Background

Capitec is a leading South African retail bank established in 2001. With its headquarters located in Stellenbosch, Western Cape employing 15,000 people, Capitec has rapidly emerged as one of the country's largest financial institutions. The bank was founded on the principles of simplicity, accessibility, and affordability, aiming to provide innovative banking solutions to the broader population. Today, Capitec offers a comprehensive suite of services, including transactional accounts, savings accounts, personal loans, credit cards, and insurance solutions to its 20 million clients.

Capitec has garnered a reputation for its client-centric approach, utilizing technology to enhance convenience and accessibility for its clients. Serving nearly a third of the South African population, Capitec’s clients range from its predominant retail banking client base to small and medium-sized (SME) business banking clients, as well as its digital banking users, with Capitec’s banking app the largest in South Africa based on monthly active users in the region. 

Capitec has achieved remarkable growth since its inception, enabling it to rapidly expand its client base and branch network throughout South Africa to challenge the dominance of traditional banking institutions in the country. It has received numerous accolades and industry recognition for its client service, financial stability, and technological advancements. 

Capitec’s journey with Optimizely and partner Responsive Digital began in 2018.
Problem

As Suveshen Nadashen (Head of Product, Group Website (DXP)) explained, “before we replatformed, it was extremely difficult to manage the website from a content and development perspective.” Capitec’s previous content management platform caused its internal team several problems that prohibited the bank from creating content efficiently and delivering the world-class client experience that its clients expected from South Africa’s most popular bank.

Firstly, the bank was experiencing frequent platform downtime due to infrastructure instability. This resulted in the website being intermittently unavailable for clients, leading to a loss of trust. The bank’s existing platform had reached its limitations and was becoming increasingly difficult and unstable to build on. This hindered the bank's ability to develop new features and limited its agility in executing marketing strategies.

Capitec’s previous CMS had limited content management capabilities, requiring code deployment for basic tasks such as adding a column to a table. This posed a significant constraint on the bank's agility and efficiency in content management. In addition, the maintenance costs associated with the custom-made platform were becoming prohibitively high. Capitec sought a more cost-effective solution that would reduce the financial burden of ongoing maintenance while ensuring a high level of performance. 

Furthermore, the previous platform provided limited data analytics and insights into user behavior and navigation. This made it challenging for Capitec to gain a comprehensive understanding of client interactions and optimize the user experience. 

Lastly, the on-premise hosting model of the previous platform required significant time and resources for server maintenance, software licenses, integrations, backups, and hardware upgrades. This became an arduous and expensive task for Capitec.

Capitec selected Optimizely Content Managment System due to its ease-of-use, Optimizely’s technology roadmap and Capitec’s shared desire in building a long-term partnership. The adoption of Optimizely's CMS addressed various pain points for Capitec, including platform stability, content management limitations, maintenance costs, digital transformation, data analytics, and hosting. By making this strategic shift to an enterprise level CMS platform, the bank aimed to enhance its digital capabilities, improve client experience, and drive operational efficiency.

Implementation 

Capitec were not only looking for a world-class technological solution but also a strategic partner to assist and enable its digital transformation. Responsive Digital partnered with Capitec in 2019 to deliver a robust implementation within tight timelines.

Responsive and Capitec collaborated to enhance the client experience by leveraging future-proof technology. The partnership aimed to improve Capitec’s digital maturity, enabling data-driven decision-making and achieving better results from marketing campaigns. The ultimate goal was to increase conversions and enhance client experiences while also ensuring the bank remained competitive and sustainable in the long term. 

Through their joint efforts, Responsive and Capitec successfully delivered an intuitive and well-built solution that improved service delivery, fostered brand loyalty, expanded client reach, and delighted clients.

Solution

Capitec has experienced significant benefits since implementing Optimizely's CMS and partnering with Responsive. 

The bank has achieved remarkable platform uptime, maintaining nearly 100% availability since its inception. This enhanced reliability has re-instilled its clients' trust and ensured uninterrupted access to banking services.

The stability of the platform has facilitated the development and optimization of requested features, allowing Capitec to better meet client needs. The improved content management capabilities have empowered teams to easily update content and explore tools like Optimizely’s Web Experimentation A/B testing platform and personalization, enabling more engaging and tailored experiences for users.

