This week on the podcast, Brent sits down with Laura Merling, Chief Transformation and Operations Officer at Arvest Bank. They start the discussion with a review of Laura's background leading transformations at companies like Ford, AT&T and Google. Laura then goes on to share the multi-year process underway to transform Arvest Bank into a technology-enabled community bank of the future. Laura outlines her 90-day framework for transformation, focusing on understanding customers, assessing technology and defining metrics. She highlights successes like the me at Arvest program and cloud migration. Gain insight into Arvest's new Centers of Excellence and how customer-centric innovation is driving momentum in the evolving financial services industry.
Podcast Episode
Episode Transcript
Laura Merling 0:00
Because if you're gonna change how we approach our customers and we're going to start
with this customer centric versus product we're not going to lead with do you need
a credit card? We're gonna lead with how can we help you? You know, what do you need
to grow your business or what do you need to help you with your your personal life?
Brent Williams 0:18
Welcome to the be epic podcast, brought to you by the Sam M. Walton College of Business
at the University of Arkansas. I'm your host Brent Williams. Together, we'll explore
the dynamic landscape of business and uncover the strategies, insights and stories
that drive business today. Well, today I have with me Laura Merling. Laura is the
Chief Transformation and Operations Officer at Arvest Bank. Laura, thanks for joining
me today.
Laura Merling 0:46
Oh, thank you for the invitation. I was looking forward to it.
Brent Williams 0:49
Me too. I'm looking forward to this conversation. You and I have gotten to know each
other over the last year or so and you've been in this role at Arvest now for about
18 months?
Laura Merling 0:59
Ah it'll to be two years next month. Okay. Well, I know. It does. It went by really,
really fast. That must mean I'm enjoying it.
Brent Williams 1:10
That's right. That's right. Well, you know, I think when you joined Arvest really
it sounded like the charge was to lead a multi year large scale, transformation process,
digital transformation process some degree, I assume. But maybe before we get into
before we get into Arvest and transformation, tell us a little bit about you. Your
background is pretty cool. I mean, you've got I know Ford, AT&T, Google, now financial
services. Tell us about that journey.
Laura Merling 1:43
Oh, it's a it's a long and sorted journey. It was definitely a windy road meeting,
you know, part of is taking advantage of opportunities that come that came along the
way. But it's leveraging knowledge and experience of what I learned in the previous
role. And so it was taking, hey, I've learned XYZ at one company, how do I now take
and apply that to that one that was probably a little bit of a stretch was doing,
you know, AT&T autonomous vehicles, however, but when you think so AT&T is connectivity,
right? And so then when you think well, connected cars are kind of the foundation
for autonomous vehicles. And then where's the revenue really coming from in self driving
cars? It's not really the car because it's kind of expensive, the revenue is actually
in the services that surround it and the digital capabilities. So it's taking what
you know, and say, Well, how can I apply that to another industry?
Brent Williams 2:47
That makes sense.
Laura Merling 2:48
I think I've oversimplified it, but that's no, it's all very accidental. It was definitely
not planned that.
Brent Williams 2:54
Most of our journeys aren't, right? But it looks like you've had a lot of fun, like
in a lot of varied experiences, which, you know, now in financial services at Arvest
Bank. I assume all of those experiences have prepared you pretty well for this role.
Laura Merling 3:13
Yes, I think so. There's, you know, there's always things you the reason, you also
do it is there are the things you want to learn and can learn by going into into a
new industry. And that's what's exciting about it. I think I'm a, I'm a continuous
learner. And it's just something I like to do. But I mean, the things along along
the way that you learn, you know, it was interesting, I looked back AT&T was 2012.
And at the time, I thought AT&T was really behind digitally, like, hey, you're trying
to do what online? And what do you mean, your customers can't do, you know, XYZ online.
