Yes, that’s right, it’s that time of the year again! Another fantastic year has quickly passed by, supporting our clients in the Leasing and Financial Services industry with their business transformation and technology innovation projects. The VIP Apps Consulting team has taken a moment to look back on the past 12 months and reflect on the highlights of 2017 and the challenges for 2018.
Innovation and the Leasing and Financial Services Industry
In 2017 we had the pleasure of supporting and attending signature industry events, like Lease Europe in Malta, Leasing Life in Amsterdam, talks organised by The Leasing Foundation in London and several other technology events. We had the opportunity to discuss with representatives from the leasing and financial services industry along with consultants and leading players, the state and challenges of the industry for 2018 and beyond. The theme on these occasions broadly focused on the importance of the digital transformation and innovation journey for the sector, and how the industry needs to juggle with multiple challenges tied to legacy systems, disruptive business models, regulations, new technologies and competitors while pursuing new strategies for sustainable growth. Everybody agreed that only those companies that can balance long-term goals with the efficient immediate performance, while addressing these emerging challenges and opportunities, would be in the position to continue competing for customers with new service demands.
A strategy for 2018: Challenge the Process, Embrace the Vision
The above-described scenario can feel daunting, but we believe it’s also full of opportunities. With the culmination of 2017, we asked ourselves how can we help our clients achieve their goals in 2018. A pivotal year for the leasing and financial services globally as technology modernisation becomes more imperative to remain dominant in a rapidly evolving ecosystem.
In a previous post, we talked about three strategic areas CFOs and CIOs need to focus. We believe that business processes are at the core of the digital transformation. With the customer at the centre of your strategy, mapping and documenting your business processes, facilitates not only to keep up with your digital transformation journey but also with growing number of regulations changes ahead. Companies need to redesign and rethinking business processes, identifying areas for optimisation and design flexible flows that enable the adoption of new technologies. Corporate groups must ramp up their digitisation efforts, especially on those areas that still heavily rely on manual, paper-based tasks.
Managing change, will also play a significant role this year. Despite understanding the importance of change management, a common problem in business transformation is that managers lack sufficient operational insight to steer it effectively. The impact of poor change management, not only translate in the transformation not being delivered, but also in the waste of resources and the team exhaustion. Change should be continuous, stirring how people think about their work and empowering them to look for potential improvements. Documenting processes as part of the preparation and strategy, represent a crucial input for organisation navigating change, as you can not analyse change unless you have a holistic understanding of what you are doing today.
VIP Apps Consulting team has extensive experience within the leasing financial services industry with the knowledge, capabilities and operational experience, to help organisations assess and implement the required process changes.
Keep up to date with the latest technology trends and other industry news by following us on LinkedIn
