Small business owners rely on digital tools to run their businesses, but how does their banking experience measure up? In this episode, hear real-world stories from business owners with diverse needs as they describe their experiences and challenges, and hear from financial institutions that are taking these needs to heart.
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Cheryl Brown
Hello and welcome to The Purposeful Banker, the leading commercial banking podcast brought to you by Q2, where we discuss the topics on the minds of today’s best bankers. Welcome to the show.
Today I’m replaying another great session from our CONNECT 25 customer conference, and this one incorporates a lot of voices around a central topic: What do small businesses need in a digital banking experience, and how can banks and credit unions meet those needs. You’ll hear first-hand stories from a few business owners, as well as insights from Texas Security Bank, Bank of Tennessee, United Federal Credit Union, Autobooks, and Monit. Let’s tune in.
Ben Cash
My name's Ben Cash, I'm a senior product manager here at Q2. My focus is on small business digital banking. I usually try to start off with some sort of story, some personal story. And so, I'll do that this year too.
My brother owns a couple coffee shops from where I'm from, and he's a small business owner. And so, a couple of months ago I was actually in his coffee shop and I was sitting at the counter and he was doing his normal thing as a business owner. He was behind the counter. He was managing his finances, sending invoices, making payroll. Doing a lot of it from the phone. He also had a tablet. And there were two people sitting next to me at the counter that were friends of his, and they come to his coffee shop often. And one was a lawyer in the area, so this person owned a small law firm, so they're a small business. And then, the other person owned a small tech company with a couple employees.
And so, I was sitting there, being the product manager I am, and nosing my way into the conversation. And naturally, I was like, "Hey, how do you manage your banking relationship? What's that like?" I started doing my undercover user research session that I try to do with these business owners. And what was interesting from that conversation is the answers were very telling because you learn about the financial tools they're using. But what you really learn is really the challenges they face every day, the risk that they're up against, the trust they have to build. And they're really trying to stitch together all these different things because they're trying to manage their business and manage banking.
And if I could bottle that moment that I was sitting in watching three business owners, different industries, all there hanging out and talking to one each other about their challenges, that really is one of the best images of small business. I think it's a good picture of what this segment represents. And so, when I looked at that situation, my goal was like, OK, can we recreate this at CONNECT? And that was a little bit of the inspiration of this session. And so, obviously, we're not in a coffee shop, but we were able to get some small businesses. We video recorded their voices. And so, we're going to hear some of those today from actual small business owners and the challenges they face every day.
And so, the theme of today, and we have a great panel and I'll introduce them in a second, but we're going to go through just the life of a small business owner. We're going to talk about their digital day-to-day and some of the things they're faced against. And then, we'll talk about what they need beyond traditional banking through some of our fintech ecosystems, stuff like that.
If that story paints a picture of the segment, I think this number actually shows off the opportunity for you all as institutions. McKinsey said that 37% of small business owners are probably going to move financial institutions or willing to move financial institutions in the next couple of years for a better or more comparable digital experience and meeting some of their needs where they are. And so, that motion starts to represent, they've estimated, about $700 billion in deposits, which is a lot of money on the table for this segment. And so, that's why now, why this conversation today is if we can actually align ourselves with the small business owner and their needs and their challenges and build a digital experience around that and position ourselves, we start to win some of these deposits as institutions.
And so, that's enough about some of this. I'm going to introduce our great panel today. I'm going to let them introduce themselves. And so, we'll just go down the line. And then, from here we'll actually have some sort of discussion, but we're going to show some cool videos throughout some of this conversation. So Katrina, if you want to lead us off.
Katrina Leach
Katrina Leach. I am director of digital banking at United Federal Credit Union out of St. Joseph, Michigan.
Shon Cass
Hi, guys. Shon Cass, executive vice president and chief experience officer for Texas Security Bank, just down the road in Dallas-Fort Worth.