With simplified platform maintenance, the bank's teams can now shift their focus from website maintenance and upkeep to driving new developments and delivering innovative solutions. This increased efficiency has accelerated Capitec's go-to-market strategies, enabling faster and more streamlined marketing campaigns. Content can now be published in minutes rather than days by all business areas. Additionally, the app and integrations directory have facilitated swift linking and delivery of features, promoting agile development cycles and enabling effective testing and optimization.

Furthermore, the implementation of enhanced security measures and processes has strengthened the bank's defenses against internal and external vulnerabilities, ensuring the protection of sensitive client data. Optimizely’s CMS, built on .NET and Azure, allows Capitec’s internal teams to easily add additional security measures to combat potential external threats and improve internal processes like profile management.

Capitec has had a positive experience utilizing various features of Optimizely's digital experience platform. The Search & Navigation feature has been valuable in delivering tailored search results to users, particularly for new business units, enabling efficient information retrieval. Visitor Groups have allowed the bank to experiment with customized content and blog suggestions based on defined user groups, enhancing engagement. The out of the box A/B testing feature has been instrumental in finding a balance between client preferences and business requirements by testing and delivering preferred solutions.

Among the impactful features, the drag and drop functionality of Authoring and Layout has provided content managers with seamless and intuitive ways to experiment and create content. Cloud functionality, facilitated by Optimizely and Azure cloud hosting, has supported Capitec’s digital transformation by offering scalability for their growing client base. Forms & Surveys have played a significant role in capturing client leads and integrating them seamlessly into the CRM through Optimizely connectors. The low/no code interface has made tasks and editing straightforward, even for users without coding experience, empowering content managers and developers alike.  

Optimizely’s platform, Capitec’s innovative technological outlook and Responsive’s strategic guidance have transformed the bank’s website into a world class digital experience. Capitec’s metrics have improved dramatically since 2019, as seen below:

Increase in traffic:

•  5.74% increase in Organic search
•  33.18% increase in Users
•  40.35% in New Users
•  25% increase in pages views
•  29.21 increase in Sessions

Overall performance:

•  21% increase in overall GTMetrix score from Sep ‘19 to Sep ‘22 (77% to 98%)
• Faster page load time - 75% decrease in load speed
  19/09/2019 C (4.0ms) - 22/09/2022 A (969ms) 

Integrations

Capitec leverages Optimizely's CMS to integrate with various tools, enhancing their operational efficiency, client experience, and security

1. Optimized Client Experiences with Salesforce CRM:
   Capitec's integration of Optimizely with Salesforce CRM has optimized client experiences and streamlined marketing efforts. Data synchronization ensures accurate client information, saving time and costs by eliminating manual data entry. Improved lead nurturing, data-driven marketing campaigns, and ROI tracking contribute to better conversions.
2. Enhanced Security and User Experience with AAD SSO:
   Prioritizing security, Capitec leverages Azure Active Directory (AAD) Single Sign-On (SSO) for simplified access to Optimizely CMS. Users enjoy seamless login using existing AAD credentials, supported by multi-factor authentication and conditional access policies. AAD's role as a central user identity repository enhances user management and offers a comprehensive audit trail for compliance.
3. Efficient Email Communication with SendGrid Integration:
   SendGrid integration with Optimizely’s DXP strengthens Capitec's email campaigns and notifications. Task notifications are effectively managed, enhancing communication with clients and content managers.
4. Seamless Cloud-to-On-Premises Integration:
   Capitec utilizes Optimizely's capabilities for secure cloud-to-on-premises integration, driven by critical considerations. Strong security measures, robust network connectivity, data privacy, compliance adherence, effective monitoring, and change management contribute to a secure and efficient hybrid setup.

Conclusion

Overall, Capitec has reaped the benefits of Optimizely's CMS through improved platform performance, content management efficiency, accelerated development and delivery, enhanced security, and the ability to optimize user experiences for sustained growth and client satisfaction.

In the next 18 months, Capitec aims to hone in on localisation and build out specific journeys for different clients’ life stages or paths.

The team will continue to optimize and personalize Capitec’s retail experience as well as delivering the best digital experience for its retail and business banking clients.