9 strategies for financial services transformation

Financial services firms have spent years asking their IT departments to modernize their digital capabilities to combat disruptors, address security concerns and thrive in challenging competitive environments.

Now more than ever, technology teams must navigate new pathways toward optimization amid dramatically shifting behaviors among customers — and employees.

Here's a potential roadmap:

9 ways to optimize your digital journey

1. Focus on the right mix of digital transformation and digital optimization strategies

What it means: Digital transformation doesn’t completely end. No financial enterprise has the time, resources or budget to transform its technology and processes every year. Optimizing your technology is how to make incremental improvements and enable your IT team — and everyone else — to grow your organization for the long term.

What it takes:

• Deployment of the right digital technologies to move key business initiatives forward (examples include faster loan processing, on-time compliance reporting and enhanced customer experiences)

• Optimization of existing processes that bring value to the enterprise

• A commitment from leadership to take an always-on approach to fine-tuning efficiency gains with smart, tailored solutions that align with business priorities

2. Bring your data together with enterprise content management

What it means: An enterprise content management (ECM) solution unites all your business-critical content and processes. By eliminating content silos, financial firms can reduce processing times, increase collaborative efforts and more effectively streamline digital interactions.

What it takes:

• An ECM solution that helps employees retrieve and work with content in a modern, seamless way across devices

• Enterprise-wide components that include document and data capture, content management, AI, process automation and powerful search capabilities

• A solution that tightly integrates with important business-level systems, so all documents and data are quickly accessible for a complete view of the customers

3. Improve efficiencies and productivity

What it means: There are activities your organization must complete regardless of how long it takes, such as reporting and responding to customer inquiries. However, they can often be done quicker and with less friction — while delivering better results for customers or members — when you implement solutions that can automate important processes.

What it takes:

• Comprehensive analysis of what processes can be automated and how big of an impact the right technology solution could have in automating them (think the loan life cycle and customer experiences)

• Investment and seamless deployment of intelligent automation tools such as content routing and sharing, workflow automation, intelligent document processing (IDP), robotic process automation (RPA) and self-service dashboards

• A platform that makes working remotely accessible, seamless and secure

> Watch the webinar | How AI-enabled IDP is modernizing bank operations

4. Support your compliance strategy with automation

What it means: Compliance standards are detailed and ever-changing, but there is so much on the line for financial firms that a solution that gets it right — and makes compliance easier — can prove invaluable. Audits, fraud cases and new requirements can all be automated and managed with the right tool.

What it takes:

• Case management and workflow tools that give your team complete visibility into processes — from loan document tracking and document retention to how data is kept safe across the enterprise

• Integration with core financial services systems so your team can minimize IT stacks and limit information access to the right people

• The flexibility to quickly and easily adapt to regulatory changes

> Automation in action | Redstone FCU transforms debit card dispute process

Learn more about how the fast-growing credit union saved time and money with Hyland

5. Accelerate solution building with an effective AI strategy

What it means: Your financial institution must be adaptable, quick and able to rapidly respond to ever-changing environments. By harnessing advanced AI capabilities, firms can deliver new levels of value at every touchpoint — via applications they use every day.

What it takes:

• The deployment of generative AI to extract valuable information from large amounts of unstructured data, which in turn will help users find relevant and accurate information faster

• The creation of autonomous AI agents that perform specialized tasks and lead complex workflows

• A solution partner with a responsible AI strategy that stresses transparency, empowerment, privacy, security, data ownership, honesty, bias management and governance

6. Speed innovation with a scalable, cloud-native platform

What it means: Investing in a modern, cloud-based platform that unifies enterprise content and transforms unstructured data into AI-ready intelligence can position financial institutions for long-term agility and success.

What it takes:

• A business development case that focuses on how your firm will leverage cloud-delivered solutions to increase customer insights and experiences, grow revenue and reduce costs

• A plan for migrating your data to a trusted, proven cloud partner

• A cloud partner aligned to your platform requirements

7. Use your tech to focus on people

What it means: Technology should make the quality of conducting business better for everyone who comes in contact with it — your employees, as well as your customers or members. The right tools should make employees’ days more productive, customer interactions more enjoyable and personal, and outcomes swifter and more accurate.

What it takes:

• Tools that see your customer from every vantage point, so loan processing, customer onboarding, in-person interactions and account status are up to date, accurate and personalized

• Automated communication management tools that help your customers or members get the information they need, when they need it and on the channel where they prefer to consume it

• A system that eliminates manual or repetitive tasks so employees can focus on high-value work

> Learn more | How automation can position mortgage lenders for smart growth

8. Secure your system with a foundation-up strategy

What it means: Your enterprise is only as safe as its least-secure app or integration, so keeping private data safe needs to be a central part of your business strategy. Leading ECM solutions improve security by providing must-haves such as automated data classification, records and retention management, data encryption, role-based controls and more.

What it takes:

• Tight integrations with line-of-business applications

• A platform that simplifies app building and gives firms the ability to rapidly customize solutions

• The ability to apply and maintain granular levels of security

9. Be prepared for the next bend in the road

What it means: The pace of change in the financial world demands constant evolution and adjustments, so keep an eye to the horizon for new forks in the road.

What it takes:

• An executive and corporate culture supportive of innovation

• Input and participation from the people who will use the technology

• A strategy for connecting technology with the business processes that provide the most value