Thomas Eorgan
I'm Thomas Eorgan, I'm the director of sales enablement for Bank of Tennessee, which is located in Tennessee. And glad you guys are here this morning. Thank you.
Ben Cash
Yeah. Well, thanks for being here today. We're excited. This is going to be sort of a hybrid approach where we'll show a video, do some panel discussions, and then show another video and panel discussions, so on. And so, the first video that we want to show you all is just the day in the life of a small business owner. Who are they? What do they represent? And so, you'll hear some of their voices today.
Russell Griffin (video)
What I enjoy is the people part of it. I really enjoy pouring into people, seeing them grow, seeing them advance in their careers. The thing I liked about Texas Security Bank was they gave me a chance when other banks wouldn't give me a chance. I was just a guy that was a technician with a dream and they gave me the opportunity.
Without the digital experience, I would not be with Texas Security Bank. I am in Houston, they are in Dallas. They do not have a branch anywhere close to me. So, the digital is the only way this relationship can work.
When I moved to Houston, there were three employees, we're now at 240 employees. So, it's come a long way with a lot of growth in a short period. The most important thing that the bank can do for us is just the personalized experience.
Carter Davison (video)
When I was a senior in high school, I had an opportunity to purchase a porta potty business called Potty Box Portables. Less than a year, we had more than tripled the business. As I've grown from a small lawn care business to the porta potty business and now to The Bagel Exchange, where I've got 12 to 15 employees and a lot more expenses that I have to take care of, it's great to have the guys at Bank of Tennessee and the digital banking platform that I can rely on.
Ben Cash
Awesome. All right. So Shon, I'm going to start off with you. When Russell said, I love this quote, he said, "I was just a guy with a dream" and you gave him a chance when no one else did. Love that quote. I think it's a reminder, in a lot of ways, of how many small businesses are fueled by this ambition as well as how this segment has been, historically, sometimes underserved. My question to you, and for this audience, is what does this segment represent for you and what is the opportunity for banks and credit unions to invest in these small businesses?
Shon Cass
Yeah. Russell's got a great story, and I think your opening slide spoke to this a little bit. It's a wonderful opportunity for us as bankers. This is a great market. I think there's 33 million small business owners that deposit opportunities. But really, what I've experienced ... And our bank is a commercial bank, that is our focus. We only work with commercial businesses. But to get to work with these entrepreneurs, and all of them are very similar, they all have a dream and they're all trying to achieve that dream. But there's so many things that go into running that business.
And so, it really ... I've been a banker for 30 years and it allows you to be a banker. It allows you to come alongside that business owner and provide the necessary resources that they need, not just a checking account, maybe not just a debit card or a credit card, but come alongside them and wrap all of those services around them and just to watch them grow and succeed. So for me, it's amazing. The opportunity is why we started our bank in 2008 and, again, focused on that market.
Ben Cash
Yeah. Love that. Yeah. Huge opportunity. So Thomas, Carter. Young individual. How old is he?
Thomas Eorgan
Yeah. I was going to just start out by addressing the elephant in the room and that is that Carter started his first business when he was 16 years old and his third business when he was a senior in high school. I mean, when I was 20 ... He's 20 years old. When I was 20, I was probably at a kegger somewhere, who knows. But this guy is running businesses. He's a great guy, very unique individual. Started his landscaping business, lawn care, and then he parlayed that into this Potty Box Portables business. He invested in that. He grew it three times over its value in a year and he sold it.
And he walked into this bagel company that is in Kingsport, Tennessee. It's a really unique place because it was founded by a New York City police officer who moved to the south with his wife to Kingsport. And he was like, "There's not a bagel place around here, like a real bagel place." So, he started Bagel Exchange. And then, Carter walked in there as a kid and started eating the bagels. And so, long story short, struck up conversation, ended up purchasing the business from this gentleman and he's growing it. He's launching another location about 30 minutes from his existing one.
