Padma Chukka: Compete With Yourself = Successful Outcomes for Customers

Show Notes

“For every project initiative, I create a strategy with an optimal outcome in mind—whether customer experience or operational efficiency—before moving on to successful execution.” Padma Chukka

It's in Padma’s nature to question the status quo, because she values efficiency. Don't you? It started at the beginning of her career as a software engineer. Managing the IBM Recipe by Context project's development and deployment in a 300mm chip facility, decreasing the recipe creation from 17 hours to 13 minutes.

She loves to compete with herself more than with her competitors, knowing that she doesn’t have to limit her boundaries. So far, she has been capable of anything she sets her mind to yet is hungry to push her horizons. She strolled through six continents, went to Punta Arenas, the city at the end of the world, and longingly looked at the seventh continent that she wants to set foot on one day. 

She is a mentor, protégée, and not afraid to claim herself a feminist. Her passion project is diversity and inclusion. It led to creating the inaugural IBM program plus mentoring of students and female entrepreneurs. She believes that she is made up of bits of all the people that she has met, and she is currently leading the world's first Financial Services Cloud Ecosystem for IBM.

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Welcome to unbounded talks on growth in financial services. Hi everyone. I'm your host. Mike Parsons. Unbounded is powered by flow ex.ai. Today we are talking serious cloud and customer experience expertise. With Padma, Ciocca from IBM. Yes. The big blue is back again. That's right. And Padma is the director of IBM cloud for financial services ecosystem.
That's right. She is one busy lady and she's bringing to us a world of innovation, not only on the cloud side, but on the customer experience. She spent a lot of time making sure that banks can have happy customers making sure that they have the technology to go on this journey of transformation. So get ready to get your espresso coffee, buckle up your seatbelt.
Get ready to dig in to the growth equation. Padma, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Mike. I'm honored to be here and so glad to be speaking with you and. Again,
we will certainly get stuck into it. I know you've spent so much time working across different divisions of IBM. In fact, if we look a little further, your life story is just, it's like reading through someone.

Who's a member of the United nations. Padma. Tell us a little bit about how you arrived, where you are today at IBM.

Let me start with this way, Mike, I am a disruptive value creator and rally team to create outcomes with an engineering mind and business experience, which I shared a little bit before. I fought with my father to get out of the country so that I could experience different cultures. Get a chance to learn from multiple people that I meet every day.
And I feel that like a destiny to meet somebody like I met you today. After completing my master's in software design and development, I joined IBM as an agent. And then got my MBA from NYU stern. Why leading the second largest acquisition integration and raising a baby, call me crazy, but I enjoyed it.
It was fun. I have to say three hours, three hours or less than three hours a night society.
So I, I have to ask you, like, how does one. Spin so many plates. When you reflect back to that time, what was it that you did to get the master's work on the acquisition? Transform a business all at the same time. Most of us struggle doing one of those at the time.
Like, how did you do.
It's internal land rush. You see the goalpost in, you're running towards it and you wanted to do it all, at that point you just wanted to do doll and tests. Test the ability test, the energy that I have. And it was crazy because my mentors and everybody said, you don't need to be having an MBA to become an executive at IBM.
At that point, I was not an executive at IBM and I said, it's not about executive. I did this about learning. I wanted to learn something different. I, I. It's what do you call it? It's that fire in your belly? It's if I wanted to take it all in, that's where I am. And at the same time, my mother and my head and my shoulder, I'm like, you got to have a baby, you got to have it.
So I was like, okay. Where are you, I'm going to do it for me and I'm going to do it for the woman that's coming after me.
Wow. So it sounds like you were you, and you mentioned that you were testing yourself. If some of our listeners are facing a little bit of self doubt about challenging themselves, what advice would you have for them?
If they're not sure if they should really go for that masters or push themselves for learning something new, what's your advice?
That is no question. Do you know it's a duet? You can do it. One, one can do it if their mind set and they want to do it right. Don't listen to that nurse. Don't listen to anyone, listen to your gut and do what you want to do.
