AFTAs 2018: Best Mobile Strategy Initiative—Bank of America

Running a global institution has never been a simple task. In the modern era, when employees and employers alike expect a certain degree of mobility in their day-to-day roles, extra wrinkles are added. How does a firm with tens of thousands of employees manage this task, and foster an environment that views the ability to work outside of fixed locations as critical? For Bank of America, the answer lies, at least in part, in workIT and Enterprise Digital Assistant (EDA), for which the firm has won this year’s AFTA for the best mobile strategy initiative.

Each serves two key constituencies within Bank of America—for its highly mobile employees, EDA provides a mobile app for them to submit tickets, track the status of queries, approve requests and search the bank’s knowledge base from cellphones and tablets. Meanwhile, workIT allows technical teams to work off-hours on tickets, to enable better responsiveness to internal clients, in use by over 800 staff. Over 9,000 transactions have been logged on the platform to date, the bank says.

Both apps work collaboratively with each other, using standard application programming interface (API) capabilities to integrate with other applications in the bank’s technology ecosystem. More to the point, they work—and they work well.

“WorkIT, EDA and automation have reduced the average deployment time for automated software titles by 90 percent, from 10 days to one day, improving productivity and customer satisfaction,” says Howard Boville, chief technology officer at Bank of America. “These digitization efforts have eliminated the need to swivel chair, reducing manual interventions, data reentry and points of friction across four systems.”

On the platform and security side, the apps are designed to work across the iOS and Android operating systems, and make use of BlackBerry Dynamics for secure transport. Single sign-on, two-factor authentication and biometrics such as fingerprints and facial recognition are all used for security.

While EDA has already been rolled out to over 4,000 people within Bank of America’s Chief Technology Organization, the bank has ambitious targets for expansion—it will be rolled out to more than 63,000 staff by June 2019.

“We want to create a consumer-grade experience for our employees while they are at work,” says Boville. “We continue to look for opportunities to enhance mobility offerings for all bank employees whether that be notifying employees of pertinent information, providing technical support and instructions to increase productivity, and the ability to join virtual team meetings with people around the world.”