Bringing Online Banking to the Next Level with Millennium bcp

Every year CEMS students participate in a Business Project, a consultancy-like project. International teams of 3-5 students solve a real business problem as a one-semester part-time activity tutored by both the company and a professor in parallel. Business projects reinforce the CEMS partnership between universities and companies in jointly shaping the student learning process in international management.

Inês Jesus, Nyima Habich, Ilya Niklyaev, Hussein Sacoor and Sven Hanusch, CEMS Advisor: Prof. Paulo Faroleiro,

Millennium bcp is one of the leading private banking institutions in Portugal and a long-term partner of CEMS, consistently supporting the alliance and the development of its students. Last year’s business project with Millennium bcp focused on increasing users for online banking services in a world that is becoming increasingly mobile. Millennium bcp constantly aims for excellence in its services and functionalities while being continuously recognized as the most innovative bank in the country.

The project team had a very close working relationship with the bank’s Internet Banking Team, which allowed for a threefold analysis of market, company and consumer. This generated an all-inclusive understanding of the current market position of Millennium bcp’s online/mobile banking and relevant industry’s best practices and trends, current governance, objectives, capabilities and how consumers rank and perceive the online services offered.

After the analysis of these three spheres and the identification of the main gaps between the bank’s current and potential position, CEMS students identified 6 areas of focus that were key in increasing the number of online users, from employee commitment to a digital strategy, to improving and expanding the bank’s online position, to innovation management.

Some of the proposals included: an internal program for employee education on internet services; a campaign on internet banking security for consumer education; a standardized online presence approach (which included a Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn strategy, as well as an SEO strategy); and the addition of new services/functionalities on the bank’s website, such as webinars, financial agenda, financial simulator.

Joaquim Leal,  Head of Internet and Mobile Banking at Millennium bcp said of the project, “the most outstanding virtue of these CEMS students is the drive to go beyond what is expected from them. In all projects in which I was involved in, they proved to have a great ability to design solutions that end up in greater results than the ones that were drawn in preliminary stage.”

Professor Paulo Faroleiro, overseeing the collaboration at Nova added, “for a team of 5 that never met before, the group of students worked like an experienced group of consultants, complementing each other and focusing all together in just on goal: providing the best deliverables whilst executing the best project, learning and practicing the most. The best compliment I could make during the entire project was ‘if I had my previous business manager position as IT consultant and audit business director, I would hire you all; I saw no difference between you and my teams of consultants with 10 or more years of experience’.”

Due to the successful interaction between CEMS and Millennium bcp, this project was yet another fruitful Business Project, translating into the best BP of 2013/2014 at Nova School of Business and Economics, and the second best in the CEMS Alliance.

 

 Submitted by Inês Jesus, CEMS Alumna 2014 ( NOVA, HEC) on behalf of her team including: Nyima Habich, Ilya Niklyaev, Hussein Sacoor and Sven Hanusch, CEMS Advisor: Prof. Paulo Faroleiro, & Millennium bcp Advisors: Joaquim Leal and Sofia Ataíde