The cool thing about the business is that they fly in the dough for the bagels from New Jersey, so it's like authentic New York bagels. It's pretty amazing that you can do that in Kingsport, Tennessee. But yeah. Carter's a great guy. Interesting thing about Carter is we opened a business checking account when we first started our relationship with him, and we also opened a minor savings account the same day. It's kind of weird story there.
Ben Cash
Yeah. I love that. I mean, I have three boys and so sometimes I'm like, "I got to keep this clip so when they start to get older I'm like, 'This is inspired.' "
Thomas Eorgan
Exactly.
Ben Cash
That's great. I appreciate that story. All right, Katrina. We weren't able to get some of the videos from some of your customers, but we talked to a lot of them and great stories there. Stories like Russell's and Carter are familiar to credit unions too. It's not just banks. How are you all thinking about the opportunity in the small business segment? And are there any stories you are able to share that gives insight to these members?
Katrina Leach
Small business is, I think, very underserved in today's digital landscape, and Q2 does a great job in partnering with us to be able to bridge that gap and serve those members. One of the things that we've focused on is bringing the Composable Dashboard experience to our small business members and allowing them quick access to the tools that they use every day to drive their business, bringing some hyper efficiency into their day-to-day so that they're able to spend their time where they most enjoy it, which, as Russ said, he enjoys being with his customers. And so, we help to bring that and bridge that gap. And we do that by being out there in the market and being small business owners ourselves and talking to them about how we use the services and how it has brought efficiency to us and how we're here to partner with them so that they can achieve their goals.
Ben Cash
Yeah. That's great. I love that you said being small business owners ourselves. Because I think the question used to be, how many in the audience know a small business owner? And I think these days it's like, how many of us are small business owners? Because everyone has a side hustle. So, I think it's very relevant. Thanks for that. Yeah, I appreciate that. We'll talk more about the Composable Dashboard, so I love that you brought that up.
Thomas, I actually want to go back to Carter because his journey is so ... I mean, you described it super well, from lawn care to porta potties to bagels, which is unorthodox in some ways. Hopefully he's not getting done with porta potties and making bagels.
Thomas Eorgan
I tried to find a through line to each business and I couldn't make it work.
Ben Cash
Yeah. But I think it shows that business owners don't always fit a traditional mold all the time. My question to you is, what's your take on the opportunity to support entrepreneurship across that evolution without making the customer feel like they have to start over? And how does Bank of Tennessee position itself to help businesses, like Carter's, scale?
Thomas Eorgan
Yeah. I think, in Carter's case, any small business case, I think the key is relationship continuity. I think that once you establish a relationship with your banker, you need to carry that forward with all the businesses that you run. John Wagner is Carter's relationship manager, he's a seasoned professional at Bank of Tennessee. He's been with Carter since day one and he understands his business and Carter relies on him. I mean, he's basically a kid and he relies on John for a lot of advice. So, I think having that single through line of that relationship with John has really helped Carter out because he depends on him, he trusts him. He doesn't have to start over with another banker.
Now, I will caveat that and say that probably a majority of us in this room have a business banking team that's probably nearing retirement or getting older. And you got to really think about, what does that next relationship manager look like? They need to be a good relationship person, need to have good people skills, communication skills. But we have the opportunity to make sure that this next generation of RMs and business bankers have their foot in technology. And I think that's going to be the huge differentiator between this generation of RMs and the next generation.
Anyway, that through line is extremely important. I think the same thing holds true with digital banking. As Katrina mentioned, Q2 brings all these tools to the table. And the cool thing about Q2 is that if you're a small business owner, like Carter, you're just starting out, you got maybe just yourself as an employee, you use certain features of the digital banking suite. But then, when you add complexity, another business, you add employees, you add payroll, you add ACH, the system grows with the business.
