Journey Analytics: An Interview with Lori Bieda, Head of Analytics Centre of Excellence, Bank of Montreal

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Customer analytics has come a long way since banks first started building Customer Information Files in the 1990s. “CIFs”, as they were called, were the primitive forerunner to what we now call “data lakes”. Just getting access to data was the main barrier back then – closely rivalled by the suspect quality of the contact data. Today the biggest analytical challenge for banks isn’t the limitations of technology: it’s embedding data-driven decision-making into the operational DNA of the bank.

Most banks still limit their analytical muscle to product cross-selling, risk management and fraud detection. But as banks face stiffening competition from fintech interlopers, eager to capitalize on the mass migration of customers toward web and mobile banking, they can see the smoke signals: either they make it easier for customers to do business with them across multiple touchpoints, or they face the likelihood of losing them to less costly providers.

Lori Bieda, who heads up the Analytical Centre of Excellence at Bank of Montreal, believes that banks can only succeed if they master the science of journey analytics. People crave both the convenience of online banking and personal attention from their local branch. They expect to be able to easily open an account, apply for a loan, pay a bill, cash a cheque, or monitor their investments using any channel or device of their choice, at any time. Identifying the breakpoints in that experience – where the journey is interrupted or disconnected due to faulty wiring - is crucial to customer loyalty and retention. “I’m a huge advocate of journey analytics”, she says.

Lori’s mandate stretches far beyond journey optimization. She’s also focused on cultivating a data culture at the bank: one where analytical literacy and data fluency are found at all levels of the company, not simply concentrated in a “genius” pool of data scientists. Which explains her missionary work on the speaking circuit. She’s an eloquent ambassador of analytics, promoting it as a strategic tool for converting insight into business outcomes, whether that’s higher satisfaction scores or attrition reduction or simply increasing the average number of accounts. But realizing the full value of analytics, according to Lori, means looking at many different types of data horizontally – events, click paths, transactions, interactions – to isolate the moments that make or break an experience.

With a wealth of experience in the analytical field – from her formative years at the database marketing agency Rapp Collins to heading up Client Insight at both CIBC and TD to serving as Executive Lead of Customer Intelligence at SAS – Lori has the rare ability to connect data science to business strategy. In short, she is the ultimate business translator, as she demonstrates in this insightful (excuse the pun) interview.