of the framework is

Laura Merling: 00:24:33

actually in governance. So metrics is kind of four. And

Laura Merling: 00:24:38

that's it piece is really governance and governance is

Laura Merling: 00:24:41

really, governance is really about how do we make sure that

Laura Merling: 00:24:48

we're holding each other accountable for all the things

Laura Merling: 00:24:52

that we're trying to do,

Brent Williams: 00:24:53

Okay. And that's governance of the process.

Laura Merling: 00:24:56

That's governance of the process. That's also it's

Laura Merling: 00:24:59

a little bit of governance of things happen, market dynamics

Laura Merling: 00:25:03

change, market dynamics changed earlier this year in banking.

Laura Merling: 00:25:08

Right? We had some changes happen in the banking sector.

Laura Merling: 00:25:12

And so you have to be prepared to adjust for those dynamics for

Laura Merling: 00:25:16

what you do as part of your strategy, right. So while we

Laura Merling: 00:25:21

created a multi year roadmap, you have to make sure that

Laura Merling: 00:25:24

you've put enough you're putting governance that you're not

Laura Merling: 00:25:27

spending dollars on something that right now doesn't make

Laura Merling: 00:25:30

sense. Maybe you do come back to it again next year. Yes, it's on

Laura Merling: 00:25:34

your long term journey. But you need to step out of that journey

Laura Merling: 00:25:37

to do something else right now. And so that's, that's what that

Laura Merling: 00:25:41

governance is, it's, it's to look holistically at your

Laura Merling: 00:25:44

roadmap, and say, what are you doing? And are you still

Laura Merling: 00:25:47

prioritizing what you should be?

Brent Williams: 00:25:50

I think the thing that sort of the reason

Brent Williams: 00:25:51

why I wanted to go through that framework is, you know, I think

Brent Williams: 00:25:55

it's just a simple way to think about it, that's right to think

Brent Williams: 00:26:00

about it, I assume it's allowed you to galvanize your team

Brent Williams: 00:26:02

around it, and you can communicate it easily. And it's

Brent Williams: 00:26:06

not. It doesn't only work in financial services, it works in

Brent Williams: 00:26:11

in any industry.

Laura Merling: 00:26:12

It works in any industry. And the one thing that

Laura Merling: 00:26:14

people always go, but you forgot people, like well, I didn't

Laura Merling: 00:26:20

really forget the associates what what we've what we've done

Laura Merling: 00:26:23

is we kind of see people as kind of overarching

Brent Williams: 00:26:27

Okay

Laura Merling: 00:26:27

across those, that process, we're methodically

Laura Merling: 00:26:31

thinking about in the Arvest program and what that means to

Laura Merling: 00:26:34

our associates on the people side. And along with that comes

Laura Merling: 00:26:38

process changes. So we found out a whole organizational change

Laura Merling: 00:26:41

management team. And that organizational change management

Laura Merling: 00:26:45

team is right there alone with us through every step of the

Laura Merling: 00:26:49

way, with our associates, and like the technology team to say

Laura Merling: 00:26:52

here's what we do. It's complicated.

Brent Williams: 00:26:55

Yeah, it is complicated,

Laura Merling: 00:26:56

but it's not yet.

Brent Williams: 00:26:57

As you explained it. It. I think, I don't know if

Brent Williams: 00:27:02

I use the word simple, simple to understand. Complicated to

Brent Williams: 00:27:06

probably execute on and, you know, and one thing I just

Brent Williams: 00:27:12

wanted to mention is, you know, we laid it out as a framework of

Brent Williams: 00:27:15

five steps. But those aren't five linear steps, right?

Laura Merling: 00:27:18

Their definitely not linear.

Brent Williams: 00:27:21

That's one thing that probably adds some of the

Brent Williams: 00:27:23

complexity.

