Vaibhav Sharma
Unisys studies show that the average cost to acquire and set up a customer account at a branch is $350. Setting up the same account online reduces the cost to $140. Because of numbers like this, you may have already taken the vital first step of developing an omnichannel strategy. If so, you’re ahead of the pack – but to stay in the lead, you have to implement that strategy effectively. That can be quite a challenge.
At Unisys, we surveyed 100 manager-level and above US and UK industry practitioners. More than 51% of respondents felt that they weren’t yet advanced with regard to the execution of a digital transformation strategy for branch and back office speed/efficiency. Moreover, only 16% noted having an optimal strategy when it came to keeping employees and channels available/up and running at the point of interaction.
The Obstacles to Omnichannel Execution
You may have experienced this frustration yourself. After all, your ability to satisfy customers and retain market leadership depends on having an infrastructure that can adapt to changing expectations and demands, provide responsive service, and comply with regulations. Yet, your legacy banking environment is often at odds with these requirements. Gartner has reported that 71% of firms believe that at least 60% of their core applications portfolio needs substantial reengineering.
Add to that the fact that you may be managing multiple, disparate platforms in different geographies, and adding piecemeal solutions to deliver new capabilities across channels. As system and network complexity grows, the processes you’ve put in place to acquire and support customers become complex and fragmented. This situation makes reporting more difficult, so you have to dedicate more time and resources to compliance. Meanwhile, the increased surge of transactions from your online and digital customers is straining capacity and inhibiting your responsiveness. With all these concerns to address, it’s no wonder your efforts to execute your omnichannel strategy get sidetracked.
The Tide Is Changing
The good news? The industry is making headway. In our survey, 38% of respondents felt they had one common support structure with interactive end-to-end visibility to service levels. More than 40% of respondents reported that they have an advanced strategy when it comes to using transaction analytics to provide continual improvement as customer patterns change. That being said, around one in five organizations still use manual tools with various local vendors to keep branch and corporate tools up and running.
Achieving Modernization and Productivity
To execute your omnichannel strategy and stay ahead of the pack, you need to modernize your core banking platform and increase the productivity of your workforce. For that, automation and analytics are the name of the game:
* Automate processes
Replacing your existing system with a modern core banking platform that supports automated processes and services for online account setup is critical. Automation enables you to eliminate unnecessary costs and resource requirements associated with customer acquisition. In addition, you’ll improve the customer experience and enhance your ability to grow market share with Microservices architecture.
* Leverage advanced analytics
Advanced analytics and reporting capabilities can identify target customers and relevant messages, boost campaign performance, connect customer responses and call center activity to improve processes and experience, increase efficiency, uncover and grow cross-sell opportunities, and generate additional revenue for the business.
About the Author : Vaibhav Sharma is the Global Industry lead for financial services for Application services. He has led the core banking modernization and architecture with global banks. He has advised and helped banks and financial intuitions on their transformational journeys. Focused on applications services in the digital age – Cloud Adoption, Automation, Agile, Devops and Blockchain.
