Innovation has built upon innovation to create Standard Bank’s own “innovation portal”, the Beyond Payments app, created by Flow’s developers.
The Beyond Payments app provides a platform for Standard Bank staff members and consultants to submit original ideas to Standard Bank for improving customers’ banking experience. It acts as a knowledge management system for sharing and developing product and service ideas within Standard Bank, and is a platform for innovation in the banking industry.
Tinashe Gunda, one of the developers at Flow who worked on the project, says the app is all about helping Standard Bank find “new ways to improve people’s lives using their bank”.
In order to submit an idea, an individual simply has to register on the app and request to become a concept owner. The app also allows other users to critique and comment on concept owners’ ideas.
Using the app might be simple, but its development was not a straightforward process for Flow’s development team, and creating the app also required traversing some new territory and a few innovations from them.
Head developer Richard Frank says: “We stretched Expression Engine [the online content management system Flow uses] to new limits, and we used quite an advanced front-end script to make a fluid, responsive design.”
In plain English, this means that the app is equally useable on any device, from a desktop computer to a mobile phone.
The app development was also challenging because the app had to be hosted from within Standard Bank, which meant that the Flow development team had to familiarise themselves with the Standard Bank hosting environment.
Despite the pains of innovation, developer Reatile Tshikalange says: “I love the finished product; the entire team’s effort shows.”
Tyrone Crowie, projects assistant at Beyond Payments, is happy with the app, saying, “Over the time I have used the application, it has been very easy to navigate between pages and update the system, and it is overall self-explanatory.”
Richard says that “the way forward would be to see how Standard Bank uses the app and how we can improve it, based on user feedback”. He believes the app has great further potential for Standard Bank.