Polski
The rapid flow of customers to digital channels has become a real test for the Internet infrastructure of banks – especially the ones that targeted their services at businesses and enterprises. For many, such a transformation proved to be a challenge intensified by the changing preferences of target groups. The decision to rebuild the technology is not easy – but many arguments are showing that it is worth it.
Digital solutions ahead of business banking
Currently, there are two forms of business systems in banks:
- Less common – banks with one platform that provides customers with access to various banking products.
- More common – banks with separate solutions, often with separate login methods, each focused on one or several bank products.
In the era of remote technologies, the latter of those solutions turned out to be a big challenge for both customers and the bank’s employees who support them in technical matters. This situation was also aggravated by the extensive digital transformation process forced by cost optimization, the need to increase competitiveness and the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. All these factors made the decision on technological changes inevitable for many financial institutions.
Unfortunately, even before the pandemic, making the call to replace or thoroughly rebuild solutions for corporate clients was difficult. COVID-19 has only exacerbated this trend. Such an approach may be a result of a lack of a holistic view of the current situation of banking systems and the desire to quickly satisfy only the basic needs of customers. This, in turn, may result in a fragmentation of digital services, which, however, is a major obstacle for businesses that would like to use them.
Corporate clients’ expectations and banking reality
The area of corporate customer service is a perfect example of a system that is more beneficial when build in the form of one platform offering many functionalities. Why? Because of the multitude of areas they cover, the high level of complexity and the use of services from various bank systems to implement the business process. It is also important to avoid the trap of going back to a monolithic solution. The construction of the platform in the microservice architecture at a later stage of use allows for later expansion and adaptation of the technology to future changes.
Additionally, quoting McKinsey’s article: “The platform play: How to operate like a tech company”, the bank’s IT ecosystem should divide components and solutions into three-dimensional groups:
- Customer-journey platforms
- Business-capability platforms
- Core IT platforms
Based on these tips, it’s easy to see that a well-designed business banking platform that supports a wide range of banking services and allows you to:
- Provide complete business processes with comprehensive validation of provided data, which further automates the processing of customer orders.
- Access the data from various bank systems and their aggregation to obtain a better overall picture by the client.
- Optimize operational costs by eliminating processing manual data from one system to another and possible human errors.
- Optimize maintenance costs by minimizing redundant functions and processes in many systems.
- Standardize banking processes (e.g., granting and controlling customer privileges is the same process for all banking products and services).
All these elements should be connected with each other so that business processes can move freely between them.
The guarantee of success in all these areas should be the verification of the bank’s strategy and mission as the entire organization (Mission Control Committee). Only such a view allows for a holistic approach to building a uniform and coherent platform. It is also a prerequisite for making strategic decisions allowing for investment planning in new areas, and optimization. In addition, it is also the basis for replacing existing technologies that need improvement or phasing out of those that are no longer valuable.
Comprehensive platform? It’s possible with Ailleron
According to the Forrester research from 2020, 46% of banks indicated “Improve our use of data insights in business decision-making” as one of their business priorities, which directly shows the willingness to build a coherent platform. However, many banks do not know where to look for such solutions, what makes it difficult for them to make the right decision. In such a situation, the knowledge, products and know-how provided by Ailleron are crucial. Ailleron is the creator of the Corporate and Business Banking platform intended for servicing business and corporate customers, written entirely in a microservice approach. We implement projects replacing the platforms owned by our clients with our solution or extending the existing programs with the technologies we provide.
In addition, Ailleron can not only provide the platform itself, but also co-create a strategy and plan for the entire process (participation in the Mission Control Committee) to make it as safe as possible. As part of the implementation, we often propose changes that affect the entire ecosystem in which our platform operates.
Learn more about our Corporate and Business Banking solutions for desktop channel and mobile access!