It's. Are the one who has to know what you wanted to do. And what did
you, what did you do partner when you faced those really tough moments that we all have? How do you not listen to the naysayers? How do you push forward? Is there, did you listen to David Goggins on YouTube? Did you go and work out?
What was the thing that could just make the difference for you in the morning?
I, in the morning or any morning before I go to bed, this is what I said to myself. What am I going to do? What am I going to learn? How am I going to make a difference in someone else's life? And the one question I'm so glad you asked this question.
Like every time I go to in, in every job that I have to do in IBM, I have to go to. I don't jobs. Don't come to come and fall in my lap. I have to be myself and make sure that I go to the interview. And every two years I changed my job because I don't want to do the same thing over and over again.
Otherwise I will not be learning. My brain cells will be dying if I don't learn. The first thing, they're like, why do you want to do it? What do you want to do it? And they said to them, I wanted to do it so that I can tell my girls, I have two girls. I can tell my girls that I don't want to show Ginni, Rometty, or Indra Nooyi, or another woman.
See you and say, They have done it. You should do it. You could do it. I don't want to say it. I said, your mother did it. Devin. You can do it if you want to do it
right. Mindset.
What else? That's all about mindset. You just, you do what you wanted to do. You want to be a role model for, I wanted to start at my home for that.
Yeah, that's really powerful and great advice. So for all of our listeners, if you're facing a little self doubt, just think about publishers golden rule. It's about mindset. And before you go to sleep, say to yourself, what am I going to achieve tomorrow?
How am I going to change someone else's life tomorrow?
It's not only what am I going to do to make someone else's life a little
bit. There you go and listen partner, you mentioned change and you and I happened to work in an industry that is full of change at the moment. And so I would I would really love to dig in a little bit into your experience. You sit in such a great position because with the financial services cloud, You're serving so many different sorts of financial institutions all around the world.
And you can even argue if you're an insurance company, but primarily if you're a banking company. Oh my gosh. Did you just see your business change a lot in the last couple of years, right? We're talking inflation, we're talking a complete channel switch from a user's. Tell us, what have you seen in terms of change over the last two years?
And let's start to dig into how some of the banks are dealing with this change. But first from your vantage point, what have been the big changes in financial services and that the FinTech world at large, what have been those big key changes over the last few?
Oh, wow. I'd say it's a question it's like 45 minutes.
There's not enough, Mike. I'll say it this way. More than ever. Pandemic, we forgot about the pandemic aspect, right? Pandemic aspect. We're not able to go I'm at blue trot or I was not able to go anywhere else because there, so what does it mean? I can't go to my. Do deposit my check, right?
Just that right. More than ever regulated industries and specifically financial institutions are facing a vast number of disruptive forces, including increasing customer demand for new, innovative, and personalized products and services. Intense competition, intense combination from not only from into bands.
What about fintechs right there? They're making all these innovations and trying to jump in with a different type of set of products that they can come up with. They can think of, they can imagine. And then coming up are all the trends for the bands, right before that there was only one bank, one bank with a brick and mortar.
We go there and we put out check and get the money, do whatever we need to be doing. Now it is with all of this. And on top of it, this regulator declared to the auditory bodies that they are looking at it with a huge big guys, I would say, to make sure. They are protected. They're protecting us in a way, right?
If I can't trust with my money, how am I going to put my money with you? That's my college, my, my kids, family, my love my life. So it's it's a tremendous change. Banks need to keep up with it, right? There's no question about it. And also I wanted to say it this way. We are all the supporting cast in end user's story or a movie, if you will, they, you are a supporting cast.
What do we need to do? We need to make sure the end user gets what they want. So what are the one? They wanted it to be easy banking, trust, pour the banking. How can I put my money and sleep without any issues? So those are the end-users important issues. At any point of time, they don't care about this regulatory bodies.
They don't care about the databases. They don't, all they need is they need to make sure they're safe. That information is, and they need as specific, easy way of doing the business with the bank.