And so, again, he doesn't have to go back and learn a new system, he just uses the same system as long as his business grows. And on the consumer side, he's a personal consumer customer, he does the same thing with the same UI. I think that's super important to have that. You don't want to start over every time. But I think, at the end of the day, you want to never give your customers a reason to graduate to a larger bank. You want them to stay with you because you bring all the tools to the table that you can. I think that's the magic of the Q2 platform and that's what we're seeing with our customers.
Ben Cash
Yeah. Love that. Yeah. That single platform to serve all aspects of the journey. Love that piece. I also like how you said the evolution of the relationship manager, the banker in this digital age. And I feel like, Shon, this is a good question to you in terms of Russell's relationship is totally digital. And he said the most important thing to him is that personalized experience. And so, in view of that, this evolution, how can banks and credit unions deliver that personalized experience, especially when the banking relationship is contingent on being digital?
Shon Cass
Yeah. I agree with so much that was said over here. Russell is a great example of a customer who has grown. I don't know if you guys caught the statement of started his business. He was a technician and then bought the company and now has over ... Today, actually, almost 300 employees. He was the guy working out of the back of a truck that never made a payroll, didn't understand all of the aspects of running a business. So, that relationship that you spoke of, that was where we really wanted in that exercise, is being able to grow with him. But in the same respect, he's in Houston, we're in Dallas, we don't have locations there. And so, he's able to use that technology to do his day-to-day banking, but our relationship manager stays in touch with him, engages with him regularly, and that's really where the relationship is.
Like I said, I've been in banking a long time, and when those business customers used to come into the branch and they had that interaction with the teller and we thought, "Wow. That's a great relationship." Well, that was just a transactional relationship. The relationship today can actually be stronger because we've taken care of the transactional piece with the digital, and now we can engage more often with the customer on the actual things that they need to grow and win the business. I think it's an opportunity to even have stronger relationships with our customers. And with the technology, being able to monitor their transactions, engage with them when they see certain transactions that are happening is absolutely critical.
Ben Cash
Love that. Yeah, thank you. Before we jump to the next video, Katrina, I actually want to get your take on, we're talking about as more relationships go digital, where do you see the biggest opportunity to use some of these digital tools to make small business members feel seen, supported and help them succeed?
Katrina Leach
Q2 does a great job of providing all of the data that you need to find how you can better serve your businesses. And so, one of the things that we've really been focusing on is how do we make our businesses aware of the services that we offer? They're not going to approach you with something that they need if they don't necessarily know that you offer it. So, educating your staff to educate the businesses on what you offer is key. But also, putting that content in front of them, making the information readily available right there in their experience is going to help drive their adoption and their interest in the products. And then, it allows you to have the conversations on what's going to most efficiently benefit them for them to be able to leverage.
And so, with dynamic personalization and starter experiences, we've taken the positive pay module and we've been able to put that in front of our businesses and it's able to tell them the dollar amount of potential fraud exposure that they have and how this service is able to help protect them so that they can focus on other things. And using that data to continue to build out those experiences, to be able to put that information in front of them is going to be key to driving the adoption of the services and then your business relationships.
Ben Cash
Yeah, love that. I love that you brought up the positive pay example, because this next video captures some of what does that represent in this segment, whether it's understood or misunderstood. So ...
Carter Davison (video)
I use the digital online banking probably every day to check balances and to send ACH payments or transfer money. I think the digital banking is very crucial to a small business.
Russell Griffin (video)
Being able to do it remotely. Again they're in Dallas, I'm in Houston, we have transactions all the time going on. Whatever it may be that requires a wire transfer, it's always been able to been done.
Carter Davison (video)
The main digital services that I use on a daily basis are mobile deposits, obviously, check-in balances, and then sometimes I'll need to transfer money from one account to the other for a payment that I need to make that day. And it's nice to be able to do that on the go, on the fly.
Russell Griffin (video)
With the positive pay, I knew nothing about that, didn't know what it was, didn't know what it meant. Texas Security Bank guided me towards that. At the time, did I understand anything about it? No. Since then, have I understood the importance of it? When we got hit with fraud, I absolutely understood the importance of it.
