I recently read through a guide on the Top 15 Financial Services Trends for 2017 by my friend and colleague Eugene Sefanov. Business Process Management (BPM) platforms continue to add more capabilities for greater impact on all industry verticals allowing organizations to remain relevant in an ever changing digital economy. The following is some insights into how BPM will enable some of the identified top Financial Services trends for 2017:
FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS WILL DEVELOP MOBILE PAYMENT TECHNOLOGY THAT OFFERS CUSTOMERS MORE VALUE
Everyone is family with jokes about banker’s hours, however customer don’t expect to perform services during “normal business hours”. Check out my previous blog on mobile devices behavior. Millennials, the increased use of smartphones, and IoT (such as Natural Language Understanding and Speech Recognition Technologies) has resulted in greater expectations for customers to perform more self service activities on mobile devices. The top BPM platforms provide a responsive UX that can enable financial services organizations with the ability to offer more than payment options, but also self-service offerings without “human service”.
FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS WILL LEVERAGE MORE COMPLEX ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND ROBOTIC PROCESS AUTOMATION CAPABILITIES
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is the use of software technology to automation processes developed by the business, but governed and hosted by IT. It enables further process automation by eliminating process exceptions that result in manual interactions or swivel-chair tasks. BPM vendors are already investing in technology that bring artificial intelligence and robotic process automation with the use of analytics into their platforms. This was demonstrated last year with Pegasystems acquisition of OpenSpan, a workforce intelligence and Robotic Process Automation technology vendor.
Some examples of processes in Financial Services that can take advantage of RPA are:
- Requests for overdraft protection
- Exceptions processing (overrides for high-value customers or low-risk transactions)
- Statement reconciliation
- Credit card applications
- Dispute resolution
OMNI-CHANNEL WILL REMAIN CRITICAL TO MANY FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS
Organization today have to manage interactions with the customers over a variety of communication channels. To increase customer satisfaction, it is critical for each interaction experience to be consistent, accurate, and current, regardless of communication medium or devices. I am always reminded of this fact when I run into an organization that uses paper. BPM can also help with analyzing and documenting internal processes to identify bottlenecks in order to provide seamless customer interaction between front office and back office operations. The result is an enhanced customer journey that provides a consistent experience that is effective, reduces errors, and increases compliance.
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION INITIATIVES WILL STAY TOP OF MIND
The term Digital Transformation seems to have a lot of definitions in the industry. In my opinion, Digital Transformation is an organization’s adoption of digital technology to realize their vision and strategy for accelerating their innovation and customer experience in ways that previously didn’t exist. While discussion on Digital Transformation typically focuses on an organization’s external customer interactions, such as websites or mobile applications, an organization’s internal processes are just as important in winning and retaining customers. BPM provides dashboard and reports that can be used to ensure continuous improvements resulting in an increase in operational efficiencies.
Sources:
http://blog.verint.com/customer-engagement/25-examples-of-processes-for-robotic-process-automation
