BankUnited

Digital tools and technology have influenced operations across nearly every industry, but the financial services sector is one where the impact can be felt the most. Customer expectations of digital experiences have skyrocketed, and offering a compelling user experience is no longer a competitive differentiator—it’s a necessity.

Mary Harris, Senior Vice President of Marketing and PR at BankUnited, understood the importance of offering a compelling customer experience—digital or otherwise—all too well. The company’s customers were increasingly shifting their banking activities online and with banking habits evolving, the technology that powered BankUnited also needed to shift with the times.

“I don’t know when you last visited a branch in person, but very few people are doing it now,” said Harris. “Having a responsive and feature-rich website, especially in the financial services arena, is crucial. Times are changing and the way people do banking is changing too.” 

Unfortunately, the company’s content management system had become a limiting factor. The BankUnited website was the gateway for everything—it was an information hub and promotional asset for prospects and a banking tool for current customers. While the existing platform covered the basics, it simply didn’t have all the features that BankUnited needed to deliver the customer experience that Harris envisioned.

Additionally, regulators were also pushing new rules that targeted the way financial institutions marketed their services to customers. As such, BankUnited needed a more sophisticated workflow system that added an approval process without severely disrupting backend content creation and publishing.

BankUnited teamed up with Bayshore Solutions, a leading digital agency, to find a content platform that would fit the institution’s requirements. They ultimately decided to go with Progress® Sitefinity™ CMS.

“We evaluated a number of different CMS platforms. When we were looking at the customization requirements, we realized the flexibility and ease of customization of the Sitefinity CMS platform would be ideal in this situation. This made the platform an easy choice,” said Kevin Hourigan, President and CEO, Bayshore Solutions. 

One of the biggest issues facing modern businesses is responsive web design. People are accessing websites from a variety of devices, each with a specific screen size. Whether people are using laptops, smartphones, tablets, smart TVs or anything else, the site must fit the screen. While BankUnited did have a mobile site with the previous CMS, it was not built using responsive web design, which led to usability issues in some cases. With Sitefinity, the website’s layout will adjust automatically to the specifications of whatever device customers are using, creating a consistent, platform-agnostic customer experience.

For financial institutions, working around regulations is also critical. Companies like BankUnited need to comply with regulations, but they also need to develop workflows that enable them to work around them efficiently so they aren’t getting bogged down by compliance matters. With Sitefinity, BankUnited was able to create an automated three-step approval process that would keep the institution in line with industry regulations. The process was simple, but also expedited content publication while keeping it accountable.

Flexibility and scalability were also important for BankUnited, as the institution’s previous CMS limited opportunities for growth. One of the big benefits of working with Progress solutions is that they can be used in conjunction with each other to tackle new challenges as they arise. For example, by using Sitefinity CMS and Kendo UI® by Progress together, BankUnited developed a secure sign-on page for both corporate and personal customers. The sophisticated site gave users the confidence they needed to log-in and do their regular banking activities.

The development of the overhauled site, complete with all the new features, took BankUnited and Bayshore Solutions about 10 months in total. Because Sitefinity is so easy to use, BankUnited was able to get employees across all the various teams—from legal to marketing—on board with the CMS in no time.

Since launching the new website, BankUnited has been able to provide users with a premium customer experience, regardless of device. The industry moves quickly, but with Sitefinity CMS, BankUnited can keep up and stay prepared for whatever challenges crop up next.

The biggest benefit of implementing Sitefinity CMS was the time saved with everyday operations. With the previous CMS, the workflow was managed by the IT team. This created an operational bottleneck, as publishing content was a three-touch process for IT that left the department with less time to address its own priorities. Now, everyone can publish and edit content to the BankUnited website, without the help of IT.

“So with BankUnited—as in most cases—time is money,” Harris explained. “The more efficient you can become with your processes, the better off you are and the more money you’re saving your company. With Sitefinity CMS, the marketing, IT and web services teams have all streamlined their operations and become more efficient, which helps us work faster and in the end saves us money.”

BankUnited was also able to improve the way compliance was handled internally. Having a fully accountable and automated workflow empowered the institution to work efficiently while building a better customer experience, regardless of any new regulations.

“BankUnited is a pioneer in the banking sector, and every bit of time saved on tasks such as content publication enables the company to reinvest that time into more mission-critical activities,” Harris added. “Sitefinity helps us save time today so we can put those extra resources into developing the products and services of tomorrow.”

Moving forward, new Progress products such as DigitalFactory will further enable financial institutions like BankUnited to embrace digital transformation and gain competitive advantages.