Designing Enterprise Software in a Bot-First Banking Environment

Executive Summary

Challenge in one sentence

NORD/LB is looking for guidance on how internal enterprise interaction should evolve in an AI-assisted, bot-first environment.  What principles, strategies and tech solutions can help to combine chat, bots and classical user interfaces in a regulated banking context?

Why This Matters

User behavior is changing: chat-based interfaces and AI assistants such as Microsoft CoPilot are increasingly used as the first point of interaction. Instead of navigating through classical enterprise UIs, employees often start their work via conversational interfaces. Without a clear interaction logic, NORD/LB risks fragmented user experiences and long-term architectural inconsistencies.

Solution Space

NORD/LB is looking for clear, well-reasoned perspectives on how internal enterprise interaction should evolve in a bot-first environment. NORD/LB is open to different types of contributions:

• Strategic interaction frameworks that provide decision logic on how chat, bots and classical UIs should be combined in an enterprise context.
• Interaction and experience models that describe coherent ways employees can work across conversational interfaces and traditional systems.
• Enterprise interaction platforms or layers that connect chat, bots and enterprise applications, with a focus on integration logic, governance and scalability.

Submissions may range from conceptual frameworks and models to reference architectures or platform-based approaches.

Who can participate?

This project is open to partners who work on enterprise interaction, experience, architecture or AI-driven systems, including:

• strategy, research or innovation teams
• specialised consultancies with experience in enterprise UX, interaction models or regulated IT environments
• startups & scale-ups developing interaction platforms, orchestration or enterprise tooling
• technology providers offering adaptable products or platforms for enterprise interaction, integration or automation

Different organisational sizes and maturity levels are explicitly welcome. A fully developed product is not required.

Why Participate

Participants gain the opportunity to engage directly with NORD/LB on a real, strategic enterprise challenge at the intersection of AI, UX and enterprise architecture. Participants benefit from:

• direct exchange with NORD/LB stakeholders across innovation, UX, architecture and automation,
• the opportunity to influence strategic decisions on future enterprise interaction models,
• a realistic pathway into paid refinement & piloting and further partnership phases, depending on fit and scope,
• and the chance to build a strong reference within a major regulated banking institution.

Process

The process ensures fast clarity, fairness and partnership alignment:

1. Application via platform with a concise set of mandatory questions.
2. Evaluation & shortlisting based on relevance, clarity and decision value.
3. Get-to-Know conversations to discuss assumptions, approach and boundaries.
4. Validation Phase with expert input from NORD/LB to validate the approach.
5. Long-term partnership options to integrate and scale the solution.