Making the Business Case for Unifying All Channels Part III: Control Technology Overhead

For the past 30 years there has been an almost continual shift in the ways that customers interact with their financial institutions-and to a large extent, this has been driven by technology innovation. From online branch systems and ATMs, to telephone and internet banking, the change has been constant and will inevitably continue.                 

Customers have come to expect that their financial institution will provide access to their accounts from any and all channel technologies and not just for inquiries, but real-time transactions too. The competitive nature of the financial services industry necessitates that community institutions meet these expectations in the same ways that large multi-national banks do.  

The problem is that this has driven community institutions to make massive investments in channel technologies, as they have appeared in the market-with little regard for existing channel implementations. Consequently, silos of customer data have been created, disparate technology architectures are not "playing well" together, and system complexity is requiring that institutions add IT staff. So what can be done? 

Establish a single technology architecture that makes technical support and system integration much less challenging. And, the good news is that this doesn't have to be daunting. The technology advances of the past several years make it possible today to create your own company standard (selecting the applications and infrastructure that will be used uniformly across the enterprise-SQL Server, Oracle, Linux, etc.). Therefore, for example, if you are going to standardize on Linux, apply that to application selection as you upgrade existing channel technology or choose a new vendor. 

You can also reduce information silos by establishing "systems of record." Rather than maintaining redundant data in various applications, a single system/application can become the "official" source of certain information. For example, rates can be entered and maintained in one location instead of via multiple files, thereby streamlining processes and eliminating the risk of inconsistency between channel applications. Another good example is using a CIF for customer/member data rather than multiple account files. 

Perhaps the biggest savings opportunity offered by standardizing your channel technology is to reduce the number and variety of technical skills required within your IT organization. Not only do you save by the range of skills, but you make it far more straight forward for the current team to address support and enhancement requests. In a competitive market, having the ability to embrace change and easily apply new technology capabilities to a uniform infrastructure gives you an advantage that can make a big difference to your customers and to your bottom-line.