And I looked back now, and I'm like, oh, they were actually pretty advanced, in terms
of level of maturity. And the things that that I learned there was the foundation,
you know, just before ATT was Alcatel Lucent, which was another, they provided telecom
infrastructure to AT&T. And those two were kind of my first foray out of being in
the software industry. And so going from software to the customer side, and now being
on the customer side, saying how do you apply all these great things? All these great
technologies, how do you actually make them useful inside of a corporation? And so
for me, that was that was kind of the exciting thing is taking what I had learned
in a software world and bringing it to an end customer, and then taking that on my
journey forward. So AT&T, my biggest probably takeaway was, how to do metrics around
one it was a large scale transformation as well. Now their target was, you know, 2020
being 80% digital, so everything that you do with the company, every step every process
in the company being digital um, and so a multi year journey, how do you approach
it? What are the steps you take? And then also how do you measure outcomes that you
measure success. AT&T, I can tell you down to the button, you clicked on a screen,
how much money we saved, to every phone call that was made and how much money it costs.
So it was really measured at a detailed level, which was an interesting way to understand
metrics and outcomes and how you want to, you want to look at transformation, which
I then brought to the next place, which was Ford Motor Company.
Brent Williams 5:35
And I assume you've sort of continued to refine that, and I don't want to get into
that process on that by pillars. Maybe maybe first a little bit about our best bank.
So living in Northwest Arkansas, of course, I'm pretty familiar with Arvest Bank.
And, you know, I've heard you refer to Arvest Bank as seeking to be a community bank
of the future, maybe kind of just tell us a little bit about Arvest where Arvest is
going the footprint and those kinds of things.
Laura Merling 6:06
So started out as a community bank, it's always been a community bank started about
60 years ago, by Sam Walton. And I think what's interesting is, so we don't want to
it's not that we we didn't, we never went away from being a community bank. But we
want to continue to be a community bank in a digital world, which I think is a an
interesting you know you think about community, where does community happen? Does
it happen in the neighborhood square? Or does it happen online? And if they find who
you are, and what you're doing the answer is, yes. Right? It's both. And so, you know,
what does that transformation mean for us? So we're in we're about a mid sized bank.
So we like to be called a community bank, because we're focused on on serving the
community. But if you talk to the regulators, we're a midsize bank, okay.
Brent Williams 6:56
And that's usually how regulators gonna make that determination.
Laura Merling 6:59
Exactly, it's based on on asset size. And so but, we're in four states. So we have
Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas as our kind of four state footprint. Within
those we aren't across the whole state, we're in a subset of those states. But definitely
serve those states. We also have some things that we do that are nationwide. So we
have a mortgage, we do mortgage servicing, that's nationwide, we have another service
that we do, which is automotive lending, that is beyond the four state so we have
a new things that we do that stretch beyond the four state footprint, and those are
all done digitally already today.
Brent Williams 7:43
Well, I noticed, you know, speaking of Arvest as seeking to serve the community, I
noticed not too long ago, an announcement about maybe different like industries or
verticals, if you will, within a community that you're really focused on serving or
serving maybe more holistically.
Laura Merling 8:01
Yeah. So when we think about a community bank, and what does it mean to be a community
bank in the future? We started by saying, well, what is a community bank today? Right?
It's about relationships. And so we don't want to lose the relationship piece of being
a community bank. It's really at the core of who Arvest is, and has always been and
wants to continue to be. And so then we'd said, if we take that as the foundation,
or the or the, the individuals, the companies and the nonprofits that serve the community,
and how do we think about that. So when you start to think you think it's everything
from skilled trade, to agriculture, to health care. And so what we did is we started
with two of those entities and said, okay, we're gonna take healthcare and agriculture,
we have a lot of experience in serving those communities and as companies, and what
can we do to bring more value to them? How can we help them succeed in the community,
both as a business, but their employees that can make up the community? And so it
was really starting with those two. What are the services that we can provide to them,
and make sure that we get more focused in the areas of value that we bring to them
as a as a bank. We don't want to just be a bank, we want to be a partner. And what
does that mean to be a partner?
Brent Williams 9:29
And I guess that means refract refining products and services, building new products,
integrating products is it all the above?