Laura Merling: 00:27:24

It does, well, I know they're not linear, and

Laura Merling: 00:27:27

they're not one time, right, you have to continually be looking

Laura Merling: 00:27:30

at all of those. Now, you don't want to continually change your

Laura Merling: 00:27:33

goalposts of what you're what you want your business to be in

Laura Merling: 00:27:36

five to 10 years when you grow up, because you don't wanna keep

Laura Merling: 00:27:38

changing the goalposts. But it's not a direct line. It's going to

Laura Merling: 00:27:42

be zigs and zags, again, based upon things that happened in the

Laura Merling: 00:27:45

market. Who would have known COVID, who would have known

Laura Merling: 00:27:49

Silicon Valley bank , who would have known, right, just so so

Laura Merling: 00:27:52

things have market dynamics happen that you have to pay

Laura Merling: 00:27:54

attention to.

Brent Williams: 00:27:56

Well, as you I guess I'll kind of ask you a two

Brent Williams: 00:27:59

pronged question here. As you look back over the last couple

Brent Williams: 00:28:03

of years, what's maybe the thing that you're most proud of thus

Brent Williams: 00:28:08

far, and then anything as you're looking forward, that really,

Brent Williams: 00:28:11

really excites you?

Laura Merling: 00:28:13

The probably one of the main things was the me at

Laura Merling: 00:28:17

Arvest program, because we didn't have have that right and

Laura Merling: 00:28:22

we partnered with our people team, our HR team too and a

Laura Merling: 00:28:26

third party helped us because without that, no, people would

Laura Merling: 00:28:32

join the company, and they've had different experiences at

Laura Merling: 00:28:35

other companies. So people have been at Arvest for a long time,

Laura Merling: 00:28:38

but but they also have come at different stages of their

Laura Merling: 00:28:41

career. And those experiences might lead them to believe like

Laura Merling: 00:28:46

we had a few of our associates who were terrified of moving to

Laura Merling: 00:28:51

the cloud. And because they were at another company that when

Laura Merling: 00:28:54

they moved to the cloud, they outsourced all of it. And so

Laura Merling: 00:28:58

they lost their job. So when we said we were moving to the

Laura Merling: 00:29:01

cloud, they're like, oh, I'm losing my job right now. No, no,

Laura Merling: 00:29:04

no, no. We, we need you here, we want to, we want to teach you

Laura Merling: 00:29:08

how to do this. And so me setting up me at Arvest

Laura Merling: 00:29:12

framework and foundation and getting that in place. And it it

Laura Merling: 00:29:16

wasn't easy. It took us almost a full year for people to believe

Laura Merling: 00:29:20

that we were really not going to let we were focused on their

Laura Merling: 00:29:24

growth on their success alongside of what we were doing.

Laura Merling: 00:29:30

So that's probably one because now it's spreading across the

Laura Merling: 00:29:33

rest of the bank. Right. It takes time to roll it out. But

Laura Merling: 00:29:36

that for me is probably one thing that I'm most excited

Laura Merling: 00:29:40

about what we've been able to put in place. In terms of the

Laura Merling: 00:29:46

transformation on the technology side. We are on track. It's been

Laura Merling: 00:29:53

pretty fast. We've we've made four pivots if you ask my head

Laura Merling: 00:29:59

of infrastructure, he'll tell you we've made four pivots on

Laura Merling: 00:30:01

our migration to cloud over the last year, we are not the only

Laura Merling: 00:30:05

one, you'd have to. I think I just if I could tell everybody

Laura Merling: 00:30:10

just, if you think you're the only one, you're not go ask five

Laura Merling: 00:30:13

other companies, they've made four pivots as well. So if

Laura Merling: 00:30:16

you're trying to move to cloud, but over the course of that

Laura Merling: 00:30:19

year, not only have people learned it, and done side by

Laura Merling: 00:30:23

side with partners, but we will be wealthy out of wonderful data

Laura Merling: 00:30:27

center, with almost from a year beginning to end to be in Google

Laura Merling: 00:30:34

Cloud, with one of our data centers. That's pretty good.

Laura Merling: 00:30:38

That's pretty good clip.

Brent Williams: 00:30:39

Yes it is.

