Data Data everywhere.... Not so much to use.....

Many of the business banking customers have expressed dissatisfaction with the way banks provide transparency to them in their transaction banking. Simple information such as the status of their payments, remittances, collections , failed transactions, receivables ,  loan and tax payments, file uploads etc are not sent back to them in time resulting in avoidable cost for them. The irony is that much of the information that the customers want are available and within the control of the bank. But the  systems through which the transactions flow are disparate and the ‘information integration’ initiatives undertaken by banks in the past have not resulted in any commensurate business benefits for the customers .

There are a number of reasons why banks have not been able to meet the customer expectations in providing  the desired  transparency to their customers :

• The core processing systems through which these transactions flow are robust yet disparate and based on old technologies.
• The channel facing applications that banks have built over the years connect the customer to the core systems but  still built as disparate systems for  – branch, internet, mobile channels. Lacking an ‘omni channel’ design.
• Even within the channel solutions, there is no cohesive ‘design thinking’  to integrate various devices, their operating systems and technologies.  Even today banks use channel applications that demand specific browsers, tablets & mobile devices and operating systems.  Change Control for applications with such a heterogeneous landscape  is still a nightmare.
• The information integration initiatives using data ware houses and analytics to provide transparency have served  only limited purposes for  customers because the data is not ‘real time’ .

The technology changes in the digital world in which the customers live today, have enhanced their user experiences and have pushed expectations levels from banks. Banks are still struggling to catch up on them. Banks are far away in integrating ‘social media’ and public domain information to enable meaningful decisions for customers. Any initiatives that banks are investing in today in these areas are more from a marketing perspective. Again a ‘flawed’ design thinking.

Since technology innovations today are not happening sequentially but exponentially it is time for banks to have a paradigm shift in their design thinking to deliver better customer experience and transparency.  The technology teams should shed the ‘band aid’ approach of  building layers and layers of incremental code changes but should in parallel think of newer designs and  systems that can co-exist and over  time progressively modernize their existing systems . Their  design thinking  should  embed  designing for omni channels ,  device agnostic designs, integrating social media and public domain content  which impact customer business, predictive analytics , real time information integration and above all should revolve around better customer experience and value.