Futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts that the technological singularity, the crucial moment when machines become smarter than humans, will happen in our lifetime. At the same time, it is estimated that 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created across the globe every day, and that is only a rough estimate. These numbers and statistics almost seem made up, but it puts into context the trajectory the world is on. And with further integration of the Internet of Things, this is only going to keep rising and rising. In 2006 it was estimated that there were 2 billion Internet of Things devices worldwide, by 2025 that figure is estimated to be 38.6 billion.
But what use is all that data to us?
It’s far too much for our human minds to fathom and by the time we get our heads around it, it will most likely be out of date. Ultimately, it is data insights that are of use to us, not raw 0s and 1s. For that, we are going to rely heavily on trending technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Advanced Analytics. As this technological revolution takes hold of society, no industry is going to be unaffected. For the financial services sector, the road to digitalisation is well underway, but in many ways, we have barely scratched the surface of what is possible.
So far, the emphasis of transformation has been focused on structured data but in many ways, using these technologies to unlock the value of unstructured data is the key to the future of financial services. Hidden within this unstructured data are insights into changing customer needs and wants which allow you to stay in touch with dynamically moving trends that push you and keep you ahead of your competitors.
Until now, the majority of the value businesses have found in data has been in their structured data. It is here that it has been relatively easy to automate processes such as assignments and requests. However, unstructured data is a lot more complicated. By unstructured data, I mean email exchanges, survey responses, and call centre interactions, all of which hold massive insight into customer behaviour but remains untapped due to the ambiguous nature of the data structure. For many organisations, this means this data is just sitting there untouched even though it undoubtedly contains the key to the way it will operate in the future.
As a heavily data-driven industry, analysis of this large quantity of data has the power to uncover new customer insight and the development of new services through digitisation. The trending digital disruption can be seen through the likes of Monzo, Tide, and Revolut, to name a few. With this disruption in the back of everyone’s mind, the challenge is: how do we blend what we know already and our existing workflows with digital analytics to enhance decision making?
With this in mind, what will the focus areas be?
Create Digital Capability
Consumers are moving away from plastic bank cards; they want to be able to manage their money and banking services in one place on their digital devices.
Modernise Legacy Systems
Differentiation in the financial services sector has become centred around personalisation of service delivery. More personalisation requires more data and full consolidation of interactions across the different channels available to customers. Moving from legacy on-premise to modern cloud solutions will be essential to achieving this goal.
Security and Privacy
This is a key ongoing concern for customers. The key to any financial services-customer relationship is trust. That trust is built up over a long period and lost in an instant when it comes to security and privacy.
How can ServiceNow and Crossfuze provide you with an effective solution?
Effectively every financial services organisation has the same four key challenges. You want to create a friendly, trusting experience for your customers; your staff want to work in an environment where it is easy for them to solve customer problems; you want modernised, automated and secure processes; you need robust, cost-effective risk and compliance. Underpinning all of this is data. Data supports each of these four challenges so it makes sense to bring all of these challenges onto a single platform, with a single data repository that allows you to forge seamless links between them.
ServiceNow helps you eliminate the roadblocks that have historically slowed down customer engagements. This is achieved by unifying the customer experience through a simple, consistent experience across all points of interaction. In the back-end, by consolidating all data and processes on a single platform, employees can automate routine, structured tasks and focus on personalising the customer experience. Full process and data visibility make it possible to drastically improve operational resilience by anticipating, preventing and rapidly recovering from any disruptions. This is because teams have the visibility to rapidly map threats and vulnerabilities back to their source to remediate them more effectively. Lastly, out-of-the-box regulator-approved reporting capabilities massively reduce compliance costs. Audit risks are diminished as real-time alerts are tracked and catalogued to keep a full record for audit purposes.
All of this relies on the power of data which is made possible by consolidating and structuring data in the ServiceNow Platform’s single data model, be it from a structured or unstructured source. If you are interested in finding out more about how Crossfuze can support you in your data mission by leveraging the ServiceNow platform to harness previously unattainable insight. Please get in touch at letstalk@crossfuze.com or reach out to me personally at oliver.nowak@crossfuze.com.
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