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The digital customer experience has never been more important. Consumers are more mindful about world problems such as global warming and others. All of this translates into expecting their banking provider to act as responsible corporate citizens while offering advanced digital experiences.

How technology can help drive innovation

 Before we take a look at the types of technology some financial organisations are using, remember that implementing technology isn’t ‘just because’. The real impact comes when you use technology to emphasise the following three areas:

• Customer insights: Produce correlations from dispensed internal data such as CRM, transactions, and investment stats.
• Intelligence: Merge customer insights with external data related to economic trends and behaviour.
• Customer engagement: Leverage data from customer insights and intelligence to deliver personalised customer experiences at the right time, through the right channel.

Here’s a teaser from our financial services whitepaper with three out of five ways organisations can use technology to drive innovation, build resilience, and be truly customer-focussed. Download the whitepaper to access the full guide.

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1. Public cloud infrastructure

If you’re looking to innovate into a digital-first model, you need strong cloud foundations. Public clouds can be deployed faster than on-premise infrastructures and there’s no extra cost of purchasing, managing, and maintaining on-premise infrastructures. Every employee can use the same application from any device, securely over the internet.

For finance organisations, compliance and security is very important. Microsoft Azure is built with a multi-layered security approach, with physical data centres, infrastructure and operations. There are 3,500 cyber security experts actively monitoring to protect your business assets and data. With over 90 compliance offerings, you can ensure valuable data is correctly safeguarded, and AI-driven security signals can also help modernise your security operations.

2. AI

Another way for organisations to empower employees is by using AI. AI-powered chatbots are ideal as a first point of contact, and can answer frequently asked questions. If customers need more help, they can move them onto customer service representatives.

AI can also be leveraged for knowledge mining and machine learning. This uncovers insights and analytics that can enable more informed business decisions. AI can test millions of ideas/scenarios per minute, uncovering insights and information such as credit risk scoring, identifying vulnerable customers, and interest rate changes. You can also test new business models rapidly. In the new normal, the ability to enrich existing data with external data will help build resilience within the organisation.

3. User experience

In the EY survey, 43 percent of respondents say the way they bank has changed. As customers are more used to digital ways of interacting, they expect financial institutions to adapt and innovate alongside them. Moving to mobile and web banking apps and leveraging new ways of delivering augmented experiences such as video conferencing, virtual reality, and augmented reality are key new business model enablers.

Citi traders, for example, is using the Microsoft HoloLens to see a virtual workstation that shows data as 3D images, making it easier to work and collaborate.

The new normal

In the new normal, competition will occur between business models rather than product and/or process innovations. Financial leaders should adjust their digital strategy to focus on supporting their customers with innovative ideas and empowering employees with new skills. When you think about how you’re planning on achieving your business goals in the new normal, make sure you build a skilling roadmap alongside. This will ensure there’s no skills gaps in your organisation.

Find out more

Download the report: Boosting the innovation of banking business models

Watch the on-demand webinar: How are traditional banks adapting their approach in a digital world?

About the authors

Tine Petric is a Specialist in the area of Applications and Infrastructure, advising organisations within the Financial Services Industry. He is passionate about the impact that technology can make in inclusive finance and ESG overall. Tine is also an avid tech blogger and guest lecturer at universities where he talks about Business Model Innovation and latest tech trends. Tine holds a Master Degree in Business Administration and Management from the HEC University of Lausanne, Switzerland

Christian Thier leads the Financial Services Account Team Organisation of Microsoft in Switzerland. He drives strategic and transformational partnerships with Banks and Financial Services firms across all segments, helping its clients to accelerate in digital business transformation. He has more than 20 years of working experience within the Banking, Insurance, Financial Services and IT industry in various roles. Before joining Microsoft, he was working at Interactive Data, serving as Managing Director and Board Member of Interactive Data in Switzerland, and Vice President Sales EMEA since 2005. Christian holds a Master Degree in Business Administration from the Goethe-University in Frankfurt/Main, Germany.

The post 3 ways the banking sector can innovate in the new normal appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Organisations are transforming, becoming ever-more driven by innovation, and seeking to establish partnerships that will boost their value proposition and optimise internal IT. In the past few years, I’ve been fascinated just how much can be done when there is a strong will to adopt new technology.

Think of the first new clearing bank in 250 years in UK – it runs exclusively in the cloud.

Think of Insurtechs like Shift Technology which helps insurance companies more effectively detect fraud. The diversity of business models that cloud solutions enable are limited only by imagination.

