ING Scaling Agile

The ING adopted a new way of working since the summer of 2015. The agile work is gradually implemented within the bank. The head office operates according to The ING Way of Working. The rest of the organization will follow. The method is copied from companies like Spotify, Netflix and Google. ING is the first bank that has embraced this way of working.

Our organizational transformation is based on three key elements:
1. Agile way of working: autonomous, self-directing teams that work in short cycles;
2. Omnichannel: the same customer experience, regardless of the used channel;
3. The Orange Code: the culture that drives our agile way of working.

Agile working
Motive for organizational change is that ING wants to stay relevant. ING wants to stay ahead in the market and help our customers stay ahead, both private and business. This will only succeed with continue and rapid innovation. Not only with products and services and the way we approach customers and help, but also in the way ING works. There are three main reasons why ING agile works:
• We are more efficient and more agile
• We can innovate faster, with a shorter time to market
• We are more attractive for employees: they have a lot more freedom and responsibility than in a traditional organization.

For start-ups that can reinvent itself from scratch is agile work for granted. For ING it took a new organizational structure, a totally new way of working and a different culture and a new environment. The introduction of “agile” was like a new start.

Impact of Agile work for ING
• ING standing by the Agile Way of Working teams.
• There is multidisciplinary cooperation in improving
• The focus has shifted from internal to external. From push to pull.
• There is an accelerated time to market ‘with short releases instead of one big, long project.
• Business Scrum has been introduced to set short “sprints” (time periods) priorities
and monitor results.
• Furthermore, it is carried out by the principle of self-organization, teams have a large degree of influence.
• Finally, coping better with uncertainty and has greatly increased the internal entrepreneurship. Act First, Ask Forgiveness Later.

And what’s gone for good at ING?
• The support departments are all deleted.
• Steering not exist. As project boards.
• ING is making virtually stopped business cases.
• In the workplace, most department divisions disappeared ones siled departments work in hand: there is a lot of glass replaced by a transparent look which also works figuratively.

The choices that were made
Digital innovators are changing the way business is done. They create disruption with new value propositions. What could this mean for banking? What’s certain is that who ownes the interaction, will come out as the winner. To find the answer, we have looked at technical innovators. We did not go to The City, or visit other banks. We went to companies like Spotify to be inspired. We learned from these companies how they innovate, and how their innovative culture is essential to their success. And then the big question was: how to transform our existing organisation towards an organization that can adapt to changes, in the same way as these companies can? Our agile way of working aims to break through existing silos: that is what we internally call the ‘Spotify model’.

Agile working asks for another way of organizing. Squads and tribes are at the heart of this new way of working. Before – and you may recognize this if you used to work for a large organisation – if we wanted to bring a new product or service forward, we needed a Marketing manager, a Product manager, a Formula manager, a Communications manager. And then you still had to hope for IT being available to get it done. Now we have a Squad: a small multidisciplinary team, that has end-to-end responsibility. So it’s a team of business and IT together, from the first idea to implementation.

Agile: how does it work?
Squads
At the agile method works in all squads. These are self-directed, autonomous units, with end-to-end responsibility for a specific customer-focused mission. In a squad work colleagues together from all disciplines needed to complete the task well. If the job is completed, the squad will be disbanded and the members go into other squads started. A squad is working on a joint place. To facilitate this and to provide inspiring workplaces, ING’s headquarters fully adapted in Amsterdam, as well as our location in Leeuwarden. No one at ING Netherlands has a private room, not the management.

Tribes
The squads are part of a larger whole that operates according to similar principles. Squads that are engaged in the same area, are part of an overarching tribe.

Centers of Expertise
In principle, all activities are organized into squads. But scarce or specific knowledge is housed in a Center of Expertise.

Who does what?
The roles within agile are:
• The Product Owner is responsible for the product to be delivered
• the Chapter Lead is responsible for a specific expertise
• Customer Journey Expert studies the needs of the customer
• Agile Coach helps grow the squad and to work as a high-performance team.

Omnichannel
The introduction of internet banking and mobile banking has driven 2 changes:
1) A change in the preferred channel: to digital.
2) And an exponential growth of the number of customer contacts.

What numbers are we talking about?
• In 2011, ING in the Netherlands had 11 mln logins on the mobile banking app.
• In 2014, we already had 500 mln logins on the mobile banking app
• Even more important maybe is that in 2014 the number of mobile banking transactions surpassed the number of internet banking transactions.
• In 2015, we had more than 1 biillion digital customer contacts.

And this digitalization comes together with changes in customer needs and customer behaviour. This leads to a number of these changes in needs and behaviour.

ING is moving from Single Channel to Omnichannel. In above figure is visible how the use of channels by ING has evolved throughout time. Currently ING is trying to make the last step from a cross-channel organization to an omnichannel organization. In omnichannel, boundaries between channels disappear. Customer data is stored in a central place and is available over all channels in real time. We will still employ multiple channels, but the customer experiences are identical over these channels. Each channel has the same product and service offering, the same look and feel, the same way of working and the same processes. The idea is to put the customer at the heart and organize and our channels around him.

• A dynamic customer profile is at the heart of our omnichannel strategy.
• We will create a dynamic customer profile by centrally storing all customer information.
• The customer profile will be fed with customer data and information from all channels.
• All data will be available in real time, in all channels. Changes made by customers or colleagues will therefore be directly visible in all channels.
• The dynamic customer profile will enable us to provide distinctive service in both the Daily Banking Services and the Advice that we offer.

Interview ING Domestic NL
Datum: Juni 2016
Geïnterviewde/ presentator: Bob Timmerman, ING
Geïnterviewde/ presentator: Heidi van Eijk, senior manager bij ING
Op uitnodiging van: Suzanne Kemps, Frismakers Company
Doelstelling: Opgetekend naar aanleiding van de presentatie tijdens het Frismakers event Ricoh Open

Gebruikte bronnen
: www.ing.jobs/Nederland/Over-ING/Wat-ING-biedt/Agile-werken.htm
: www.focusconferences.nl/blog/2016/07/de-positieve-energie-van-agile-werken/

Agile, Scrum