From automating cash flow management and reporting to maintaining accounts, financial services businesses need client relationships defined by flexible systems, integrated processes, and remote capabilities. This need arises particularly from their desire for faster product developments, building agile capabilities, and avant-garde customer experience. The global cloud computing industry, which is expected to benefit greatly from its role in transforming the financial services sector, will see 50% rise in its revenue by 2022-end, according to Gartner.
Digital transformation powered by the cloud introduces crucial capabilities for the financial services businesses, such as accessing and mining the data in a proactively while leveraging cost optimization opportunities driven by automation. Institutions need to strategically adopt the cloud to address the immediate essentials while deriving optimum value from their transformation journey.
The Cloud is the Future for Financial Services Businesses to Go Digital-First
In the throes of dynamic change, financial services businesses are witnessing a number of new business models, products, and services, as established companies continue to vie with start-ups to inflate their market share. Innovation is at the center of competition and the cloud, being the innovation magnet, underpins the companies to maintain their competitive edge. The cloud enables
- To create and deploy customer-centric products and services faster for enhanced experience
- To scale on demand while allowing customers to engage on their preferred platform
- To bring novel methods of reimagining and automating operations
- To accelerate the digital transformation or modernization journey right from visualization to implementation
However, viewing digital transformation from the perspective of established companies means choosing the right roadmap, strategy, and technologies for a seamless and cost-effective journey. While many companies in the sector are slow to embrace the cloud due to reasons just mentioned, along with their privacy concerns around leaving legacy systems, the status quo is witnessing an accelerated change. More than ever, financial services businesses are aware of the ways how cloud technology facilitates meeting the business objectives even as achieving high customer satisfaction.
Challenges that Tag Along with Transformation
Following are primary issues facing the financial services businesses in their journey of going digital.
- Lack of control – The fear remains among financial institutions that they’ll lose control of their infrastructure to a certain extent.
- Compliance – Complying with a range of regulations mandated by the financial services industry needs a comprehensive understanding of procedures with respect to handling sensitive data.
- Security and Privacy – Ensuring data safety and security after moving to the cloud means making certain that the systems accord with all the applicable regulations that govern data privacy.
Catalysts to Successful Transformation
Most financial services institutions begin their cloud adoption journey with an IaaS model, evolving thereafter to PaaS and SaaS models. A successful digital journey is proportional to having the right strategy in place for cloud migration and management. Following are some key recommendations to realize a successful digital transformation journey.
- Making sure to have a ready-to-embrace mindset towards innovation and change.
- Studying the journey of cloud adoption and digital transformation.
- Erecting and aligning resources efficaciously in the form of tech-savvy professionals, product teams, and business analysts.
- Defining the services or products to iteratively and incrementally add functionalities and features.
- Proactively mitigating key aspects of the digital journey, such as risks, regulations, compliance, and security.
- Establishing a robust base for infrastructure resilience and managed business continuity.
Building to A Flexible Future
The troubleshooting and visibility into operations needed can be easily provisioned with advanced cloud solutions. This will help financial services businesses to stay current on customer demands and changing regulations. With a right CSP, they will be able to manage security and networking better. Companies that leverage several CSPs and adopt the hybrid cloud or multi-cloud model are highly likely to unleash the latent potential of their business and build a future of fortune.