Integration fatigue

In recent years the financial sector has experienced a backlash of criticism. The credit crunch has left consumers feeling untrusting of banks, fearful of losing assets to incompetency. Recent software glitches and loss of data has heightened this doubt. RBS and Natwest outages earlier on in the year left customers unable to obtain their cash, make debit card payments or conduct online/telephone banking. In order to combat these negative attitudes towards the sector, banks must restore good customer service through transparency and good back office technology – and more specifically a good understanding of data analytics.

When it comes to understanding customers, data is the golden ticket. But currently, financial organisations are finding themselves trapped on a data integration treadmill – investing 25% of their budgets into a cause only a small minority believe will offer ROI.

In fact, over three quarters (83%) of IT staff don’t expect to see any return on investment from these projects. Furthermore, 84 per cent believe that better use of data could improve customer service, which is essential to rebuilding reputation amongst customers.  With no expected ROI and a bruised perception of the banking sector, many IT departments feel the need to invest in other short term projects to compensate.

Data should be used to gain a competitive advantage, but currently it is holding financial organisations back from being able to innovate in a way which might restore loyalty in customers. Traditional integration of systems is no longer sufficient in today’s world. It is neither time nor cost effective. Instead of using traditional methods of extracting value from data, organisations should use search rather than integration methods. By using semantic search, businesses can completely side step the traditional data integration approaches that are currently failing them and work towards restoring loyalty.