Carter Davison (video)
We're looking at expanding right now to another location about 30 minutes down the road. And so, I'm super excited to see where we can continue to take this business.
Russell Griffin (video)
They've helped me run the business. They've been a partner in the business. I just don't think I would get that with any other bank.
Ben Cash
Yeah. So good. We're going to dig into some of that, especially the positive pay. Totally understand that.
Shon Cass
Absolutely.
Ben Cash
Thomas, actually, I'm going to start with you this time. Carter talked about using digital banking daily through the mobile app to move money, do transfers, keep his operations running and moving. And so, from your perspective, what's the biggest shift in how small businesses are engaging with your digital tools and what are some of the things you are all doing at the Bank of Tennessee to empower these business owners to succeed?
Thomas Eorgan
I guess the first part of that is the way that people use the online banking platform has dramatically changed. It went from, like Carter said, checking balances, moving money around, it became more of a financial operating system. They run their business organizationally and operationally within the platform. And we found that because we look at our engagement metrics and we know that people are spending a lot more time in the platform. And we used to think that was a problem, so if we saw someone that was spending a lot of time on something, we're like, "They're stuck or they can't find it" and it was a negative. Now we think it's a positive because they're in the platform, they're using it to run their business, it becomes an integral part of their day-to-day operations. I think that's how our customers have changed.
And then, on the back side, as bankers, when we launched with Q2 back in 2014, it was a convenience platform, it was a way for customers to access their accounts. Now we use the platform on the back side, as Katrina said, to get interesting data about our customers. We launched Monit a year ago and it's been a huge success for our company. We get all these tailored insights on the back end and we can take those to our business bankers and say, "Here's an issue a customer's facing" or "Here's a cash flow problem" or "Here's a receivables problem." And we can take that to them and say, "Contact your customer, find out what's going on there." So, the way that we use the platform in the back end is almost as revolutionary as the way our customers use it on the front end because we're using it to just better serve and deliver services to them when they need them.
So, I think one of the things we're doing to help our customers in that avenue, and it's just ... Katrina looked at my notes or something because it's exactly what I was going to say. I'm just kidding. I don't think we do a very good job of promoting our services to our customers. They don't always know what we have or what we can offer them. We did a customer survey last quarter, the end of last year, and I threw this hypothetical question out. I said, "If we were to, hypothetically, offer payment and invoicing solutions, would you be interested?" And 16% of our customers said, "Yes, that would be awesome." Sorry, Derik. We've offered Autobooks for five years, we've already had that technology, they just didn't know about it.
To Katrina's point, we got to be better at serving up talking about what we do and not being ashamed of that. And I think, through Q2 Discover, we have opportunity, Q2 SMART, and we're working with some of the EVE data to do that. We just continuously market and promote products to our customers. I think that's a great way to serve them, because they don't have the time to go discover it, we’ve got to be proactive. I think that's the key.
Ben Cash
Yeah. It totally makes sense. Especially when we talked earlier, small businesses, they're thinking about their business. They're not a CFO or corporate treasurer. Which I think Russell's point about positive pay is a really good point. I mean, I know my brother, if you're … if he’s not on positive pay, he doesn't know what that is, right? We've used that term for so long. I love Russell's take on it. So Shon, I want you to answer this question of ... He talked about learning the importance of positive pay after the fraud incident. And so, how do you see, as we think about some of the things that Thomas and Katrina said, like surfacing some of these pieces to the customer, how do you see the opportunity to guide business owners towards what they need before they realize they need it?
Shon Cass
Yeah. I want to tell this little story, going off script here. This has been a couple of years ago, went on a call with our CEO and we had a client, relationship manager had left the bank, high-profile client, CEO and I went out to meet with him and reassure him that his relationship was strong. During the conversation, he brought up some pain points and I could see that my CEO was getting really excited because we had solutions for those pain points. And so, as he started rattling off the solutions, the business owner actually got very upset and he said, "You came in here to talk to me how valuable my relationship is, yet I'm having pain points and you have solutions and no one has told me about them."
