Customer Centricity The customer-led operating model for SME banking.

Diagnose before you sell.

Every meeting begins with insight, not with a product pitch.

The Copilot pulls the Client-360 brief, surfaces the anomalies, proposes likely problem archetypes. The RM walks in already informed and runs a ten-minute Discovery Script that turns conversation into evidence.

This is the entry point of the customer-led operating model. It assumes the institution’s Lending Process, Risk Analytics, and Data Management are already running. The Client-360 brief only exists when those three foundations exist.

In this phase

From data trigger to evidence on the table.

Five activities. The 90-day cycle, or a single data trigger, becomes a structured client conversation that generates evidence the credit team will recognise.

01

Pull the Client-360

Financials, behavior, sector, recent notes, all in one brief

02

Spot the anomalies

Trends, deviations, RAF flags surfaced automatically

03

Match to archetype

JTBD pattern recognition with confidence ratings

04

Frame the questions

Five lenses, five questions, ten minutes

05

Hold the discovery

Conversation captured, archetype confirmed, action logged

The toolkit

Five signature tools.

Every Phase 1 instrument is template-driven, Copilot-supported, and pre-validated against the Risk Appetite Framework. The RM keeps judgement. The toolkit keeps consistency.

Tool 01

Client-360 Brief

Auto-assembled one-pager. Financial trends, account behavior, sector benchmarks, recent RM notes, RAF flags. Three anomalies surfaced. Two likely problem archetypes proposed with confidence ratings. The brief lands in the RM inbox before the meeting.

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Tool 02

RM Discovery Script

Five-lens, ten-minute conversation framework. Cash-Flow Rhythm, Bottlenecks, Risk Spikes, Data Reality, Win Condition. Each lens carries sample questions and Copilot data prompts. Standardized across the organization. Comparable across clients, sectors, time.

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Tool 03

Pain Point Tracker

Maps observed client problems to data indicators and early-warning triggers. Builds the institutional pattern library. Sixty percent of traders reporting collection delays this quarter is not anecdote, it is signal worth a sector-wide receivables-finance program.

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Tool 04

Needs Assessment Form

Captures identified JTBD candidates, root causes, urgency, and the proposed direction of solution. Becomes the input to Phase 2 Co-Design. No information lost between conversation and structuring. No hand-off friction.

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Tool 05

Action Summary Generator

Post-meeting deliverable. Diagnosed archetype, evidence trail, next-step plan, owner, timeline. Every conversation produces a traceable record. Continuity built in by default.

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Try it

Walk through a Q3 review prep in three minutes.

Pick a synthetic client. Watch the Copilot assemble the Client-360 brief. Review the anomalies. Pick which problem archetypes to test in the meeting. Lock the diagnostic question set. The demo proves how Phase 1 turns ninety days of waiting into ten minutes of insight.

Featured demo · live

Client-360 Diagnostic Builder

Open Karibu Logistics. The Copilot has flagged DSO stretching, FX exposure rising, and buyer concentration. It proposes two archetypes with confidence ratings: working capital strain at 9/10, FX exposure mismatch at 7/10. Pick the questions you want to ask. The Discovery Script is primed. The meeting starts already informed.

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Working preview · five-step guided walkthrough · about three minutes
The principle

Q-Lana on Discovery.

A client meeting should start with a diagnosis, not a pitch. When the relationship manager walks in already informed and runs a real discovery, the conversation produces evidence the credit team can use. Information beats intuition, every time.

Christian Ruehmer, Co-Founder, Q-Lana

Across Q-Lana

Related

Two places Discover & Diagnose shows up next.

Why this matters

Information beats intuition.

Discovery is the cheapest form of risk mitigation a bank has. Every problem caught in a ten-minute conversation is a default not booked, a covenant not breached, a workout not assembled. When discovery is structured, comparable, and continuous, the institution learns faster than the market changes.

For Heads of SME Banking, Distribution, and Customer Strategy

Walk us through one underperforming customer segment.

No pitch deck. A working session on where the relationship is held back by the operating model, and what changes when the bank moves from product-pushing to problem-solving.

Q-Lana Weekly

One newsletter. Five lenses. In your inbox every week.

Curated news with practitioner commentary. One Deep Dive in rotation. One applied tool. Read in fifteen minutes. Used the same week.

Q-Lana. The Operating System for SME and Corporate Finance.
Information becomes intelligence. Intelligence becomes advantage.