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Digital Experience Center helps Raiffeisenbank staff, community expand tech competency

July 27, 2017

Germany's Raiffeisenbank Straubing eG and NCR Corp. have collaborated to create the bank's new Digital Experience Center, which recently had its grand opening.

The center is based on NCR's Innovation Experience Room, which was developed as a tool to enable financial institutions to build and strengthen the digital competencies of customers and staff.

The room can be equipped with state-of-the art technologies ranging from virtual reality headsets, 3D printers, drones and robots to examples of big data or Internet of Things applications and nanotechnologies. NCR has already created similar Innovation Experience Rooms with two other banks in Germany.

The Digital Experience Center of Raiffeisenbank Straubing eG is primarily run by four employees who were selected as promoters of digitization in a series of workshops. The bank plans to engage local communities by opening the center for schools, public organizations and regional businesses.

"Our innovation workshop can be used by banks in several different ways, but in essence, it all comes down to familiarizing the consumers, customers or employees with the use of the new technologies through fun, playful interaction," NCR Innovation Evangelist Ralf Kluth said in the release. "We want to turn fear into curiosity and reluctance into a thirst for innovation that spurs new business ideas."

"Only those who have no faith in the future cling to the past," Raiffeisenbank Chairman Rainer Haas said. "Our goal as the management board of the bank is to provide young innovators in our bank with the right instruments to shape change and give them the necessary freedom to actually make it happen."