Each year Bankgirot conducts a survey of its customers – the banks – to ensure that things are moving in the right direction. In recent years, we have received good ratings from the banks in these surveys. Here you can read one view of how collaborating with Bankgirot works on a daily basis.
Swedbank's Product Manager Anna Johansson has been focused on achieving good product efficiency in the bank's work with Bankgirot products. Anna and her team have received a great deal of attention for their work with our products.
Tell us what you have done to achieve good product efficiency.
Anna: Aside from strong teams both here and at Bankgirot, which together provide the partnership with substantial expertise and extensive experience, I am convinced that our systematic and conscientious work methods are the secret of our success in achieving good product efficiency.
We have consistently focused on a number of areas together with clearly established goals for what we are to achieve. Based on this, we have followed a tactical action plan for reaching those goals.
One concrete example is the successful activity during the year to get our customers to switch from paper-based information to a more sustainable format, namely digital.
Contributing expertise and customer benefits to customer collaborations is fundamental. How well do you think this is reflected in your partnership with Bankgirot?
Anna: Conducting activities related to our business requires efforts from both parties. From the bank's side by understanding what we need to do to develop our offering.
And from Bankgirot's side by being proactive with suggestions for actions that benefit our business and improve its efficiency. My experience is that this is something that our customer team at Bankgirot are very good at. With their service-minded approach the customer team show that they understand our business and are genuinely interested in the needs and demands of our customers.
This enables us as a bank to feel confident in day-to-day operations as well as when planning for more long-term activities.
What would you say characterises the challenges Bankgirot faces?
Anna: With the mandate to contribute to the banks' competitiveness, both collectively and individually, they have a complex task separating those different roles in their relations with the banks. Successful navigation between so many wills and needs to finally reach a requirement shared by the banks demands stamina and a good ear.
From Swedbank's side we always appreciate straight talking and honesty, something which we believe benefits our partnership with Bankgirot as well as the banks as a whole.
In general, in my mind Bankgirot's products and services are of a high standard. It is more a question of what steps are required to take their offering into the future. Here our ongoing joint work to develop innovative solutions for the payments of the future fulfils a central role.
Anna: Here Swedbank and Bankgirot's ongoing joint work to develop innovative solutions for the payments of the future fulfils a central role. Collectively, the banks show a clear demand for optional extras and the possibility to build their products from the smallest component parts, which would increase the flexibility of Bankgirot's offering to us.
How each bank chooses to package these solutions for end customers is then decisive for each bank's competitiveness.