Financial Services have, to some, understandably underinvested in IT for the last 5 years whilst strengthening balance sheets. But the point of such investment is that technology, when correctly applied, saves money and enhances customer experience. A major issue not directly flagged in the excellent techUK papers is that there are industry wide issues organisationally with regard to the application of technologies for  enterprise wide document management including their impact for omni-channel engagement. In Germany, unlike the UK, this area of IT is seen as a professional career path with a strong knowledge of systems engineering, software and hardware disciplines seen as essential.
When was the last time your UK organisation employed a “Senior Output Manager”? Chances are, never. The role together with associated budgets is often split over many departments (such as IT, facilities/reprographics, marketing, outsourced suppliers, etc). In a sense “output has no lobby”. Hence the C-Suite has no idea of the quantum of huge opportunities that lie in this area, merely a hunch over a long list of things that should be done better.
We see UK Financial Services firms continuing to needlessly struggle with compliance, customer complaints, high operational costs, poor customer service and self-service, and so on. Yet much of this can be addressed in an efficient and effective manner through implementing Enterprise wide integrated and controllable document technologies such as illustrated by German engineered 'icon Suite', to name just one of a number of leading document related products from the German-Austrian area. After our benchmarking revealed the extent of the problem and subsequent extensive research on available solutions globally, iconUK was formed to bring the most innovative solutions to UK organisations.
[It should not be a surprise then that 70% of Germany’s top 30 Insurers and almost 30% of the top 20 banks use this technology, with paperless electronic signature software from xyzmo SIGNificant as optional customer service and workflow productivity enablers.]
So the issue is not proving the technology, or demonstrating the ROI, the difficulty is too often in gaining the necessary cross-organisational focus and agreement to take advantage of such solutions. Only then will UK Financial Services organisations be able to take the large leap forward in their digital modernisation strategies that is both required and competitively available.
Download 'Towards a 'New Financial Services' Whitepaper' by techUK here
*Julian David, CEO techUK, presenting an overview of Financial Services and the urgent need to change as described in the white paper. Presenters included Keith Saxton, Chairman of techUK Financial Services & Payments Programmes; David Rennie, Identity Assurance Programme, Cabinet Office; Huw Evans, Deputy Director General, Association of British Insurers; and Alistair Milne, Professor of Financial Economics, Loughborough University
|
Connect with us on Linkedin 