And so, that's what I try to use when I'm teaching our younger bankers, is our responsibility as bankers is not just to offer products when they come looking for them, it's to assess their needs and understand the needs sometimes before they even know that they have the need. In this case, Russell is actually a longtime friend of mine as well. And so, I was talking to him about positive pay and the importance of positive pay. And as he said, he didn't know much about positive pay, didn't know what it was. And so, we talked through that, and just from a liability standpoint, I said, "You've got to get on this product."
Being a friend of his and knowing this company for a long time, his office manager I knew very well, also called me and said, "Can you please stop talking to Russell about positive pay? Because I don't want to do it." We got him on positive pay, thank goodness. And sometime after that, they had a big fraud incident, there was about 13 fraudulent checks that processed. And she personally called me and said, "Thank you for not listening to me."
Another quick story, I went on a call recently just a few days ago and was talking to a group of business owners, three brothers, they're aging out, their children are actually taking over the business. And positive pay came up again, and this one gentleman was very upset. He goes, "Look, don't talk to me about positive pay. I don't want to do positive pay. My bank now is forcing me to do positive pay." And he said, "So, are you going to force me to do positive pay? Because if you are, I'm not coming to bank with you." And I said, "No, I'm not going to force you to do positive pay, but I'm going to tell you that it's the most responsible thing you can do to protect your business and protect your assets."
And I said, "Tell me what the problem is." And he said, "I'm struggling to get the check report out of QuickBooks to upload into the system, and I'm fighting that all the time and I'm missing the exceptions." And I said, "Well, what if I helped you figure out how to get the check report out of QuickBooks and then taught you how to use the system?" He said, "That would be great." But he said, "My current bank's not doing that. They just called me and said, 'You have to use this product.' " And that's one thing I think is an important lesson for us, is we can't just say you got to use this product, we got to go alongside them and make sure they understand the features and the benefits of using the product.
Ben Cash
Yeah. Sorry. No, that was great. No, I loved it. I think it makes a lot of sense. And Katrina, you can shed a lot of light on this. You kind of alluded to the positive pay use case. And I think we can all agree that the term positive pay is a term we've used for a long time that many business owners have no clue what it is.
Shon Cass
No clue.
Ben Cash
Sometimes banks don't always ... Banks and credit unions don't know what it is. And I think it's delivering that context when it matters to the end user. Especially as we talk about this idea of going digital, if the digital relationship is that. And then, how do you surface context that makes sense to a business owner who does not speak banker speak. And so, Katrina, United Federal Credit Union is an early adopter of Q2's Composable Dashboard, which you talked about, and dynamic personalization. Given some of this conversation, how do you see that shaping the future of small business banking?
Katrina Leach
I think it's great. Just from our limited time leveraging dynamic personalization so far, we're able to really personalize the information that we're putting in front of these businesses. You leverage the EVE data and you leverage your other sources of data to figure out the content that's going to be most valuable for the businesses. And then, you leverage dynamic personalization to control what content they're seeing on Composable Dashboards that's going to be most relevant to them.
And then, you embed a call to action for them to easily get in contact with the relationship manager who can speak informed on the product and the service with the business and show them the value and how it's going to help them. And then, set them up, walk them through it. It's almost like you leverage Composable Dashboards and dynamic personalization to get the interest and then you leverage your human to really seal the deal and help that business use it to its full potential.
Ben Cash
Yeah. That's great. I love how you position that.
I do want to move on to the last video, and you all alluded to different pieces, you mentioned Monit and Autobooks and some of the issuing files, I think, through positive pay and some of this fintech ecosystem. Because if we think about a business owner today, they're using a lot of different apps, and some of the reports say they prefer to purchase those apps through their financial institution because they need them, a lot of things they do. We're going to watch a video of some of our fintech partners, some are in this room, and we're going to see what they have to say about our ecosystem.
