Regardless of why a financial institution begins their digital journey, successful financial institutions set a clear strategy from the beginning that will ensure they reach their goals. When planning for digital investment most business objectives align with one of three possible categories, increased efficiency, revenue generation and customer experience. However, most digital investments provide at least some indirect impacts to the customer even if that wasn’t the primary intent.
Increased efficiency, which looks to automate operational processes cutting time and costs, also positively impacts customer service by allowing agents to focus on customers over manual back office tasks.
Revenue generation goals seek to attract customers by providing new products and services in an increasingly competitive market. While the desired outcome is additional profits for the organization, both new and existing customers benefit from the resulting innovations.
In order to launch these transformative products and services quickly, institutions would be wise to investigate potential partnership options with fintech providers. This is often the key to not only bringing new products to market, but also delivering a delightful customer experience.
Leveraging the Power of Partnerships
Financial institutions should ask themselves: do they have the technology and personnel required to not only bring the product to market, but also support it long term?
Determining how to expand an existing team can be a challenging exercise, especially without a very clear goal in mind. Many organizations move to immediately staff and build solutions in-house based on high level goals, which can open them up to risk as there are significant costs associated with maintaining expertise, infrastructure and administrative staff.
The ultimate decision about where and how to situate resources must allow the financial institutions to enhance the customer experience without disrupting either the customer relationship or the institution’s internal teams. Get this right and the financial institution will generate more income opportunities while it retains existing customers. Get it wrong and the resources spent on the journey to digital will fail to generate a return.
With the explosion of fintech providers specializing in niche services and available development partners, it has never been easier for an organization to grow in a healthy way.
Partnering with a fintech service provider to bring their solution to market within your ecosystem is an excellent way to achieve desired outcomes without creating unneeded risk or disruption to your current business model. Both parties bring value to the table in this arrangement as the fintech is able to get priceless market and user insight during implementation and the financial institution is able to provide a more polished product to their customers at a lower cost.
If it is decided that your organization wants to own the solution, don’t assume that means you need to staff a full team internally. While we can attempt to forecast the direction a product will move when it launches, it is reckless to go all in and place your investment based on those assumptions. Staff augmentation can help financial institutions scale organically while the new product grows and more insight is gained into how it will evolve. While hourly labor costs are typically higher, it provides a low risk entry option to get through launch and initial support, at which point an organization is in a much better place to forecast resource needs.
A good digital strategy can unleash the potential of a financial institution’s workforce, both inside and outside the enterprise. If your institution is ready to get strategic about your digital journey, find out how our team can help you work through the tough questions that must be answered to ensure your financial institution’s digital strategy is sound.
