The Modern Banking Workplace: Sparking an astute digital culture in banking
Modernization of the banking workplace is being driven by an urgent need to deliver innovation and transform the culture. Facing burdensome legacy processes and technologies, banks must reinvent their ways of work along with an intelligent digital mindset that fosters agility, collaboration, creativity, ingenuity, productivity, accessibility, privacy, security, simplicity and speed of execution.
“Banking executives have long realized the need for transformation and innovation both within and across the business silos that exist in their organizations,” says Kenneth Parker, managing director, worldwide banking and capital markets at Microsoft. “Banks are fundamentally rethinking ways in which both customer-facing front office and back office operational processes are defined and executed with a focus on high efficiency, end to end process digitalization and reengineering. Market demand is surging for a world-class client experience combined with shareholder demands for streamlined businesses that drive increased shareholder returns through transformative technologies. Banker productivity tools, combined with artificial intelligence and cognitive services, enable true digital transformation to a highly efficient modern workplace. Such combined solutions have now achieved a level of maturity that bankers trust to meet their business goals and drive enhanced value across the workplace.”
Modern Workplace solutions are the cornerstone to empowering bank employees, which is the first pillar of digital transformation. “Banks need to empower a digitally astute workforce with intelligent tools to evolve their culture,” says Guillermo Kopp, director, worldwide financial services industry at Microsoft. “Modern Workplace tools allow banks to redirect their internal technology services to focus more on creating business value. Empowered bankers will overcome the limitations of functional and product silos in favor of a more cohesive, collaborative, no-nonsense and fast-paced work style.”
Digital information, social media, and innovative technologies already have a profound impact on the behaviors and expectations of bank customers and are redefining the dynamics of financial markets. “With Microsoft banker productivity and collaboration solutions, bank personnel can collaborate securely in real time to develop new ideas and products, build strong consensus, and act promptly,” says Kopp. “These technologies allow bankers to co-author, share and edit documents with multiple stakeholders at the same time, quickly find people and information, and glean relevant insights from the interconnected financial markets and a plethora of product offerings. For example, bankers can get breaking news, market insights, and social feeds in real time to identify trends and surface relevant content, and easily adjust their financial models using interactive visualization techniques.”
Cross-functional customer relations scenarios address specific business needs and add value by simplifying the way that banks work. These customer relations scenarios are spearheaded by typical ‘personas’ such as heads of banking business groups, product managers, financial advisors or risk management leaders. “We should call out the transformative power of modern banking scenarios such as digital credit approval, proposal management, product ideation and development, and predictive business analytics,” says Kopp. “The Microsoft 365 Enterprise suite, running on the cloud, fosters a secure digital workstyle that improves bank productivity and employee satisfaction. The addition of Microsoft operating software, enterprise mobility suite, and advanced security capabilities also allows banks to better heed customer privacy imperatives and meet stringent compliance demands such as the General Data Protection Regulation.”
Over the coming weeks we’ll provide perspectives on how modern workplace technologies can transform the way bankers work, sparking an astute digital culture that enables them to drive customer relations-centered change and new business value.
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