‘Our Customers’ Needs Changed Quickly’

CECILIA MAO IS the global chief product officer at Equifax — charged with supporting corporate strategy through new product innovation. Her team builds solutions that help organizations maximize efficiencies with data, analytics and technology services that matter most in today’s complex digital environment. 

Mao recently talked with Adam Gunther, senior vice president of global identity and fraud at Equifax, about the company’s transformation to the cloud and stronger positioning to better respond to shifting marketplace demands.

 

ADAM: Let’s start by talking about the Equifax digital transformation.

CECILIA: I joined Equifax in 2020, in the middle of the cloud transformation. The company made a historic $1.5 billion investment in creating a new cloud-native foundation for all of our data, platforms and services — making them more interoperable, faster and efficient. 

We are now exploring ways for this cloud-native approach to help us create more world-class safeguards in the areas of identity and fraud protection, along with robust business solutions to help organizations grow.

ADAM: COVID-19 changed the world, particularly for our customers [financial institutions, businesses, government agencies]. For example, it was the norm to go into a bank branch and show a physical ID for identity authentication. Yet, that was no longer an option during the health crisis. If Equifax had not been on the cloud, it would have been a challenge to help our clients through that. 

Although our customers’ needs changed quickly, we were able to quickly adapt and provide new solutions. From your perspective, how has the transformation manifested in products and better outcomes for our customers?

CECILIA: Yes, identity authentication and verification accelerated during the COVID pandemic. We were challenged to quickly replace in-person processes with digital infrastructure. Our customers were also required to change by reacting faster and reducing friction for their end consumers, all while identifying the next pattern that a fraudster may come up with.

In addition, many of our customers are going through their own transformation journeys, so it was important to meet their needs during this transition. We created a solid template through our cloud transformation to scale. We’re partnering to make processes more secure while we develop new products and applications, keeping data protected, and being consumers of our own identity and fraud protection products. 

ADAM: I completely agree. We must continue creating value. On the Identity and Fraud team, we've seen that manifest itself in two ways: integration and orchestration. On integration, we talked with our clients who are trying to deal with multiple data sources, multiple signals. That’s the identity and fraud component.

Then there's the actual transaction itself, whether it's a new account opening, securing a payment, whatever it is. Again, leveraging what we've been able to do in the cloud to make that integration easier is helping orchestrate that whole decisioning flow and workflow. 

Let’s shift a bit to corporate culture. Talk about its role in creating customer success.  

CECILIA: When we talk about being a technology company, a cloud-native company, a product company — those focus areas are not mutually exclusive or siloed. Our culture shift impacts our evolution and to a large degree enables it. It impacts how we collaborate and align, changes how we become better partners with each other and with businesses.  

Our culture shift encompasses a change in the overall company mindset in every country we operate. It creates a common language so we can aim for the same outcomes. So, regardless if you're sitting in Security or Product or Technology, you have the same goals and outcomes for customer success across the board.