Laura Merling 9:37
It's all of the above. So it's understanding you know, so in our in our footprint,
where we are some of the key areas that we serve are row crop, right beef cattle and
then our side cow calf operations, and poultry. And so when you think about that,
well wouldn't each of those customers in our market need you know row crop is very
different from poultry in terms of what they need to operate and run their business
and how they might want a partnership and what that means. On the healthcare side,
you have small physicians offices, you know, if I'm one or two, you know, physician
office, I might need CFO in a box right?
Brent Williams 10:28
Yeah,
Laura Merling 10:29
If I'm row crop, I might need a leasing platform. Because I might lease my land out.
So it's really figuring out what it is, and then where do we add value to that partnership?
Or to that relationship?
Brent Williams 10:44
Okay, that makes that total sense.
Laura Merling 10:45
Does that help?
Brent Williams 10:46
It does. And I just when I saw it and heard about it, I thought it made so much sense,
you know, to focus on those areas that really are pillars of the communities that
we all live in I guess.
Laura Merling 10:58
And those are, those are centers of excellence. So what we're doing with those is
they will partner with each of the bank markets. So rather than having everybody have
to hire experts, Now some will we still want experts where it makes sense. But how
do they help with policies, process products, what are all the things that they can
do to help bring, so they're gonna have industry expertise, themselves, and we have
some interesting, so the the gentleman that we just hired to run healthcare also happens
to own a farm, a fifth generation family farm. So but then so does the person that
runs our food value chain also is on the seventh generation family farm. So we've
actually found it's been an interesting dynamic between the two of them, and what
what they can bring together to help serve our customers.
Well, so you've been with Arvest almost two years, and hired to lead transformation. So maybe kind of walk me back over the last couple of years as you as you stepped in this industry as you stepped into Arvest. And as soon as you stepped into this community, like what are some of the other things in that learning process that stand out?
Oh, there's so many. One was just Arvest itself is a unique company. And it's, it's interesting, because everybody will say that during the interview process, we have amazing people here, we have normally nice people. I have to say, no offense to all the other places that I've worked, they have great people, but Arvest, the folks, people are just really nice. They are very people oriented people. It's just a really fun welcoming environment. And everybody's there to try to help each other. And it just is a I've really enjoyed that. So that stood out just in the company. One of the things that that I learned is I've done a lot of different industries that are all regulated, right? So the difference is that I've learned with financial services is regulatory is part of what you do day to day and ingrained and embedded in everything that you do, whether it be deposits or lending. So whether we're giving you a bank account, a checking and savings account, or whether we're giving you a commercial loan, it's in every part of what we do. And that was to me for an interesting learning to think about, okay, how do we, when I think about transformation, I never had people from the chief risk officer's office sitting in every meeting, we now have that person sitting in every meeting, we have someone from risk and compliance, who sits in every one of our discussions about our product roadmap, our technology roadmap, what we're thinking about doing from a transformation, like setting up the Centers of Excellence they're in all of those discussions. So that's one learning. And one, one change. I don't know if that's the type of learning you're looking for.
Yeah. No, it's just an interesting, I guess, nuance to the industry as you're stepping in to the transformation. And I also wonder, like, you know, alright, so day one of a job like that, you know, how do you start thinking about the process because it is very much about a process.
It, it is about a process. So one is just understanding and learning the landscape of the bank.
Brent Williams 14:25
Okay.
Laura Merling 14:27
What does it do? You know what I've you know all the the services that Arvest has
to offer, there's a lot of them. So how do you understand them? Not just who runs
them, but but how does, how the customers use them? How do they think about them?
What are the different levers that we use in the bank, to run the bank? Just really
kind of understanding who makes up the bank understanding the different markets that
we're in because every market has different needs. Understanding right what each of
the markets serves and what our market looks like. That's just foundational. And that's
kind of throughout everything that you do. But back to one of the things that I kind
of took away from my work at AT&T was setting up a framework for how I would think
about transformation. What did I learn there? How do I think about taking that forward?
And it's, it's crazy, but it's a 90 day framework. And that framework starts with,
who do we want to be when we grow up?
Brent Williams 15:30
Okay.
Laura Merling 15:31
You have to figure it out. And you can't solve that in 90 days.
Brent Williams 15:34
And these are sort of the questions you're asking yourself?