Derik Sutton (video)
You have to meet the business owner where they're at. They're looking to Google, they're going in a ChatGPT. Those services are recommending third-party tools, first and foremost. We want to be able to help financial institutions do is to bring all of those tools, all those capabilities directly to the banking relationship directly inside digital banking.
Max Koenig (video)
When you look at a typical business owner, they're not financial people. They're really good at managing their business. At the end of the day, businesses don't have a dedicated CFO or controller. They have a part-time bookkeeper, a CPA, a brother-in-law, or a spouse, for example, managing their financials. Big technology incumbents are offering slick digital experiences to help business owners get paid. But again, what businesses don't realize is they're paying high fees to get access to these types of services.
Derik Sutton (video)
When business owners accept payments using third-party applications, only $1 out of the full $7 makes its way back to the financial institution, meaning that the financial institution is not capturing the full deposit relationship of that business owner.
Max Koenig (video)
Eighty percent of businesses in the United States fail due to mismanaged cashflow. And so, we try to really help them get ahead of certain scenarios or intentions that they're thinking about.
Derik Sutton (video)
What we've been able to do with Q2 is we've been able to release innovative technology, like tap to pay, and beat many of those providers to market. And we're enabling community banks to offer leading-edge payment technology, back-office services directly through their financial institution.
Ben Cash
Yeah. I think, as we think about just the small business owner, it becomes less of this platform, more of this ecosystem of creating this space for them to manage their business inside online banking. Shon, I want to ask you a question. Russell described before that Texas Security Bank has a plethora of knowledge. He said that before. And that helped his business grow. And I want to get your perspective, how do you think about offering the same breadth of value digitally by partnering with Q2's fintech ecosystem to bring tools like cashflow insights, payables and receivables, and security directly into the platform?
Shon Cass
It's amazing. I want to say acknowledge our partners here, Monit and Autobooks. Something was said earlier, and I meant to go back to it, is digital banking started out as a place where clients could go and check balances. Today, I will tell you, in our bank, and I'm a little bit of an outlier, spent my career in retail banking opening branches. And to me, today the digital banking platform is the bank. That is where our clients are going every day to do their banking business. And so, being able to provide that kind of technology inside of that ecosystem available to them while they're in there doing their banking just makes sense.
And I'm probably an outlier too, I'm one of those old guys that's probably getting close to retirement. But it's just amazing to me to be able to offer the technology at the fingertips while they're in there doing their banking, and whether it's the business owner or key players in that business. That's one of the things that we're seeing too, is our business owners now are starting to age. And in this example of this client I just went and visited, the three brothers are stepping away and their children are coming into the business. And we talk about this all the time, how those individuals want the same experience they have in their personal. And I see it firsthand, this entire meeting they were asking me about the digital tools, how do I access it electronically? What do you have to offer? And then, being able to provide these services to them.
But one of the things that I mentioned earlier is it's not just offering it to them, but coming alongside them and explaining to them how it can benefit them and how it can change their business. I'm a business owner as well, been a business owner, grew up in an entrepreneurial family. And one thing I say about business owners, if it's not broke, don't fix it. And so, you have to come in and show them how this technology can allow them to be more efficient, how it can run their business a little bit smoother and give them time back to go focus on what their core business actually is. I hope I answered that. I don't know.
Ben Cash
You definitely answered it. Yeah. That was great. Yeah. I appreciate it. So Thomas, I'm going to come back to you. There's a lot of fintech tools out there, hundreds of them. And many businesses owners are going directly to those third-party providers, rather than maybe their primary banking financial institution provider. And to access them, few of those are connected to their primary bank. And so, the question is, how does the fintech partner ecosystem through Q2 enable you to stand out and create these stickier, stronger relationships by making your digital experience the place where it all comes together for that?
