The strong impact of digital transformation on corporate culture was highlighted by Alpha Bank's Digitalized 2019, which took place with great success on Monday, December 9, 2019 at the Athens Concert Hall, with the participation of approximately 500 executives from the Bank and leading companies in the Greek market.
The main objective of Alpha Bank's Digitalized, which was organized for the second consecutive year, is to establish a public platform for dialogue among top executives in the market regarding the digital transformation of businesses. As all the speakers at the event recognized, the new digital reality is already here, radically changing business and decisively altering corporate culture.
In his video message shown at the opening of the event, Alpha Bank CEO Vassilios Psaltis pointed out that “new digital technologies are coming to challenge the business models we knew, to fundamentally change our expectations and behaviors in the market and to transform our culture and everyday life, both in our personal and professional spheres. Digitalized 2019 highlights this critical transition process and aims to record the aspects of the impact of digital transformation on corporate culture. In this sense, Digitalized 2019, as part of Alpha Bank’s digital transformation, is proof of our pursuit to place our Customers at the center of our action and to offer them high-quality services.”
The main pillars of Alpha Bank's digital strategy were presented by the Acting General Manager and Chief Digital Officer and Retail Banking Products of Alpha Bank, Damianos Charalambides, who emphasized that the "bank of the future" places the customer experience at the center of its activities. Referring to the first impressive results of the digital transformation program that the Bank since 2017, Mr. Charalambides emphasized, among other things, that:
– 50% of transactions have already been transferred from Branch cashiers to the Bank's digital channels,
– Private Customers can open a new account, obtain a debit card and access to Alpha web banking, at any branch, in just 15 minutes,
– the submission of the required documents for the renewal of business legalization can now be done via e-banking, while in any case the renewal process is completed in less than 3 days.
Mr. Charalambides also presented the benefits of the new ways of collaboration implemented within the framework of the Bank's digital transformation (agile methodology), emphasizing that team spirit and Staff satisfaction are strengthened, while at the same time the efficiency and effectiveness of the Bank's operations are significantly increased.
Chief Customer Officer and CEO Financial Services, Dixons Carphone Group, Andreas Athanasopoulos, as the event's keynote speaker, highlighted the crucial importance of the human factor for the success of the digital transformation of businesses.
He emphasized that the starting point of any digital transformation effort should be the customer experience, who now has particularly increased expectations and demands. Mr. Athanasopoulos set as a necessary condition for the successful “digital shift” of businesses, the search for new models of leadership and collaboration. He also referred to the challenges but also the opportunities generated by the new competitive framework in the fintech ecosystem and described the way in which data analysis and management through machine learning and artificial intelligence affects the way in which decisions are made in modern businesses.
Afterwards, the event audience had the opportunity to attend a particularly interesting panel discussion, in which leading market executives shared their significant experience from the different business sectors they represent and exchanged views on the impact of digital transformation on corporate culture.
The discussion, moderated by journalist Eva Antonopoulou, was attended by Mr. Andreas Athanasopoulos, Group Strategic Planning, Executive Director of TITAN Group, Alexandra Papalexopoulou, and the President and CEO of Vodafone Greece, Haris Broumidis. The speakers agreed that the key point in the process of digital transformation remains the human being, while the new corporate culture that is being formed both in the financial sector and in other sectors of the economy, should be directly aligned with the technological upgrade of products and services as well as with the improvement of the overall customer experience.
The event concluded with the awarding of prizes to the three winners of Alpha Bank’s internal digital innovation and new ideas competition, i3 (inspiration-innovationimplementation), which was organized for the first time this year and received a great response from the Bank’s Staff. This was followed by the awarding of the three teams that distinguished themselves, among dozens of entries from 12 countries, in the new digital innovation competition FinQuest by Alpha Bank, which the Bank launched in September 2019.