Laura Merling: 00:30:41

By anybody's standards,

Brent Williams: 00:30:42

Yeah.

Laura Merling: 00:30:42

That's a fast pace. So I think, I think the

Brent Williams: 00:30:42

Yeah.

Brent Williams: 00:30:45

team and what they were able to do there, there's, I mean,

Laura Merling: 00:30:47

Other than hopefully they use the platform,

Laura Merling: 00:30:49

there's so many, I mean, we've had so many between the quick

Laura Merling: 00:30:53

wins that we did with the contact center and making some

Laura Merling: 00:30:55

adjustments there. To last year we went, we have two things.

Laura Merling: 00:31:01

Last year and nine months, we went from building our own new

Laura Merling: 00:31:06

core banking platform to delivering the ability to do

Laura Merling: 00:31:09

equipment finance, as a loan product on a new core banking

Laura Merling: 00:31:14

platform that we built from the ground up. Yesterday, we

Laura Merling: 00:31:18

launched our loan origination system for all commercial

Laura Merling: 00:31:24

lending. So the other one was loan servicing, this is loan

Laura Merling: 00:31:28

origination. For me, some portion of our commercial loans,

Laura Merling: 00:31:34

and the team built that from the ground up and we did it in

Laura Merling: 00:31:38

partnership with it, we changed the operating model. So the I

Laura Merling: 00:31:42

mean, there's so many wins, we we changed the operating model

Laura Merling: 00:31:45

of how we built software and for, for Arvest, for us, the

Laura Merling: 00:31:52

lenders, the loan assistance, customers, all gave input to

Laura Merling: 00:31:59

what we built and how we built it. And every two weeks, we had

Laura Merling: 00:32:02

a group of associates that got to see what we call a sprint,

Laura Merling: 00:32:06

right. So we follow an Agile process. And every two weeks we

Laura Merling: 00:32:06

right? That's the goal is it gets used, because many products

Laura Merling: 00:32:10

demonstrate what we built, we built this, look at it, built

Laura Merling: 00:32:13

this, look at it, we even had our loan assistance, and the

Laura Merling: 00:32:18

lenders got to design what they needed. On the screens, like

Laura Merling: 00:32:23

this is what it needs to look like for us. And oh, by the way,

Laura Merling: 00:32:25

we need a pizza trackers that everybody that's working on the

Laura Merling: 00:32:28

loan knows where it is when the customer calls, and oh, by the

Laura Merling: 00:32:30

way, the customer needs access to the pizza tracker, so they

Laura Merling: 00:32:33

know where the loan is. So I think all of those things add

Laura Merling: 00:32:37

up, there's just so many of them. So many you can't measure

Laura Merling: 00:32:43

like measuring that partnership with our internal associates and

Laura Merling: 00:32:48

customers to define what that product looks like we had never

Laura Merling: 00:32:51

done that. On that regular basis. You don't have a way to

Laura Merling: 00:32:55

measure that.

Laura Merling: 00:33:00

get implemented, and kind of forced usage, meaning this might

Laura Merling: 00:33:11

not be the best tool ever, but you're gonna go use it. Well, if

Laura Merling: 00:33:14

you get to design it, that really helps in terms of

Laura Merling: 00:33:17

adoption, use and value that it brings.

Brent Williams: 00:33:23

But what about as your anything just on the

Brent Williams: 00:33:26

horizon, which is really exciting?