Now it's so interesting. You mentioned that because it's interesting that a lot of the customers of banks don't appreciate all those forces that you illustrated for us, increased competition, huge channel switching regulation, the desire for innovative new products, et cetera, et cetera.
Full banking from home across any channel. All of this is happening and you're sitting at home with your consumer hat on, and everyone is just saying, I just want this. Right now, and I have more options for banking than ever before. If we look at it, a lot of those fintechs that are, that have moved into the space, it must be one of the most seismic changes to hit banking since general deregulation.
Perhaps going way back into the days of Reagan in the U S that's right.
It is right. It's every. Everything is changing. And the banks are trying to figure out where to go, what to do and massive data that they have, and they need to protect this right and gain the confidence of the customers.
And today with the massive data and increasing need for this competition, trying to figure out they need to move fast. And if they move fast, They may get into trouble.
So this is like a banking conundrum that the tempo of the game has moved up. But then there's a chance as you could make some big mistakes has just raised as well, but you can't afford not to run faster because otherwise someone else is going to come in and take the.
Exactly. That is where the pivotal moment for them to figure out what do I do right when I mentioned.
So there's two ways that they can do one, then they can double up. They can double up when they wanted to double up and then go to the, go into the business are they can pick and choose which independent software vendor or the fender. Or some sort of SAS providers, if you will, and use their solution, integrate their solution with their own solution so that they can move fast while moving fast, they still need to adhere to these regulatory bodies.
And which cloud they need to go. That's another biggest issue for them. So at this point in the industry, none of that is no one standard. Policy framework that banks and all of these supply chain. When I say supply chain, all of these ISE, SAS providers, all of these guys need to adhere. So that's what we are doing right now.
We created that standardized the policy framework. Where the bank's workload will work, will be running from. And also this small ISV, SAS providers are running from that integrated in the risk has been decreased with this
because
you've illustrated for us is essentially a balancing act, between going fast. Managing failure. Like it's a new balancing act. And something that was interesting that you said is there's no real playbook for this. This is like new territory for the banks. So just to explain one, aha.
I had with your team in the UK. And they explained that out of the box, your financial services cloud has over 2000 compliance and regulation controls already built into the platform. So that gives you a massive headstart. That just decreases the stress level. I don't even run compliance at a bank and I feel more relaxed talking about it.
This must be a huge weight off their shoulders,
yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's exactly right. When I said bank runs their workload, take yours as an example, migrate flow X, right? When your workload running on the IBM cloud, what is flow X does? It is providing the solutions from onboarding to lending and brand simplification.
We have these really made journeys, right? Cover all these critical processes. You will make sure. To decrease the risk while you created your architecture. But at the time you will not be able to figure out all the industry standards or policy framework. You will be working. Okay. I'm working with one bank.
It's not the name, the names. And then you will adhere to their needs and it takes about. 15 to 18 months to make sure you do what needs to be done. And then you go to another bank and you've going to do the same thing over and over again, right? With this IBM Memphis cloud, the policy framework is built already.
When you run your solution on the IBM cloud, you will make sure you will go through these assessments. You will get the check marks like, okay, we're good. So bank X bank one. You can go to them and show your solution and say, I am, I'm running on this Fs cloud of IBM validated. Here you go. I'm ready to be used my solution.
That's the beauty of.
And, what's so perfect partner, is that when you put all of that cloud out of the box controls and services from your side, and then you take all of the curation layer and the front end layer from flow edge. You get a bunch of things out of the box, like onboarding like mortgage, like SME lending, all of those sorts of things.
So if you put those two things together, it's almost like an unfair head stop because you get lifting in the backend and the front end. It's like Batman and Robin, isn't it. Exactly.
I love that word. Unfair. HeadStyle but that is a business, right? You got to figure it out where it is. Where do you go home faster while taking care of the rest?
So I would say I w I it's an unfair headstone, but it is clearly taught through the process to make sure you are giving yourself a heads up.
Yeah. Yeah. Very, it's really important too, because this headstart that you just mentioned is in a context where there's more competition than ever there's regulatory pressures, there's innovation pressures and the customer's needs are changing dramatically.
