Hokkoku Bank uses Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 to build a digital organization that focuses on customers first

Promoting an open culture with communication tools that break down silos

Hokkoku Bank’s transformation goals required nothing less than rethinking traditional banking. The first step was to reimagine how everyday communication happened and how decisions were made. The company realized that traditional layers of approval, requiring key senior stakeholders and long weekly meetings, slowed down decision making. To address this, the company set about using new technology, Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365, to break down data silos, all while eliminating email and moving communications exclusively to the Teams platform.

The change was the first step in a cultural reset toward increased transparency for the bank. “The culture at our bank is very open, whereas other banks are still quite closed,” says Aki Yokogoshi, Managing Executive Officer, General Manager of Human Resources Development Department of The Hokkoku Bank, Ltd. With Teams, Hokkoku Bank found an ideal counterpart to its unique culture. Takaaki Aogishi, Senior Manager of the Human Resources Development Department of The Hokkoku Bank, Ltd., explains a typical example of how Hokkoku Bank stands out. “Oftentimes in Japanese companies, employees are referred to with a combination of their job title and their given name. At Hokkoku Bank, we just use personal names because we are looking at more than what a person does,” he says. That ethos is reflected in how the company uses Teams to break down data silos and encourage employees at all levels to communicate with senior leaders. “There is no difference between the level of access people have to various colleagues within the company via Teams,” says Aogishi. Yokogoshi agrees, noting that “whether it’s the bank president or an executive manager, we can easily bring people into a discussion that is happening in Teams.”

In another illustration of Hokkoku Bank’s commitment to transparency, the business uses Teams to make strategy, branch head, and other meetings available to the entire company. “Normally, those meetings happened in person, so only a select few participants were aware of what we were discussing,” explains Tomohiko Kikuzawa, Managing Executive Officer, General Manager of the General Planning Department of The Hokkoku Bank, Ltd. “Now, we use Teams to give everyone access to meetings and proposals, and we gather feedback that way, too.” The result is a unified organization that can advance behind common goals. “More than 350 people access those managerial meetings every week,” says Tsuemura. “Our employees use the technology to better understand what is going on at a corporate level.”

Encouraging self-directed career development and networking

By using Teams to open up communication, Hokkoku Bank helps new and mid-career employees plot the course of their career development and take ownership of how they progress. “When we started using Teams, we immediately began to tell employees that they can choose the type of job they want. They use Teams to contact people in other departments and learn more about the structure of the bank,” says Yokogoshi.

Employees also use Teams to create communities of interest—for example, for new hires—that help build connections across departments. “Teams has been a very important tool for making sure people are not isolated,” says Yokogoshi. Offering flexibility to employees with digital collaboration tools also helps make Hokkoku Bank a more appealing place to work. “In the past, when we required in-person meetings and communications, it was a requirement for everyone to be at the office,” says Kikuzawa. “But the reality is that every employee has their own set of situations, such as caregiving or living in a rural area, and they can use Teams to continue working from home as if they were here in person. That flexibility enables the bank to hire and keep more people and stay competitive.”

Collaborating with vendors and customers on a highly secure platform

The bank also uses Teams to expedite collaboration with 150 different vendors and customers and make business decisions faster. Says Tamaki Kitamoto, Deputy Manager of marketing group of the Marketing Department of The Hokkoku Bank, Ltd., “We are promoting Teams for communicating with vendors and customers.” She explains, “We need to visit a lot of customers and meet with them to understand their needs. Hosting those meetings via Teams helps us save time rather than traveling for in-person meetings.”

The bank uses shared channels in Teams to keep conversations with external vendors and customers as secure and productive as possible. For example, Kitamoto uses shared channels in Teams to collaborate with vendors on a customer relationship management project. “Often, we need to collaborate on Excel spreadsheets during these remote meetings,” she explains. “Instead of handing the document over via email or even physically, we can work with vendors and customers in a shared Teams channel, which makes working together much easier and faster.”

Now that Teams has been established as the go-to communication platform for Hokkoku Bank, the business has turned its attention to other aspects of the Microsoft 365 platform. Chiefly, Power Apps has gained a following among bank employees who want to streamline repetitive tasks. “We use Power Apps to manage the movement of documents that we receive from customers,” says Yokogoshi. “Before Power Apps was available, we did all these processes with paper. Now, the same tasks are paperless.” Digitizing manual processes helps customers send and receive information more efficiently. “For customers, the processes have been simplified with Power Apps,” says Yokogoshi. “For example, returning documents related to a loan application now takes only 24 hours with the new digital process.” The bank is also saving costs now that the loan approval process has been digitized with Power Apps because loan officers no longer need to be stationed at each bank branch to do their work. Bank employees, even those without a background in coding, find it easy to build solutions for common business problems with Power Apps. “Power Apps is easy to use,” says Yokogoshi.

Hokkoku Bank also uses Microsoft Forms to streamline customer communications, such as gathering feedback after a seminar. “In the past, gathering customer feedback after an event could take several days,” says Yokogoshi. “Now, customers can access a digital version of the questionnaire, and we get the answers immediately. Making it easy for people to respond also increases the level of engagement we receive.” Additionally, the bank is more likely to launch surveys now, keeping customer sentiment current, because gathering and sorting through survey results is easier with Forms.

Increasing security and responding to industry demands

Another key aspect of Hokkoku Bank’s transformation is the move to the cloud from on-premises systems. Tsuemura considers the cloud an indispensable part of how the bank plans to disrupt the financial services industry. “We are in the process of modernizing our systems by moving to the Azure cloud platform,” he says, noting that the bank is currently focused on creating an open API in the cloud. “The cloud is necessary if we are going to transform how we communicate with other organizations, make banking functions more open, and increase our productiveness. We have very high expectations of what we can achieve with Azure.”

The move also has the potential to increase security and help reduce costs. “When you think about it long term, moving our systems to the cloud is more cost-effective than an on-premises alternative,” says Kikuzawa. He goes on to note that Microsoft’s security posture gives the bank peace of mind. “Microsoft is constantly updating and refining security in the cloud, and we feel confident with the security credentials Microsoft can offer.”

To learn more about Hokkoku Bank’s Azure migration, please read this customer story.

And to satisfy the demands of industry regulators, Hokkoku Bank again uses Teams capabilities. In one example, the bank sends Teams logs to the Bank of Japan as part of the compliance auditing process. In the past, this process involved printing large volumes of paper records and presenting them to an auditor. Today, that same level of insight can be shared via Teams, saving Hokkoku Bank employees a significant amount of preparation time and paper.

Prioritizing customer experiences with digital tools

While embracing the Microsoft 365 platform, Hokkoku Bank has also shifted to a model that promotes digital banking alongside in-person visits, offering more choice. “We have been able to close 40 percent of the physical branches,” says Tsuemura. “We are now in the era where we can offer customers digital interactions or in-person visits, depending on what they prefer.”

Hokkoku Bank doesn’t confine its digital transformation goals to the bank itself. The company sees modernized systems as a way to better understand customers by opening up communication with employees who directly engage with the bank’s customers. “We embraced the flat, agile approach to our business because we need to hear the perspectives of all areas of the business who deal with many different types of customers,” explains Kikuzawa. “When we gather those insights, we can take the correct approach and respond to customers’ needs. This is going to give us the edge as a company.”

To learn more about Hokkoku Bank’s use of Microsoft Cloud, please read this customer story.