I have talked a lot recently about legacy payment systems, the problems they can cause within financial institutions and how to approach change, but I often get asked how companies can ascertain if they would benefit from evolving their payment systems.
I think there are ten questions they should ask themselves:
- How do you compare with your competitors when it comes to the sophistication of your offerings?
- Are your customers happy to stay with you, or is the flexibility on offer from your competitors overcoming their loyalty?
- Are the services you are providing to your customers giving them greater value, and are they willing to pay for it?
- How far can you tailor the services you deliver to your customers? Are you offering a fine-tuned Ferrari or an assembly-line Model T Ford?
- Do your customers get the services they want when they want them?
- Do you know what your customers' overall positions are? Are you able to tell them?
- Does information get used and shared by the whole financial institution? Or is your customer talking to three different businesses?
- Can you take on board white labeled products from third party specialists and use them to efficiently expand your range of services?
- Are you able to provide your own specialist services to other parties for them to white label?
- Do you know whether you would benefit from in-sourcing or out-sourcing payments services - and are you in a position to do so?
I believe that honest answers to these questions will make it clear if an organization should start seriously thinking about moving their payment systems into the future.