Laura Merling 15:36
These are the questions.
Brent Williams 15:37
Okay.
Laura Merling 15:37
Yeah. So you have to understand who we are, to know where we where you want to go.
How do you leverage, there's a great, I got an opportunity to work with someone at
Ford that that helped me refine this a little bit. And his name is Roger Martin. And
he wrote a book called, well, how to win is what it's called, but it's where they
how to win, I got a chance to work with Roger Martin. Really amazing. Yes, it was
very cool. really pushed, how do you how do you think about framing it? But it's,
it's where do you want to go as a business is along, though where to play? how to
win kind of framework and construct that takes time to do that. So it's where do you
want to be as a business? The second one is understanding the customer base. So five
pillars, pillar two is Do you know who your customer is? And in that, do you really
know who your customer is? We always talk about it. But the thing that I learned at
Ford, which was really interesting was, you know, we were building autonomous vehicles.
And we were looking at what what would they get used for? Will you use it to move
people? Or will you use it to move goods, and we would probably use it to move both.
But we were looking at using it to move goods. One of the things that was really interesting
was, there's a big difference between the way a customer looks at getting a package
delivered to them. And the way that the company doing the delivery looks at delivering
the package. So I think we all know that because we've gotten the box all crumpled
up at our doorstep.
Brent Williams 17:06
Yeah,
Laura Merling 17:07
But but it's, you know, if you're the customer, you're thinking, Am I do I want it
today? Or do I want to tomorrow? Do I want it delivered to me? Or do I want it delivered
to my doorstep? Am I am I going to be home? Am I going to be away? Like? Where all
those things? If you are the company delivering it, you're thinking I? Is it? Does
it need to be refrigerated? Or does it not? Is this long haul or local? Like, am I
going across country? Or am I going down the street. So very different in terms of
how we all think about it. And so what happens is most companies tend to think of
it from their view of how they need to get the package to you, versus how you how
you want to receive the package. And if you can flip it and think about it from the
lens of how they want to receive the package. You can redesign what it is that you're
doing and make it more customer first and customer friendly.
Brent Williams 18:07
I assume you know, when you join an organization, you know we've been if I've been
in an organization for 15 or 20 years, I think I know who my customer is. But I'm
sure there's always surprises for the organization, as you really start to dig in,
how do you bring a fresh look to a company on who their customer is?
Laura Merling 18:29
Well, the easy part is the fact that you don't know the industry.
Brent Williams 18:33
So a fresh set of eyes,
Laura Merling 18:34
A fresh set of eyes is one good way. A lot of people will do NPS net promoter score,
which is do you like me? Will you recommend me? Yeah, we did a vulnerability study,
which is completely the opposite. What are the rocks of your shoes? What are the things
that are going to drive you away from us like what do been like about what we do?
So we did that? A little bit that. But it's also going out and talking to customers
and understanding who they are so standing in the lobby of a branch and talking to
customers or in asking them questions. And it's really figuring out who they are from
that perspective. And what are they trying to do? You know, it's it's kind of stepping
back and looking at it through just a different lens of looking at it as who you are
as a person not what financial services do you meet? If we look at it through the
Do you need a loan? Do you need a credit card? That's not helping you when you're
who you are, how you want to live, how you want to run your business. I think it's
that taking that perspective will really change the answers that you get for what
you might offer.
Absolutely that customer centric perspective works no matter what the industry is.
It does, it does.
Brent Williams 19:47
So customer understanding the customer's pillar two, yep, how about three?
Laura Merling 19:51
So pillar three was probably the I started within the first 30 days, just because
it takes a while which pillar three is really doing a technology assessment. So the
transformation that Arvest hired me to do. While some of that is technology, it's
really about transforming the bank, how do we make sure we're set up for where, you
know, the world changed during COVID? That won't start to change before COVID and
continues to change? And it's it's technology is everywhere, right? Think about how
fast people started using Gen AI?
