Enthusiasm was at an all-time high at BAI Retail Delivery 2013 in Denver, CO last week as we continue to see major transformation in the banking industry.  Within the Cisco booth, we demonstrated a series of solutions that enable digital and physical channels to become more interactive and sales focused, while improving the customer's banking experience. Attendees were excited to walk through various live customer business scenarios -all enabled by the same infrastructure -and available today.

Cisco's Omnichannel Booth Experience
The Cisco Financial Services team led the booth tours that took attendees through an end-to-end omnichannel experience. Participants were asked to play the role of an existing customer for the entire demonstration and were shown how Cisco can assist financial institutions in their desire to be more intimate and responsive to their clients' needs. We demonstrated a seamless customer experience that can drive increased satisfaction and wallet share.

The experience started with video-enabled mobile banking applications; to an in-branch experience; to a consumer controlled experience of banking in the home; and then closed out with executing real-time wet signatures onto hard copy documents via a mobile application to close business remotely. Cisco's dedicated group of Financial Services experts, who focus on business relevancy, is committed to developing and enabling the future vision in banking, and our booth tour brought that to life. Attendees learned that our team can help bridge the business and IT gap, optimize technology spend, and expand the focus from total cost of ownership to return on investment.

After taking our booth tours attendees said, "We've visited many other booths and most were showing solutions we had already seen, Cisco was the one place we saw new, innovative solutions." We heard another attendee say, "The way the booth tour told the story really helped me make the connection and understand how these would apply in my institution."

BAI Panels, Sessions and Meetings

BAI Retail Delivery draws the largest and most influential group of financial services leaders of any industry conference, fostering extensive opportunities for idea exchange and inspiration. As usual, some of the top minds were in attendance and we were able to see these leaders deliver ideas and solutions for how to further the customer experience in banking as well as contribute some of our own.

I joined a panel on the future of self-service banking and we discussed how consumers are looking for choices in how they interact with their financial institutions. Consumers want to conduct business quickly and conveniently, but banks don't want to sacrifice having fewer face-to-face transactions with their customers. What we demonstrated in our booth was how omnichannel solutions can take self-service transactions, no matter how complex, from start to finish and integrate face-to-face personalization into the process.

My colleague, Marvin Cortez, Senior Advisor within the Cisco Financial Services, Customer Value Acceleration group, took part in another panel discussion on the next-generation of branch transformation. His panel discussed what's next for the branch as the industry evolves into an omnichannel customer experience driven world. Marvin said during the discussion that banks should be looking for virtual ways to connect with customers, because customers want to connect 'right now.' But he also stressed that the branch is not going anywhere so its role and how it functions in a new distribution network should not be overlooked.

As you can see, BAI Retail Delivery 2013 was a great conference to attend and we are looking forward to next year. Watch this video to hear more about what we saw and heard at BAI Retail Delivery 2013.

Did you attend and visit our booth? Let us know your feedback from the event in the comments section below.