Three ways that processes can help win the battle of banking
The pressure is on for fintechs and banks. The impact of the pandemic, new technologies on the market, and customers who want speedy service and security – all while keeping businesses afloat – has been a real challenge.
In such a process-driven industry, organisations are turning to technology as their weapon of choice. There has always been a digital gap between legacy and challenger. Now, banks are wising up to the tools at their disposal. To survive, they need to strategise a battle plan to engage and onboard new customers, and keep old ones – and it all comes down to one thing: their processes.
- Examine and uncover
Taking the time to understand the problem is critical in the world of banking and finance. Every business runs thousands of processes every day just to keep the lights on – be it customer care, new account openings, regulatory compliance, or launching new products. Without due care and attention, these processes can run rampant and set your business back with delays and missed opportunities.
This is where process intelligence comes in. This gives the tools to know which processes work well, which don’t, why staff deviate from set processes, and whether that deviation is the right move or the wrong one. Without process intelligence, leaders wouldn’t be able to see what’s going wrong or what’s going right in their business – or know how to fix it.
- Become proactive, not reactive
Process intelligence can help a bank or fintech look inward at all its data, map it all out, identify variances, examine where bottlenecks and delays occur – and then figure out how to improve. This doesn’t just enable leaders to look back at their operations and see what went wrong. It also enables them to look in real-time at what is happening now and to predict what may happen next.
This can identify inefficiencies that you would never have known about otherwise, turning operations from problem-solving to problem-preventing. Then, banks and fintechs can ensure customers get the best service, compliance is achieved, and the business can thrive.
- Automate what works
Once you’ve identified which processes need improving and which are already delivering value, you can take it one step further: automation. Across financial services, a lot of menial work is done by people that could be done by digital workers, AKA software bots. While lots of banks and fintechs do use automation already, if they haven’t done the hard work improving their processes beforehand, they won’t see the benefit on the bottom line.
After all, if you automate a bad process, you’re only making it bad faster. This is not an option: in the world of banking and finance, where the stakes are always high, a bad process could spell catastrophe. Empowering your business and staff with control over their processes is the best route to success.
This article was contributed by Neil Murphy, Global VP, ABBYY
