Working on Rabobank's digital and innovative progress
Mayhad Gilani, Product Owner Rabobank Corporate Connect
"Hey Rabobank, what's my balance?" At Rabobank, we were the first and only Dutch financial institution to develop banking services for Google Assistant. And we're now working on even more amazing features'.
Innovate with the latest tools and technology
Together with my two development teams, we are working on the bank’s digital and innovative progress. We have state of the art user test facilities in house. In addition, my developers work with the very latest cloud computing tools. We use technology from the United States that is not even available in the Netherlands yet! Furthermore, our department is completely agile, with plenty of room for brainstorming. There is also a lot of room to come up with ideas and innovations ourselves and we get a lot of support from and access to all layers of management’.
Talk to Rabobank
This became clear in the summer of 2018, when we were the first Dutch bank to launch two features for Google Assistant. The so-called Rabo Assistant allows customers to set a budget on their account. If they exceed this amount, they receive a message. Customers can also retrieve their current balance status by entering “Talk to Rabobank” via Google Assistant.
Amazing features
“And that’s just the beginning of a lot of beautiful things. Because we’re developing more crazy features. We’re currently doing a lot of user tests with our own customers and customers from other banks and collecting feedback from colleagues who are involved in analytics and data. We are also now developing services for Google Home. Amongst other things, we are working closely with customer data security and protection departments.
Business Banking
With our Business Banking team we develop dashboards for our corporate and SME clients. We continuously test new ideas and hypotheses to see what works. Our developers come up with and create the solutions in small and fast iterations. This allows us to quickly improve our services. That gives our team real energy.
Adapt to change
Our developers don’t analyze every step they take. We test our solutions on a daily basis, even several times a day. If you need help from your colleagues, you ask for it. We base many decisions not on past assumptions, but on the facts we see in the here and now. In our team it is important that you can adapt to change.
DevOps and Agile
I’ve been at Rabobank for a year and a half now. Before that I lived and worked in Edinburgh, where I gained experience in the field of innovation and digital technology at, among others, Tesco Bank, Adobe Systems and Monitise. A recruiter approached me to work at Rabobank. At first I had my reservations. I didn’t know Utrecht and what could Rabobank offer me? But after a Skype interview and a visit to the head office, I saw the enormous opportunities at this company. Among other things, the open culture, the DevOps and Agile way of working, the special people and the great building appealed to me. When I saw the sunset over Utrecht from the 21st floor, I was definitely sold. No, I don’t regret a day that I traded Edinburgh for Utrecht’.