Capital One Tops InformationWeek Ranking of the Most Innovative Companies Using Business Technology
by Capital One CIO Rob Alexander
I’m thrilled that Capital One was named the #1 most innovative company using business technology on the InformationWeek Elite 100 ranking.
This recognition is a tremendous honor and a testament to amazingly talented team of designers, engineers, data scientists, and product managers, who apply their talent, expertise, and passion to innovate in an industry ripe for change. I am amazed by the energy and creativity, the fast pace and the thoughtfulness, and the humanity that every member of our team pours into their work.
To help them be great, we’ve created a workplace that empowers our associates to be themselves and contribute from day one. We use the latest collaboration tools and practice iterative design and continuous deployment to quickly try out new ideas and learn as we go.
Because our focus is on people and their relationship with money, we’re always thinking about how we can help them realize the financial future they see for themselves. We start with modern design principles that help us understand our customers — their hopes, fears, and beliefs as it relates to the role money plays in their lives.
And, we’re using modern technologies and tools to share information with each other, and have established ways for our teams to brainstorm, share ideas, and help each other iterate to design innovative solutions for our customers.
Our modern architecture and real-time software stack enables rapid innovation and real-time software development. We’re building reusable services and have embraced the Open Source movement and RESTful APIs. Our use of the Cloud enables fast, efficient development and deployment of software.
The power of this approach comes to life for our customers through products like Capital One Wallet. Built entirely native, first for iOS, then Android, we were first to have a wallet app with Android-tap-for-pay incorporated into the app. Designed to help customers track spending, Capital One Wallet flags potential fraudulent activity through real-time alerts. Unlike traditional banking apps, customers can see a running list of their transactions, which instantly displays enhanced information, such as the true merchant identity, location, contact information, and more. The app also gives customers the ability to instantly redeem rewards points for digital gift cards, apply them to past travel charged to their credit card, or to help pay off a statement credit.
We’ve also applied these innovative design, development, and delivery principles to build the new Capital One skill for Amazon’s Alexa-enabled devices. Capital One was the first company to give its customers the ability to interact with their financial information in real time through Alexa-enabled services, such as Amazon Echo, Amazon Tap, Echo Dot, and Fire TV.
Each of these projects involved deep collaboration between developers, designers and product managers. And all of it begins with a focus on human-centered design — really understanding the needs and experience of our customers and then leveraging technology to really reinvent that experience for them.
For us, everything we do begins with human needs and designing back from that, using the power of technology to simplify and connect people to their money in a way that is natural for them. Helping our customers succeed is one of our highest priorities, and doing so through great experiences with simple, easy-to-use tools is our focus.
To learn more about you can join us to reimagine banking, check out the Capital One Developers publication on Medium, follow us on Twitter at @CapitalOneDevEx, or check out open roles for engineers, data scientists, designers and more at jobs.capitalone.com.
For more on APIs, open source, community events, and developer culture at Capital One, visit DevExchange, our one-stop developer portal. https://developer.capitalone.com/
