1. <Company>
Go-To Market Strategy –
Banking Industry
Shikhin Agarwal
(shikhin@gmail.com)

2. Executive Summary: Banking industry represents significant
growth opportunity in 2014 – 15 for <Company> iPaaS Products
• Banking industry is operating under a low margin business environment and is
looking to increase efficiency and economies of scale
– Bank executives are looking to drive changes to enhance customer focus, improve
operating efficiency and comply with the regulations
• Industry reports confirm that IT investment is a priority to harness latest
technology trends (big data, mobile, etc.) and integrate the silo-ed
data/processes
• Go-To Market approach for banking industry shall have prioritized segment,
segment-specific positioning, right support model and feedback loop from
existing customers
• Initial segment consists of ~150 banks based on size and complexity of IT and
application infrastructure, and the buyer persona
– Positioning to this segment will be based on faster time to market, high ROI, flexibility
and scalability
• As next steps, seek internal stakeholder buy-in and launch beta programs to
test product positioning and messaging

3. Banking industry is undergoing major business changes due to
current low-margin business environment
• Limited top line growth due to low interest rates and spending along with
rising cost of operations (compliance, aging technology, etc.) resulting into
low margin
– Mckinsey estimates the banking Return on Equity (ROE) could fall below cost of
equity in near future1
• Banks need to increase their capacity to change – changing customer
expectations and regulations (risk management, accounting)2
• Based on interviews of over 50 bank CFOs, CIOs and executives3, the
above challenges are real and their key business strategy includes:
– Achieving economies of scale (acquire more assets through acquisitions, customer
centric channels and products)
– Increasing operating efficiency through automation and innovative technology
1 – http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/financial_services/why_us_banks_need_a_new_business_model
2 - KPMG Report (2013): Key Challenges And Issues Shaping The Banking Industry
3 – Banks of all sizes – national banks over $100B in assets to smaller / regional / community banks of $1B in assets

4. Top business priority for banks are increasing customer focus,
improving efficiency and regulatory compliance
• While banking M&A activity has picked up in 2014, the risk/growth trade-off is
best managed by customer focus1:
– Unified customer experience throughout mobile, traditional web, ATM and so on
– Ability to bring additional customer assets by offering new financial products (loans, savings, etc.)
• Banks have been focused on improving operating efficiency since 2009 but the
cost of maintaining operational silos and compliance has been rising2
– Mostly banks have been successful at meeting the capital and reserves requirements but
they need to solve for better data management to efficiently run desired analytics
• Data aggregation, management and analytics remain the top priority to solve for
“what if” analyses for new products, balancing risk revenue trade-off and
regulatory compliance
1 – Bank Technology and News – Top 8 Ways Banks Will Spend Their 2014 IT Budgets
2 - http://www.factset.com/websitefiles/PDFs/industry_banks/industry_banks_1.10.14

5. Industry leading reports confirm IT investment a priority with
focus on unified channels (mobile, digital banking) and
improvements to break down silos
• Reports indicate ~5% increase in IT budgets of US banks to cross over $60B1 in
2014. Similar trends can be noticed in banks internationally to spend over $300B2
• Core banking transformation3 has been started to support the front office
capabilities of better customer data management, insights and channel integration
• KPMG survey4 indicated Platform Simplification as the most important IT Project to
integrate systems and processes working in silos, achieve operating efficiency and
enable capabilities of new products and channel unification
• Banks have been focusing on hybrid technology with a mix of on-premise
applications and data, private clouds and SaaS up to a certain extent
• These trends indicate that there is a great growth opportunity in the Integration
Platform as a Service (iPaaS) area
1 – http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?NewsItemID=25649
2 – Deutsche Bank Research: Bank & Technology Snapshot
3 - Banking industry is tracking the currently ongoing core banking transformation at Zions and BBVA Compass
4 - http://bit.ly/1joUFyL

6. Go-To Market approach for banking industry shall have
prioritized segment, segment-specific positioning, right support
model and feedback loop from existing customers
Understand
Target
Industry,
Regulations,
etc.
Create/R
efine
Customer
Segment
Create/R
efine
Buyer
Persona
Develop
Value Props
Customer
Messaging
Channel
Design
Solutions /
Packaging
Pricing
Support
Model
Manage
Customer
Experience
Customer
Retention
Feedback/Learning from the Customers

7. iPaaS go-to market for banks must focus on the high priority
segments based on bank’s IT complexity and strategic focus
• ~150 banks are greater than $5B
in total assets
– Total banks in US = 7000. Of which
about 500 banks are of size
between $1B - $5B
• The complexity of business,
compliance and IT infrastructure
increases exponentially at the
larger banks
Number of Banks > $1B = 650
• Positioning to this segment of banks > $5B in total assets
– Faster time to market of new capabilities (products, analytics)
– High Return on Investment (no new IT infrastructure cost)
– Security of data and processes, Flexibility and Scalability

8. Banking CIO buyers have “buyer” or “builder” types of persona
and are best influenced by vendor’s market leadership and past
accomplishments
• iPaaS category is well established and the leading industry analysts
(Forrester, Gartner, etc.) provide coverage1
– iPaaS is a fragmented market with several vendors (14 – 17 vendors) covered by
Forrester and Gartner
• Banking buyers typically follow success of their peers and prefer to adopt
market leading technologies
– <Company> leadership position in the Gartner Magic quadrant will help establish
the buyer influence
– Competition is expected from other leading players like Informatica, Dell, IBM, etc.
• Past successes – Banking Case Studies, Customer Testimonials /
References and Thought Leadership in the space – will help influence the
buyers
1 – Gartner: Integration Platform as a Service: Moving Integration to the Cloud; Forrester – The Forrester Wave: Hybrid
Integration, Q1 2014

9. Go-to market execution shall be correlated with the buying
process of banking industry buyers
1
Lack of awareness
of business needs
and painpoints
Articulate
need
Engage
vendor
sales
Research on
vendors
Obtain
internal
validation
Research to
validate
needs
Reach out to
trusted advisers /
network
Identify
programs
to fund
Set up
product
demo
Shortlist
vendors
(RFI)
Begin
sourcing
process
(RFP)
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Awareness Consideration Initiated
Buyers are not aware of
needs / challenges
Buyers initiate buying
process, sales process
begin for vendors
• Thought leadership
• Whitepapers
• Press Releases
• Industry forums
• Banking peers
influencing
• Product datasheets
• Solution oriented webinars and
physical events
• Prior success – case studies,
testimonials, customer references
• Competitive
positioning
• Pricing, packaging,
support
• Implementation and
Support details
Content

10. Next steps would be to generate internal buy-in of the proposed
strategy and go-to market execution details
• Generate buy-in on the go-to market strategy and execution
plan
• Discuss and finalize criteria for success
• Launch a beta program to validate positioning and messaging
effectiveness