They're shifting this may in fact be some of the biggest consumers. Behavior shifts that we have seen in our lifetime. I think this might be akin to the introduction of the iPhone. When all of a sudden we actually started being productive on our phones. It might be akin to when Netscape and mosaic was launched and we started browsing the web.
This one we've gone through, we might look back maybe in five or six years, and we might look back at 20 and 21. Wow. Everything really changed. What do you think
everything is really changed? I didn't use Netscape, but at the same time, it was a Google. When it came to me after the call is that's where Google around.
Two years old. I think when I look at it, I was like, wow, look at this. It's completely new, different world that I am in do to remember. I don't know about you, but I lost so much money in a way, because I'm doing hundred things at the same time. I don't have time to go to the. I really don't want to have time to go to the bank.
So the checks will be somewhere and expired checks. I discover after two to three years. Wow. I it's okay. I forgot. It would not be definitely $50,000, but at least 300, 200. I just didn't have a time to go today. All I have to do it. Give the tech open my bank of bank with my face on my daughter and she'll just deposit and bingo.
I held the money in the bank. So all the change it's just in my little life time, past few years. It's from expired checks to be able to deposit the money from my dining table, literally by my 12 year old.
Yes. Yes. And that really illustrates the change. I wanted to ask you about specific to customers and in, and to dig into that, to being Omni channel because previously.
Walk to the branch and we would deposit cash or check, and now you can do it on your mobile phone. This is a, just a great example of just one of the many things that we can do. And. I wanted to ask you about what are you seeing in the world of omni-channel from your banking clients? What are they asking a lot about?
What are the big things right now, as consumers are shifting not only to mobile, but being everywhere. And I can only imagine that this need to be ubiquitous as a bank to provide a great experience in all of the touch points. That must keep them up.
You use the word ubiquitous, how will I go to that is like a consistent, don't want to learn how I don't have.
And I don't want to learn from well to website, to go to the go to the brick and mortar. I would like many, right? We're all busy. We're all busy. We just don't want to, it has to be like a habit. Go get up in the morning. Brush your teeth. That's. The habit, right? Just like that you go, you put the check here, you put the check here, but the same type of, like you said, ubiquitous or consistent experiences, what you're looking for from the banks, from all of these channels.
And that's a customer experience with their client is the bread and butter. For the banks and it's all contact points of the customer interactions with the banks, interfaces, whatever the interface that they built. And for that seamless into index experience across every touch point with a scalable.
Virtual network of agents guaranteed to deliver the services of the bank at their standards. That's the brand of a bank.
Yeah, it really is. So how do we do that here in 2022? Have you seen some best practices? I'm just very curious to know, like where do we start on that journey? Because I'm sure some of our listeners.
Are trying to work out how to build relationships of trust with their customers when the customer doesn't come in the branch nearly as much. So what are you seeing as like best practices in this area?
I can't, I can't think of, it's a great question for me to ponder a little bit more here, Mike but the.
There's no standard way of doing it, that's where the word called innovation comes in. We can get away from the omni-channel experience, but. Omni channel is here to stay, understand less than no question about it. But at the same time, there are a few folks that they wanted to go to in-person experience in brick and mortar at the branches.
How do you figure those branches? In a way that provides the same experience, same way of doing things, right? That's one of the things that comes to me like it, and I'll try more open space, floor plan, where members and staff interact on the same level. And your digital at a presented is of their website through web chat.
Don't make it as a bad way. Sometimes I, sometimes when I get onto the call, I was like, can you just put me through a person who can understand? And I'm like, and I have an accent. I haven't. And they don't understand that accent because those things don't frustrate your clients and customers.
And like you are doing now, educated. Educate the people, it gives you a customer. If you cannot start your own podcast, get onto another podcast and talk about your bank, that's right. That's another way to educate them so that they understand what you can offer as a bank. What can you offer?
