Guiding sustainable business-model transformation for small and medium sized companies: A sustainable customer management framework for corporate banks
Abstract
Increasing environmental, social and governance (ESG) requirements pose challenges
especially for small and medium sized companies (SMEs). The aim of this study is to examine
the status quo of current challenges for corporate banks’ customer management that can be
exploited to enable SMEs to transform their businesses and ultimately create sustainable
revenue for the corporate banks. Our proposed framework on sustainable customer
management (SCM) takes up the specific characteristics of ESG assessment at the interface
between SMEs and corporate banks. Our results indicate that corporate banks establish
sustainability as a strategic priority and integrate it into various operational aspects, mainly due
to regulatory pressure. To further position themselves as transformative partners for the SMEs,
corporate banks need to overcome resource constraints, improve internal technical and
regulatory processes and focus on ESG product innovations to exploit the potential to a greater
extent. SCM requires further research regarding the role of corporate banks as key
transformational partners for SMEs as well as on the potential business opportunities.
Keywords
Sustainable Customer Management; Corporate Banking; Small and Medium-sized Companies; ESG Assessment; Flexible Pattern Matching