The first step towards bringing imagination to reality is making sure an organisation possesses relevant cloud capabilities. While technologies like AI can provide direct benefit to the customer, every organisation needs to first establish strong fundamental cloud capabilities. Only then can they build advanced, customer-centric solutions on top of them.

 

Strong cloud capabilities represent well-organised knowledge and skills, which create and maintain scalable, secure, and transparent infrastructure.

Achieving this requires skills in technologies such as Platform-as-a-Service, Infrastructure as Code, and API integrations, among others.

Learning new skills and engaging in meaningful training on a continuous basis is key to helping people across the organisation. Cloud competent organisations are aware of this. They realise the need for a robust process that allows them to operate with strong IT fundamentals.

BUILDING STRONG FUNDAMENTALS IN 5 STEPS

1. Assess current capability levels

If an organisation applies capability assessment frameworks, those can be inspected to evaluate current skills levels. If that’s not the case, an organisation should establish a framework to continuously monitor relevant skills levels.

It can be as simple as creating a heat map, as long as it provides a clear view that can be updated. Proposed methodologies for gathering information are online surveys and interviews for both groups and individuals.

2. Determine desired skills and knowledge

In alignment with overall business strategy, evaluate which skills your people need and, based on the capability framework, recognise where the gaps are.

When it comes to establishing cloud fundamentals, most customers focus on…

• Architecture: Networking, virtualisation, identity, security, business continuity, disaster recovery, data management, budgeting, and governance
• Administration: implement, monitor, and maintain Microsoft Azure solutions, including major services related to compute, storage, network, and security
• Security: implement security controls, maintain the security posture, manage identity and access, and protect data, applications, and networks

3. Invest in upskilling and training your teams

Everyone on the IT team needs solid understanding of what the cloud is, which are the most typical scenarios, and where its value lies. We see highest success when organising Microsoft-led workshops where IT professionals and relevant business divisions join to learn about the basics of cloud administration, architecture and security.

During these one- or two-day workshops, the key outcomes are…

• The whole IT team has the same understanding of cloud fundamentals
• Stronger relationship between IT and business

Once the basics are covered, try collaborating with Microsoft in designing learning paths in areas such as data engineering, containerisation, and DevOps. These types of training sessions should be tailored to specific groups of employees to make them relevant and actionable.

4. Reward employees that invest in learning

Learning rewards seem self-explanatory, but having appropriate rewards in place is not as easy as it might seem.

Rewards in IT departments are too often too meaningless and demotivating. As author Daniel Pink notes in the best-seller Drive, studies show that carrot and stick led rewarding system is not a good system. The correlation between financial rewards and outstanding work are not as high as most organisations think.

To achieve great results, you must satisfy the following needs…

Autonomy — The desire to be self-directed. It increases engagement over compliance.

Mastery — The urge to get better skills.

Purpose — The drive to do something that has meaning and is important. Businesses that only focus on profits without valuing purpose will end up with poor customer service and unhappy employees.

Giving employees the option to obtain a certificate is a great first step on the journey to Mastery. Next, consider rewarding your team with time-off work to focus on personal projects – this boosts Autonomy and Purpose. See how Microsoft does it with the ‘Garage‘.

 5. Prioritise certification in hiring and recruiting

Certificates mean transparency within and without the organisation. In a certification-driven organisation, you’ll have a good view to which skills and knowledge are present and what impact they provide. This is a major asset when designing a new job role, prioritising candidates, and assessing their proficiency. Certifications show dedication and good pressure-handling, since obtaining a meaningful certificate should be a challenge.

In a nutshell, operating with a strong cloud capability is a necessity for any organisation that desires to lead in the modern workplace. In the long-run, the winners will not be the ones who built cloud capability, but those who maintained it.

Take advantage of the learning opportunities Microsoft offers, and help us help you set up a learning organisation that will thrive for years to come.

Find out more

Microsoft skill-up offering

Microsoft Training Days: Azure Fundamentals

All you need to know before and after moving to the cloud: A Future Decoded presentation

App innovation and modernization with Microsoft Azure

Watch the session from Future Decoded: How Microsoft creates a learn-it-all culture

About the author

Tine Petric is a Specialist in the area of Applications and Infrastructure, advising organizations within UK Financial Services Industry. He is passionate about impact that technology can make in inclusive finance, interactive learning and eliminating mundane tasks. Tine is also an avid tech blogger and guest lecturer at universities where he talks about Business Model Innovation and latest tech trends.

The post Building strong cloud skills for employees in 5 steps appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.