And then on top of it, I displayed. It is on the raise for this banks. And they have experienced a short-term surgeon technology spending or the last years, or the last few years I say, and they are generally, they have to. Digitize their business and they should invest a selectively in areas where recent research indicates the best payer having the cost day-to-day operations and application development figured out the way to either you want to buy or build.
Customer experience.
So it's interesting. I before we go into some of those themes of efficiency and how we can, really upgrade operations in the back office, I just wanted to come back to, I think you made a very good point. Several times around this idea of making these experiences, not only one Omni channel, but two, that the experience is intuitive and easy and doesn't require me to relearn a whole new interface.
And I think actually, I just want to pull that out a little bit because I think you're absolutely right. It's not just about being in every channel. But doing it in the right way that doesn't create a burden on the end user, on the customer. And that's probably the thing that separates good from great banks.
Those that can be omni-channel and delight their customers. So these easy elegant experiences in each and every channel in the branch on the laptop, on the mobile, on the interactive kiosk. Making it so simple. You almost don't have to think.
That's why I don't want to think. I don't have time to think in certain things.
Right.
It's so true because those moments when you're in a piece of software, doesn't even have to be banking and you're like, oh, what are they asking? Why they asking this? What do they want me to do? I don't see that button. And you're like, Did anyone think about this interface? Cause I'm confused that to me is the moment to avoid isn't it?
Absolutely. Absolutely. It's in my opinion, if you are asking a customer to go to 2, 3, 4 clicks, you're going to lose their place where they can have to get to. Best in one click. If not too, don't get me do more than multiple legs. Take me, give me an opportunity to do what I need to be doing and be out.
And I'm trying to remember in one place there was one. How's the one website, I assume you just jog my memory. They don't want to actually Google. Yeah. They say we don't want you to be on my website more than what you're required to be. So they're presenting the information to you. At that moment and you are also giving you an option.
I'm like, if not this, go to this. So it is for me to have the choice in chance in one click. I'll take it. So that's the, where the banks need to be doing today. Don't push me too. If I wanted to open an account, if I wanted to get a credit card, let's say credit. If you ask me to fill 4, 2, 3 layers of the information, not that I don't have a credit card, I do have a credit card, there are three, four segments that you're dealing with. Plenty of credit cards. Who cares about you? Yes. Give me one click. Exactly. Like having a platinum with the American express. Why would you care about something else? Right also, but there is a chase has this blue, so he got to make it very clear, clean way for me Tuesday.
Oh, I can try.
Totally. What a powerful lesson. Don't just be, omni-channel be elegant, be easy so that the experience is like magic. Yeah, while I still have your partner. We have to talk about what's happening in the back office. And I want to remind all of our viewers and listeners that unbounded talks is brought to you by flow ex.ai.
And now we're going to turn our minds, both partner. And I, we're going to think about. How can we make things a little better on the backend of those big enterprise banking apps, and there's plenty of work to do in the back office. And in particular Palmer, I'm keen to get your thoughts on the role of the employee at the bank and how they can help serve customers.
There's such a crucial role and they have all of their own tools and applications as well.
How would they do? Of course they do. They have to do their day-to-day job.
Okay. And so this is a big job. If we want to be more efficient, if we want faster time to cash, if we want transactions, particularly those like mortgages that are very document intensive, if we want them to be better, where do we start?
In this world of making life a little easier for employees at banks, what's been your experience.
Let me start with one thing. Happy employees means happy customers equals bottom line.
There you go. There you go. So tell us more about that,
right? So if you don't take care of your employers, any bank, you in the sense, right?
A bank need to make sure their employees has enough tools and technology to do their. Most. Boring mundane activities that need to be done again, the most boring mundane, but they need to be done. So they need to, banks need to figure out a way to create that efficiency, how fast they can do the job at what point of time provide the tools.
And training at the point of time, right? They may not remember everything, give them a chance to do their job at that point of time and move on fast, efficient, and quick service to the customer can be provided with the help of modern technology. The handling of information creation of up to date monitoring and information system and strengthening those internal controls and housekeeping and reporting functions.