Brent Williams 20:27
Yeah,
Laura Merling 20:27
it went from zero to 100 million users in two months, two months. That's pretty fast
adoption of a technology. And so for us, you know, it's where do we want to be as
a bank? And how do we still be a community bank, that's technology enabled. And so
pillar three is technology assessment. So it was under skin, understanding the landscape
of everything that we have at the bank all the underlying technology capabilities,
application systems. And that takes a while. And as you might imagine, in any business,
any institution that's been around for more than a year, you have legacy technology,
I think I talked about it at another conference was the minute you implement the technology,
its legacy. And so it's making sure that you're thinking about how you construct things
for the future. So you want to know what you have to know where you need to go. And
that technology assessment is also what data do we have? And what data can we get
out of that technology? You know, what, what data can we get from the systems that
we have? And how do we, how we think about that data? Do you really is exhaust from
the systems that you use, I hate to say that, but it's an exhaust from the applications
and services that that our customers use and our associates to use. And it's important
to understand both the technology and where it is, but also to understand the data
and what's available, because the best way to serve the customer is to know what they're
using and not using because you don't want to continue to offer things that are valuable.
Or if like, simple things are, this can sound really crazy. But our mobile check deposit
for a while people were having a challenge with mobile check deposit. Well, if we
don't look at what we're having a challenge with, you don't know that it was actually
we were just giving them an error saying we couldn't deposit it, we weren't giving
them an error saying well, you didn't sign the check. It was really just depends on
the check, right? So it's making sure that you're being very specific about what the
problem is. But you have to know what data you can and what you have access to and
not access to, to be able to improve customer service.
Brent Williams 22:42
All right, step four.
Laura Merling 22:44
So step four is defining looking at and metrics. Now Step Four kind of needs to go
hand in hand with customer or technology. And then where you want to go kind of step
four really is what metrics can you use to define success? And there's longer term
metrics, but there's short term metrics. So what we did was we took the vulnerability
study that we did, where are the pain points and rocks in the shoes? And how could
we set up some quick wins to demonstrate metrics and outcomes? Hey, you know, by improving
self service for password reset, we can take 1000 calls a month out of the contact
center. Great, that's not just that's 1000 customers, we've made happier. And it's
also 1000 less calls to the contact center. So there's two ways to measure that. So
it's, it's it's things like that, that we wanted to be able to say, what are the metrics
that we can take in the short term? And then long term is we've put together our technology
roadmap, as well as our transformation roadmap, like, where do we want the business
to be? And how does that tie to technology, we now have big projects that we're working
on, that I can tell you over a five year period, here's the investment we're going
to make. And here's the outcomes we expect each year either the reduction in cost
that we take out of the bank, or increased potential revenue. And so we look at both
sides of that coin for the investments that we're making.
Brent Williams 24:27
Okay. And that's sort of your final piece to your framework.
Laura Merling 24:30
And then the last piece of the framework is actually in governance. So metrics is
kind of four. And that's it piece is really governance and governance is really, governance
is really about how do we make sure that we're holding each other accountable for
all the things that we're trying to do,
Brent Williams 24:53
Okay. And that's governance of the process.
Laura Merling 24:56
That's governance of the process. That's also it's a little bit of governance of things
happen, market dynamics change, market dynamics changed earlier this year in banking.
Right? We had some changes happen in the banking sector. And so you have to be prepared
to adjust for those dynamics for what you do as part of your strategy, right. So while
we created a multi year roadmap, you have to make sure that you've put enough you're
putting governance that you're not spending dollars on something that right now doesn't
make sense. Maybe you do come back to it again next year. Yes, it's on your long term
journey. But you need to step out of that journey to do something else right now.
And so that's, that's what that governance is, it's, it's to look holistically at
your roadmap, and say, what are you doing? And are you still prioritizing what you
should be?
Brent Williams 25:50
I think the thing that sort of the reason why I wanted to go through that framework
is, you know, I think it's just a simple way to think about it, that's right to think
about it, I assume it's allowed you to galvanize your team around it, and you can
communicate it easily. And it's not. It doesn't only work in financial services, it
works in in any industry.