Thomas Eorgan
I would say, first and foremost, that the marketplace the accelerator developer programs bring a level of competitive advantage to Bank of Tennessee. You know, we've launched Monit last year, awesome cashflow management system for our customers. And we were probably the only community bank in our footprint that had it at the time. The major players, they all have their own systems, and Monit took it upon themselves to create this for the community bank and for the smaller guys. We appreciate that. We bring the same level of capability to our customers that the big guys do. And I think we're probably the only ones in our footprint that have that. Likewise, we're going live with tap to pay from Autobooks next week for the iPhone, and probably we're going to be the only community bank in our footprint that has that capability.
It gives us a huge competitive advantage. It gives us something to talk about. But more importantly, it gives our customers a competitive advantage. People being able to take payments in the field and issuing invoices seamlessly within online banking, that's hugely efficient and a huge advantage for them. Likewise, if they know their cash position, if they know how they stack up against competitors. Monit tells them that. We had an interesting scenario a couple of weeks ago. We had a brand new customer, brand new business banker, started with us, brought his customers over, which is always nice. And we sat down in a room with him, we said, "Sign up for Business Insights, give it a week, let's meet and let's talk about what you find out."
So we sat down in a room, all three of the principals around the table with the business banker and me, and we're looking at their Monit dashboard. And it showed a really fun trend, and then about 12 months out they were cash flow negative, and they all just looked at each other and went, "Oh, no. What would we do about this?" Well, it turns out they knew it, but they'd never been able to visualize that. So, that was so important to them. And so, they found out they had a receivables issue, a long-standing receivables problem, so they took it upon themselves to fix that. But that's just an illustration of what kind of advantage it brings to our customers, and inherently for us, as a bank, to better serve additional customers. The ecosystem is where it's at. Having these pre-vetted, pre-integrated solutions from Q2, it just makes it easy to serve our customers.
Ben Cash
Love that. Make it easy to serve your customers, meet them where they are. Katrina, we'll round this discussion off with you. No pressure.
Katrina Leach
Not at all.
Ben Cash
Just given how you've leaned into innovation with Q2's Composable Dashboard, how are you using that flexibility similarly to curate and experience that puts the full ecosystem of some of these tools or how are you thinking about it in the future front and center, especially for your business members?
Katrina Leach
Being able to leverage dynamic personalization to customize the initial digital banking experience when the user logs in is key. We're able to take away the things that might not be as relevant to this digital banking user and put the things that they use every day in their face making it … They log in, they have one click, they can get to positive pay, decision the positive pay items without having to leverage through menus and navigational icons to get there. It's putting the relevant information in front of them so that they can—not necessarily get through their digital banking experience faster—but they can get the information that they need quicker.
Continuing on that space, I mean, it's all about personalization. I think we started the conversation with personalization. And being able to personalize the experience, the information, everything for that user, making it specific to them is going to make them want to stay with you because everything's there, it's easy, it's easy to access.
Ben Cash
Yeah. Love that. Business owners are juggling chainsaws, so meet them where they are, personalize that experience. But just as we think about the key takeaways, small businesses, they want more than just transactions, they want partnership, belief. They want the tools that help them work the way they do as business owners. Digital banking isn't a luxury for small business, it's a lifeline, in a lot of ways, as they think about their cash position, how they manage some of those pieces.
Fintech partnerships help banks go further, faster. You all talked about this, the ability to differentiate and compete. And then, this idea of a unified dashboard can bring it all together, meet them wherever they are in that journey.
Cheryl Brown
And that's it for this episode. Be sure to take our short survey at q2.com/podsurvey and give us your input about the topics you'd like to hear. Subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts, including YouTube, Apple, and Spotify, and visit our resource center at hub.q2.com to see our archive of podcasts and other helpful content. Until next time, this is Cheryl Brown and you've been listening to The Purposeful Banker.