It is a repartee to error proning aspects. Down those, how did they cut down those? And if the employees are able to do their activities fast enough, they'll be able to provide the faster service to the end user.
And that's really the upside. Isn't it? Padma it's if we can be more efficient in the back office, imagine how much more value we can create for the customer.
If our employees are spending less time on mundane activities.
That's right. That's where the innovation comes in. If a person's head is completely bogged with this activities, day-to-day doing everything again and again, they don't even have a time to think. So we cut this time here.
There is plenty of opportunity for these employees to. Figured out different things. How can this, how can they provide more value to these customers and who wouldn't want that mic, who would call it? So that is where my head goes. Let's make sure. Create that efficiency for these bank employees, so that they can spend more time on innovation, creating value to the customers, even to it plays, when you go to the bank, sometimes they don't, you don't even get a chance to do the eye contact because clicking, I was like, can you just stop clipping and talk to me?
So that here, what I want to do, it's not that they don't want to, but they don't have a choice.
And what do you think a bank could have on its list? Let's say they've become 20% more efficient with their employees. So they now have 20% of that time is now free. What sort of activities could they consider to help build trust with their customers?
Where do you think the opportunities lay? You said one thing earlier I thought was spot on and that's personalization, personalized services for the customer. It's like Saturday. A powerful thing because we all hate it. When a banking product is so generic and you're like no, I don't need that.
I need something that works differently. And it's like a real battle to get that personalization for your situation. That's gotta be one of the first things on the list of. Oh,
absolutely. Listen to the need. When you say personalization, how do you figure out what the personalization is? You gotta understand what this client wants.
Take the time to speak to them and understand what they're looking for. And either come up with a solution on this. Wonder what you have are figure it out, go back and take the input from these customers and figure out what else you could do, improve your product. So if you have a time efficiency that you took the time from your day to day activities, listen to the need, understand what they want and create a personalized.
In the weight, otherwise you cannot, banks cannot stay in the. If I wanted to stay in the game one, be the supporting cast for the end user story to take care of your employees, give them a chance to think this through and talk to these employees and then go do it and go back and tell the end users, this is what we have.
And then you're going to be not only in the game, you're going to be ahead of the game.
And that's the real business outcome. That's on offer for banks right now. You know what you've told us about this idea of being the supporting cast to your customers and employees? Not only can we move faster and be Omni channel and make it easy and elegant, but I think if we give employees the right tools and texts, they can spend more time building those trust-based relationships with customers.
And it's all about. Getting into the business of that. And it starts with listening to the users, doesn't it?
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You somebody double up, you say
now listen, before we let you go, I did want to ask our listeners will be keen to know where can they find you out on the work? Where's the best place for them to look you up?
Follow you, see your content. How do we find you on the internet?
LinkedIn head to LinkedIn. And there was only one path Machuca there. So find me on the LinkedIn, connect me, follow me, send me a message. Anything that I could help talk and figuring it out with you.
That's what it's really all about. Isn't it like not, no one has all the answers, but if we put our brains together and have conversations like this Padma, I'm sure we're pushing it a little bit further, giving it a good old nudge to create better experiences for customers and employees.
Right?
Absolutely. Absolutely. This is fantastic. And I'm going to say one more thing about your solution as well. Now that you're running on the IBM Fs cloud. You go to partners solution showcase of IBM, learn more about net for you, Mike, you know this, but you to your listeners go look at IBM partner solution showcase.
If you go to Google and find it, you will see the value proposition of the flow ex workloads on IBM financial services collapse. So go, you. We'll do
we'll do. Pardon me? Thank you so much. It's been great to unlock this new idea of being the supporting cast to customers in place. I'm really grateful for your sharing that idea with us today.
And I hope it inspires all of our listeners.
Mike. Thank you so much. This is my honor to be with you. I enjoyed it quite enjoyable. Thank you so much for inviting me for the show.
Thank you so much. All right, everybody. I hope you have been driving your growth equation here today on unbounded talks. That's it for the show.
That's a wrap. If you want more information, head over to flow ex. And check us out where the unbounded talks podcast.