Laura Merling 26:12
It works in any industry. And the one thing that people always go, but you forgot
people, like well, I didn't really forget the associates what what we've what we've
done is we kind of see people as kind of overarching
Brent Williams 26:27
Okay
Laura Merling 26:27
across those, that process, we're methodically thinking about in the Arvest program
and what that means to our associates on the people side. And along with that comes
process changes. So we found out a whole organizational change management team. And
that organizational change management team is right there alone with us through every
step of the way, with our associates, and like the technology team to say here's what
we do. It's complicated.
Brent Williams 26:55
Yeah, it is complicated,
Laura Merling 26:56
but it's not yet.
Brent Williams 26:57
As you explained it. It. I think, I don't know if I use the word simple, simple to
understand. Complicated to probably execute on and, you know, and one thing I just
wanted to mention is, you know, we laid it out as a framework of five steps. But those
aren't five linear steps, right?
Laura Merling 27:18
Their definitely not linear.
Brent Williams 27:21
That's one thing that probably adds some of the complexity.
Laura Merling 27:24
It does, well, I know they're not linear, and they're not one time, right, you have
to continually be looking at all of those. Now, you don't want to continually change
your goalposts of what you're what you want your business to be in five to 10 years
when you grow up, because you don't wanna keep changing the goalposts. But it's not
a direct line. It's going to be zigs and zags, again, based upon things that happened
in the market. Who would have known COVID, who would have known Silicon Valley bank
, who would have known, right, just so so things have market dynamics happen that
you have to pay attention to.
Brent Williams 27:56
Well, as you I guess I'll kind of ask you a two pronged question here. As you look
back over the last couple of years, what's maybe the thing that you're most proud
of thus far, and then anything as you're looking forward, that really, really excites
you?
Laura Merling 28:13
The probably one of the main things was the me at Arvest program, because we didn't
have have that right and we partnered with our people team, our HR team too and a
third party helped us because without that, no, people would join the company, and
they've had different experiences at other companies. So people have been at Arvest
for a long time, but but they also have come at different stages of their career.
And those experiences might lead them to believe like we had a few of our associates
who were terrified of moving to the cloud. And because they were at another company
that when they moved to the cloud, they outsourced all of it. And so they lost their
job. So when we said we were moving to the cloud, they're like, oh, I'm losing my
job right now. No, no, no, no. We, we need you here, we want to, we want to teach
you how to do this. And so me setting up me at Arvest framework and foundation and
getting that in place. And it it wasn't easy. It took us almost a full year for people
to believe that we were really not going to let we were focused on their growth on
their success alongside of what we were doing. So that's probably one because now
it's spreading across the rest of the bank. Right. It takes time to roll it out. But
that for me is probably one thing that I'm most excited about what we've been able
to put in place. In terms of the transformation on the technology side. We are on
track. It's been pretty fast. We've we've made four pivots if you ask my head of infrastructure,
he'll tell you we've made four pivots on our migration to cloud over the last year,
we are not the only one, you'd have to. I think I just if I could tell everybody just,
if you think you're the only one, you're not go ask five other companies, they've
made four pivots as well. So if you're trying to move to cloud, but over the course
of that year, not only have people learned it, and done side by side with partners,
but we will be wealthy out of wonderful data center, with almost from a year beginning
to end to be in Google Cloud, with one of our data centers. That's pretty good. That's
pretty good clip.
Brent Williams 30:39
Yes it is.
Laura Merling 30:41
By anybody's standards,
Brent Williams 30:42
Yeah.
Laura Merling 30:42
That's a fast pace. So I think, I think the team and what they were able to do there,
there's, I mean, there's so many, I mean, we've had so many between the quick wins
that we did with the contact center and making some adjustments there. To last year
we went, we have two things. Last year and nine months, we went from building our
own new core banking platform to delivering the ability to do equipment finance, as
a loan product on a new core banking platform that we built from the ground up. Yesterday,
we launched our loan origination system for all commercial lending. So the other one
was loan servicing, this is loan origination. For me, some portion of our commercial
loans, and the team built that from the ground up and we did it in partnership with
it, we changed the operating model. So the I mean, there's so many wins, we we changed
the operating model of how we built software and for, for Arvest, for us, the lenders,
the loan assistance, customers, all gave input to what we built and how we built it.
