The Key for Indian Banks to Reinvent Their Workplace

Indian banks are using technology to reinvent their workplace. They are using mobile banking, digital payments, internet banking, customer management tools and more. However, in a dynamic and quickly evolving market like India, it is crucial that banks meet their current needs while staying prepared for the future. Indian banks need to leverage technologies that offer adaptability and agility. Missing this piece while reinventing their workplace can be a serious fallacy in banks’ strategy. Let’s look at how Indian Banks can achieve this.

Platform Based Solutions

IT systems at banks often have layer upon layer of diverse applications for handling specific functionalities like loan tracking, loan origination, spreading, rating, etc. This forms a patchwork of technology systems that do not communicate with each other.

This patchwork partly accomplishes the job, forcing banks to invest in additional applications to tackle the job not done. Thus, this sunk cost fallacy leads banks to invest in building a house of cards. However, a platform based solution can help banks stay agile even with such obsolete technology. BPM based solutions can seamlessly integrate with disparate applications, external and legacy systems. This allows banks to survive with their existing investment in core banking system, accounting software, email application, etc. Thus, they accommodate changing market conditions by quickly modifying centralized business rules or credit policies. Let’s look at the core components that help banks evolve with change.

Straight Through Processing

Customers expect a fast response, and contextually correct action. However, it is easier said than done. It requires a process oriented mind-set, supported by a flexible workflow driven platform, with the ability to delink business rules from the transactional aspects of the process. Customer data, customer documents and collaterals, risk management policies and regulatory compliance aspects need to work in conjunction without forcing rigidity. It is important for business rules to be loosely coupled with the rest of the process and configured independently to facilitate faster changes whenever a policy needs to be revised.

Building a Responsive Organisation

People in your organization are responsible for decisions that involve a variety of factors. In order to be effective at their job, they need all the relevant information in time and in the required form. They need to use their time to do what they do best, and not on mundane repetitive tasks. Banks require a Business Rules Management based technology and Robotic Process Automation for straight through processing of repetitive tasks, resulting in immediate processing. This would help the workforce stay motivated and empowered. This also helps deliver better customer experience and more innovative products over time.

Staying Mobile

Mobility provides you an interface, but for it to be effective, it should be a natural extension of banking processes. A truly mobile interface facilitates capture of information and documents through a mobile or any other interface, on-the-go reviews, approvals and monitoring. Mobility should be treated as a productivity enhancer and a key aspect of a great banking process. An Omni channel and cross-channel experience is critical for mobility to be effective. Your relationship managers should be able to expedite the process by capturing customer information and documents on-the-go. It is critical to capture documents through mobile, and seamlessly attach them to the relevant opportunity, with integrated document management in the backend for a seamless mobile experience. The relevant users should be able to review and approve seamlessly on-the-go.

Handling Exceptions

Key banking processes are prone to emergent and exceptional scenarios. Exception handling is all about flexibility and knowledge worker empowerment, ad-hoc routing and flexible processes. The ability to carry corresponding documents & media items, such as photographs, scanned copies, signatures through the process offers a significant advantage. Further, the delivery of timely customer communication throughout the process is imperative to keep the customer informed about the status as well as additional requirements of exceptional situations.

Time Is an Illusion, Timing Is an Art!

To reinvent their workplace and to stay future ready, Indian banks need to act and act fast! They need to weigh long term goals over short term objectives, agility over rigidity, and future focused solutions over quick-fixes.

Virender Jeet
Senior Vice President (Sales & Marketing / Products) Newgen Software