Laura Merling: 00:33:29

Oh, so many things. We have a lot of big

Laura Merling: 00:33:35

projects and programs on the docket for next year, we have a

Laura Merling: 00:33:39

continuation of this loan origination and loan servicing

Laura Merling: 00:33:42

platform for customers revamping our consumer platform. But what

Laura Merling: 00:33:49

I'm really more excited about right now is where are these

Laura Merling: 00:33:54

centers of excellence? Right, they're new. And so I'm really

Laura Merling: 00:33:58

excited about what these centers of excellence can help bring to

Laura Merling: 00:34:01

our customers. What is the value? We've started in the, in

Laura Merling: 00:34:08

the healthcare space, we've already started and a customer

Laura Merling: 00:34:10

advisory board. That is really, you know, we have one customer,

Laura Merling: 00:34:18

she is a she runs a unit inside a hospital and she's a

Laura Merling: 00:34:23

practicing physician, but she also is doing the hospital's

Laura Merling: 00:34:27

transformation. And so the interesting part there is she

Laura Merling: 00:34:31

wants to learn from us what we're doing on our

Laura Merling: 00:34:33

transformation. We want to learn from her what we can help with

Laura Merling: 00:34:37

the hospital or even hospital ways like what's what's the

Laura Merling: 00:34:40

value add? Where do we add benefit? So I think there's so

Laura Merling: 00:34:43

much to be gained from those centers of excellence. That I

Laura Merling: 00:34:47

just I'm looking forward to what the outcomes are from from they

Laura Merling: 00:34:52

just started right and I'm looking forward to the outcomes

Laura Merling: 00:34:55

from from those centers of excellence.

Brent Williams: 00:34:57

I think it will be exciting to see how those are

Brent Williams: 00:34:59

additional value to customer's lives, no doubt, well, maybe as

Brent Williams: 00:35:04

we, as we conclude, I always ask it sort of similar question. You

Brent Williams: 00:35:10

know, at the Walton College, we've got somewhere between

Brent Williams: 00:35:14

probably 8,500 and 9,000 students, so you know, that are

Brent Williams: 00:35:18

a part of the business school. And so you know as you just kind

Brent Williams: 00:35:22

of think about what you've learned throughout all of your

Brent Williams: 00:35:26

career journey. And you think about, if you could just give

Brent Williams: 00:35:29

one piece of advice to to a student, what is it?

Laura Merling: 00:35:32

I'm gonna, I'm gonna steal a quote for

Laura Merling: 00:35:34

somebody. So I, there was a quote from a former president

Laura Merling: 00:35:38

that said, just do stuff. I'm gonna say, just try stuff. If

Laura Merling: 00:35:43

people ask you just try it. You know, I, when they asked me when

Laura Merling: 00:35:47

Ford asked me to do autonomous vehicles, I was like, you're

Laura Merling: 00:35:51

kidding me? Right? I know nothing about them. And I'm

Laura Merling: 00:35:55

like, that's okay. You get connectivity, you can figure

Laura Merling: 00:35:59

that. So So you just have to put yourself out there. Don't be

Laura Merling: 00:36:03

afraid to try thing I guess is really what I would say like if

Laura Merling: 00:36:08

if opportunities come your way. You don't know if you can do it

Laura Merling: 00:36:12

unless you try it. So I mean, I still stay involved in the

Laura Merling: 00:36:17

autonomous vehicle community. Because I still love that,

Laura Merling: 00:36:21

right? It's, it's based on passion. And I still talk to all

Brent Williams: 00:36:21

Love it. Well, Laura, thank you for joining me

Brent Williams: 00:36:25

my friends at AT&T. And actually, we're thinking about

Brent Williams: 00:36:29

how we use some of that technology to do could you go

Brent Williams: 00:36:32

stand up a pop up branch with you know, an independent network

Brent Williams: 00:36:37

that didn't need hardwired connectivity? Like you can take

Brent Williams: 00:36:41

things with you as a nugget. Just don't be afraid. Just try

Brent Williams: 00:36:45

whatever comes your way.

Brent Williams: 00:36:50

today. It's been pleasure to get to know you. And it was a

Brent Williams: 00:36:53

pleasure today get to learn about the transformation journey

Brent Williams: 00:36:56

at Arvest and the way you approach it, thank you.

Laura Merling: 00:36:58

Thank you. Thanks for the invitation.

Brent Williams: 00:37:01

On behalf of the Walton College thank you for

Brent Williams: 00:37:03

joining us for this captivating conversation. To stay connected

Brent Williams: 00:37:07

and never miss an episode. Simply search for be epic on

Brent Williams: 00:37:11

your preferred podcast service.