And every two weeks, we had a group of associates that got to see what we call a sprint,
right. So we follow an Agile process. And every two weeks we demonstrate what we built,
we built this, look at it, built this, look at it, we even had our loan assistance,
and the lenders got to design what they needed. On the screens, like this is what
it needs to look like for us. And oh, by the way, we need a pizza trackers that everybody
that's working on the loan knows where it is when the customer calls, and oh, by the
way, the customer needs access to the pizza tracker, so they know where the loan is.
So I think all of those things add up, there's just so many of them. So many you can't
measure like measuring that partnership with our internal associates and customers
to define what that product looks like we had never done that. On that regular basis.
You don't have a way to measure that.
Brent Williams 30:42
Yeah.
Laura Merling 30:47
Other than hopefully they use the platform, right? That's the goal is it gets used,
because many products get implemented, and kind of forced usage, meaning this might
not be the best tool ever, but you're gonna go use it. Well, if you get to design
it, that really helps in terms of adoption, use and value that it brings.
Brent Williams 33:23
But what about as your anything just on the horizon, which is really exciting?
Laura Merling 33:29
Oh, so many things. We have a lot of big projects and programs on the docket for next
year, we have a continuation of this loan origination and loan servicing platform
for customers revamping our consumer platform. But what I'm really more excited about
right now is where are these centers of excellence? Right, they're new. And so I'm
really excited about what these centers of excellence can help bring to our customers.
What is the value? We've started in the, in the healthcare space, we've already started
and a customer advisory board. That is really, you know, we have one customer, she
is a she runs a unit inside a hospital and she's a practicing physician, but she also
is doing the hospital's transformation. And so the interesting part there is she wants
to learn from us what we're doing on our transformation. We want to learn from her
what we can help with the hospital or even hospital ways like what's what's the value
add? Where do we add benefit? So I think there's so much to be gained from those centers
of excellence. That I just I'm looking forward to what the outcomes are from from
they just started right and I'm looking forward to the outcomes from from those centers
of excellence.
Brent Williams 34:57
I think it will be exciting to see how those are additional value to customer's lives,
no doubt, well, maybe as we, as we conclude, I always ask it sort of similar question.
You know, at the Walton College, we've got somewhere between probably 8,500 and 9,000
students, so you know, that are a part of the business school. And so you know as
you just kind of think about what you've learned throughout all of your career journey.
And you think about, if you could just give one piece of advice to to a student, what
is it?
Laura Merling 35:32
I'm gonna, I'm gonna steal a quote for somebody. So I, there was a quote from a former
president that said, just do stuff. I'm gonna say, just try stuff. If people ask you
just try it. You know, I, when they asked me when Ford asked me to do autonomous vehicles,
I was like, you're kidding me? Right? I know nothing about them. And I'm like, that's
okay. You get connectivity, you can figure that. So So you just have to put yourself
out there. Don't be afraid to try thing I guess is really what I would say like if
if opportunities come your way. You don't know if you can do it unless you try it.
So I mean, I still stay involved in the autonomous vehicle community. Because I still
love that, right? It's, it's based on passion. And I still talk to all my friends
at AT&T. And actually, we're thinking about how we use some of that technology to
do could you go stand up a pop up branch with you know, an independent network that
didn't need hardwired connectivity? Like you can take things with you as a nugget.
Just don't be afraid. Just try whatever comes your way.
Brent Williams 36:21
Love it. Well, Laura, thank you for joining me today. It's been pleasure to get to
know you. And it was a pleasure today get to learn about the transformation journey
at Arvest and the way you approach it, thank you.
Laura Merling 36:58
Thank you. Thanks for the invitation.
Brent Williams 37:01
On behalf of the Walton College thank you for joining us for this captivating conversation.
To stay connected and never miss an episode. Simply search for be epic on your preferred
podcast service.
Brent D. Williams is the Dean of the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas.
With a deep commitment to fostering excellence in business education and thought leadership,
Dr. Williams brings a wealth of experience to his role, shaping the future of the
college and its impact on students and the business community.
