Why Connected Banking is the Way Forward 

In the rapidly shifting banking landscape, financial institutions find it difficult to consistently meet the ever-evolving business and customer demands. This continued inefficiency might be hindering the company to drive business outcomes. Resorting to cost-cutting measures alone is not a formula for long-term success. A holistic approach—one that enables firms to improve operational efficiency and upgrade its capabilities to respond to changing customer dynamics—is imperative for the success of your organization. Connected banking effectively bridges silos of various kinds across financial institution and creates a synergistic organization effectively address operational efficiency while improving customer outcomes.

The Common Roadblocks

For years operational efficiency has been a key differentiator, enabling financial institutions to stay ahead of their peers. Despite a consistent effort to improve efficiency, banks face a number of challenges, including:

• Prevalence of legacy systems:Monolithic and rigid architectures of legacy systems are major deterrents to modernization
• Automation in silos:Often, automation efforts using artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation (RPA) end up as siloed technology projects
• Broken processes, content, and communications:Process gaps, systems unable to support content, and a lack of unified communications can make operations disjointed and slow

Achieving Enhanced Operational Efficiency

To enhance operational efficiency, you must consider a platform-based strategy that connects your operations holistically. This involves:

• Automating end-to-end processes:You must streamline your processes across various channels, from start to finish, with a focus on real customer outcomes
• Bridging silos:Your organization needs to identify the gaps in operation and establish a platform approach that connects them
• Leveraging cutting-edge technologies:By integrating technologies, such as contextual content services, RPA, AI, analytics, and mobility, you can further boost speed and engagement
• Integrating beyond the bank:To achieve holistic customer outcomes, your financial institution must drive integration across channels and with external partners

Financial institutions need an approach that helps them seamlessly connect new and legacy IT systems, processes, people, and functions to holistically improve their operational efficiency. This is where connected banking comes in.

Enter Connected Banking

As we said earlier, connected banking is all about bridging silos of various kinds across your financial institution and creating a synergistic organization that cohesively operates to address four key drivers: customer experience, product innovation, operational efficiency, and risk and compliance.

With connected banking, financial institutions can:

• Leverage process automation to achieve speed and operational flexibility, while enhancing customer experience
• Access relevant information and content anytime, anywhere and handle exceptions effectively, efficiently, and with context
• Enable faster responses, increased visibility, and enhanced control by mapping end-to-end customer journeys and touchpoints
• Infuse intelligence into their operations by seamlessly integrating AI, machine learning (ML), and RPA, thereby freeing up human effort for other tasks

The financial services landscape is increasingly going digital, as more and more people prefer digital mediums to meet their banking requirements. It is, therefore, imperative for you to build a connected enterprise where your customers, employees, and partners can transact and engage in an orchestrated manner and through any channel. A connected bank allows you to not just improve operational efficiency, but also helps you achieve customer-centricity and adapt to changing business requirements.

(The author Jayant Tandon is Head of Banking Excellence at Newgen Software and the views expressed in this article are his own)