It is not news the disruption in the financial services industry is pushing banks to develop differentiated strategies to meet the challenges of entrants with innovative business models. Part of the problem in succeeding in this journey still lays in the ability to create flexible technology ecosystems and structures with the internal capabilities that can quickly adapt to new business strategies.
Much of the new strategic efforts continue to be on changing the core. Due to the complexity of modernising legacy systems, many banks still operate on IT structures that impede embracing those technologies that enable a new customer engagement, resulting in losing the competitive edge and market share, against entrants like Fintechs that provide a distinctive product offering and customer experience
Building a sustainable IT strategy with the customer at the centre
Financial institutions pursuing a true digital transformation strategy, need to rethink how they define and deliver these initiatives, as going digital is no longer a goal affecting only the CIO and the IT department, but rather a business strategy with an impact across the whole organisation. Our experience with the leasing and financial services industry, shows that a sustainable strategy needs to address these 3 strategic areas:
Business Processes: A successful digital transformation requires redesigning and rethinking business processes rather than just the digitalisation of the existing ones. Just as essential to the development of financial products and services it to have a customer-centric view, so it is needed for the business process that supports them. The transformation strategy requires considering the back office and customer interactions at every point of the cycle. Map processes to identify areas for optimisation and design flexible flows that enable the adoption of new technologies.
Technology: modernise the legacy system to build a flexible IT ecosystem. As next generation technologies, like blockchain and artificial intelligence, arise in the finance IT marketplace, organisations are still striving to assimilate the fundamental one, like the cloud on which these new technologies depend. Dedicate resources to explore emerging technologies with the specific business goals in mind supported by the C-suite commitment to the new business model
People: aligning roles and responsibilities to avoid internal disruption. Encourage collaboration across departments and functions, fostering change management practices and internal communication. Take a holistic approach to innovation, having in mind not only how these technologies impact the customer, but also the need to attract/retain talent with the relevant skills
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.
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