;

Bank of Oklahoma Financial

The Bank of Oklahoma Financial page has loaded.

Bank of Oklahoma Financial

Related Features

Platforms

Overview

Modernizing a digital banking experience for 43% higher conversions

For more than a century, BOK Financial (BOKF) has helped consumers and businesses across the Midwest and Southwest thrive. Built on long‑standing relationships and a deep commitment to the communities it serves, BOKF continuously looks for ways to balance modern digital convenience with the human connection customers expect from their financial institution.

But behind the scenes, BOKF’s legacy digital platform was no longer supporting that mission. High maintenance costs, mounting technical debt, and limited flexibility were constraining marketing efforts. To keep pace with rising customer expectations and a rapidly evolving digital landscape, BOKF partnered with Horizontal Digital to modernize its platform — moving to a cloud‑based, composable architecture that unlocked performance, scalability, and long‑term growth.

The highlights

  • Cloud-powered performance

    Migrated to Sitecore XM Cloud, unlocking personalization, improved search, and faster site performance.

  • Stronger customer experiences

    Increased engagement and conversion across nine digital properties.

  • Faster speed to market

    Deployment times reduced by 50–70% with scalable content authoring.

  • Reduced technical debt

    Reduced infrastructure costs by 100%.

The situation

When maintenance costs more than momentum

BOKF was operating on a nine‑year‑old platform that had become increasingly expensive and difficult to maintain. Nearly 60% of annual effort was dedicated to maintenance, limiting the team’s ability to focus on strategic marketing initiatives or new digital capabilities.

Key challenges included:

  • Rising costs and technical debt: Major platform upgrades were required every three years just to maintain the status quo, driving ongoing maintenance expenses.
  • Poor site performance: Page speed scores hovered around 25% on mobile and 30% on desktop, negatively impacting engagement and SEO rankings.
  • Limited flexibility: A highly customized implementation made it difficult to integrate with other systems or fully leverage licensed Sitecore capabilities.
  • Talent and onboarding challenges: Legacy technology slowed onboarding and made it harder to attract modern web talent.
  • Falling behind expectations: Advances in marketing technology were outpacing what the platform could realistically support.

The cost of not moving forward

Without change, BOKF faced escalating long‑term costs and competitive risk. 60% of their work was dedicated to maintenance as technical debt continued to grow, and if the organization stayed on the same platform, maintaining the legacy platform would cost more than if they had modernized in the first place. Not to mention, competitors were adopting composable architectures, personalization capabilities, and getting to market faster. 

The solution

A phased path to the cloud

BOK Financial tasked Horizontal with assessing their Total Cost of Ownership based on their platform choice: XM Cloud. We were able to outline the specific goals and realistic investments it would take for BOKF to create the digital ecosystem they needed. Once the business case was approved, Horizontal Digital and BOKF’s teams re‑platformed nine websites from a heavily customized Sitecore XP 9.3 multisite instance to a headless front end powered by Sitecore XM Cloud.

Given the complexity of the existing environment, the team took a phased, low‑risk approach:

  • Launched six smaller sites first to validate the architecture and components.
  • Successfully launched the four largest and most complex sites just two weeks later.
  • Built a shared library of reusable components to ensure consistency and scalability across all properties.
  • Added Sitecore Search to improve relevance and usability.
  • Implemented location-based personalization for regional content and enabled A/B testing to support optimization efforts, providing greater flexibility for future enhancements and integrations.

In close collaboration, we ensured BOKF’s development teams were brought in early so they could learn as we built the platform together. 

Horizontal Digital brought a flexible, collaborative approach that enabled us to establish a joint scrum process and ramp up platform management quickly. Their partnership was instrumental in building a solid business case with the right baseline to move the project forward.

SVP, Director of Digital Experience & Innovation | Christy Ary

The results

Dividends across performance, cost savings, and growth

The move to Sitecore XM Cloud delivered immediate, measurable impact — both technically and strategically. With legacy constraints removed, BOKF’s teams can now focus on high‑value initiatives like data integrations, personalization, lead generation, and ongoing experience optimization. 

Beyond performance gains, the composable nature of Sitecore allows BOKF to integrate new marketing technologies more easily, ensuring the organization can fully leverage its investments without wasted spend or unnecessary complexity.

  • 43%Increase in conversion rates

  • 60%Reduction in deployment time

  • 100%Decrease in infrastructure costs

  • 3.4kPages updated across nine sites

  • 84New reusable site components designed and developed

  • 188%Increase in mobile site speed, 153% increase on desktop

We're experts in digital banking experiences

Ready to modernize and improve your digital experiences? We have completed over 300+ successful implementations and projects — and we can help you, too.
Let's chat

Promoted Content

Work

Driving higher purchase revenue through a connected banking experience

See More
Cadence Bank

Work

Putting a human spin on the financial world

See More
First Tech