An ecosystem for businesses

“A bank is not just about management of accounts, financial transactions and loans. We want customers to come to us and receive a comprehensive service, business assistance,” Serhii Pavlenko, Senior Manager for Development of Business Banking at Raiffeisen Bank Aval, says. “That’s why we are developing an ecosystem geared to meet the needs of small and micro businesses.”

An ecosystem is a community of biotic and abiotic components linked together through energy flows, Wikipedia explains. This term is applied not just when it comes to nature but also in business. Raiffeisen Bank Aval is building an own ecosystem for businesses and companies: a whole complex of various nonbanking services, partnership programs and comprehensive solutions that meet a wide range of business needs. In this ecosystem, its “components” interact with each other and benefit each other.

In order to take advantage of all services and functions available in our ecosystem, you must be a customer of Raiffeisen Bank Aval (have a current account opened under Business Start, Business Classic, Business Comfort or Business Elit+ service package) and sign up for Raiffeisen Business chat bot.

What can a business customer of Raiffeisen Bank Aval get using this ecosystem?

Firstly, a comprehensive and very voluminous Business Concierge service, which is still unique and not offered by other banks. As part of this service, our Bank’s business customers can receive free accounting and legal consultations and use interpreter’s, designer’s and courier’s services. In addition to handling business matters, Business Concierge service provides an assistant ready to take care of customer’s personal requests 24/7: for example, organize a business lunch with partners, find tickets, book a hotel room, order flowers, and many more.

Secondly, options of the chat bot, where you can find not only detailed information about the services of our Bank but also learn about legislative innovations, read legal consultations on contemporary topics, receive access to business webinars and reminders about filing tax returns, and many more.

In the Bank’s ecosystem, a “routine” business procedure of filing tax returns is simplified to a few clicks: it can be done, free of charge, via the partner company’s Open Data Bot service.

Doing a background check on your existing and potential counterparties is also fast and simple using YouControl service, which is free for Raiffeisen Bank Aval customers. Using this service, our business customers can receive registration information about the counterparty, find out how long they have been in business, get a list of the legal entity’s founders and information about the existence of litigations and tax liens – all in just a few clicks.

Many entrepreneurs can take advantage of legal services from our partner company Augustum, which offers a substantial (20%) discount on its service fees for business customers of our Bank.

And the offers from our partners ISTAT, SendPulse, LOOQME, UniSender and Infobip would be more suitable for companies which place emphasis upon sales and services.

ISTAT is an analytics system that helps gather information, put in order and analyze communication channels between a business and their customers. This partner offers a 20-30% discount on its service for business customers. Using this service, businesses can monitor communications with their clientele: phone calls, communication in messengers, online chats and e-mail. This service allows to digitalize all gathered data, show in it convenient reports and send a conversion to Google Analytics and statistics to CRM.

With the SendPulse service, businesses can use e-mail newsletters, web push-notices, and chat bots for Facebook Messenger or Telegram for communication with their clientele and to increase their sales turnover.

LOOQMЕ is a service that monitors mentions in mass and social media. An analysis of effectiveness can help improve PR and marketing campaigns.

UniSender service enables customers to set up e-mail messaging and e-mail marketing, and to attend training courses from an e-mail marketing school.

Infobip is a service that builds an omni-channel contact center and chat bots.

The ecosystem’s nonfinancial services include My Business, an online business magazine containing practical publications and publications addressing contemporary matters.

“We launched discounts from our partners only in July, so it’s still too soon to talk about results, because this program is only taking off. As for other services, they are very popular among our customers. The Open Data Bot service enjoys significant demand when sole proprietorships are required to file their tax returns. YouControl service is used by businesses all the time, even in the middle of the night and on weekends,” Serhii Pavlenko talks about the feedback from entrepreneurs.

Presently, Raiffeisen Bank Aval’s ecosystem is in the development phase. “We will continue to fill our ecosystem with various services and offers from our partners. For example, we are currently working on several other services: website constructor and the possibility to launch online services and keep online financial accounting. In addition, we are preparing a free training video course “Online marketing for businesses”, which will help our customers learn about the nuances of online sales, about creation and online promotion of their website or online store. Soon, our chat bot will also enable users to create invoices payable by a bankcard, which will allow our business customers to receive online payments even without creating an own website. It will be especially useful for customers that make online sales via social media,” Serhii Pavlenko said.

Can entrepreneurs become a part of this ecosystem? Definitely yes! As of today, all partners of this project are small businesses. Raiffeisen Bank Aval is open to suggestions, and aims at enlarging the partnership platform.

Speaking about priorities in selecting partners, Serhii Pavlenko said that their Bank has no serious limitations in the areas of the ecosystem’s development. The most important thing is for a partner to be able to provide their services to all customers regardless of their geographical location. For example, consulting in Odesa only or tax consultations for clients in Kyiv is not quite an appropriate format. For these services are of interest for entrepreneurs everywhere in the country and are needed for the project. And of course, our future partners are the companies whose services are of use for a wide range of businesses, helping them grow and become more efficient, our interlocutor stressed.