Staying competitive in the Digital Age
Digital innovations are rapidly transforming the financial services industry. The underlying technologies have been in place for some time—including cloud, big data, mobile devices, and the IoT. Meanwhile, advances in artificial intelligence and blockchain capabilities are setting the stage for continued market disruption.
To gain a competitive edge, financial service companies are modernizing their IT infrastructures and upgrading business platforms to increase operational efficiency, improve the customer experience, and optimize return on investment.
At BACS, we leverage our extensive technical and business planning expertise to help banks, insurance companies, and other financial services firms create IT strategies and implement technology to drive business growth and accelerate performance. Our portfolio of IT services and solutions are grounded in best practice principles gained through years of IT infrastructure planning, design, and management experience.
Whether you are upgrading technology, developing a compliance strategy, or changing business models, BACS can help you meet your immediate and long-term goals. With extensive domain and technology expertise, our consultants can assist you at different stages of technology adoption, helping you make smart investment decisions that support your unique business goals.
Adapting to the Business Model of the Future
The digital age offers unprecedented opportunity, but to succeed, you need a technology framework that can readily adapt to today’s shifting demands. For the financial services sector, agile business platforms and adaptable technology are at the center of the operating model of the future. To compete successfully, you need systems that can readily scale and seamlessly integrate with legacy infrastructure without requiring wholesale replacements.
At BACS, our focus is on helping you effectively manage and support your IT operation for continuous improvement. Our flexible delivery models are designed to meet your specific needs while minimizing the impact on your business. We closely analyze your workflows, tracking performance to identify security gaps, uncover weaknesses, and pinpoint areas of improvement.
The potential is huge, but the path to digital transformation presents a number of formidable challenges. Effectively implementing modern infrastructure requires competent technical expertise and the ability to integrate systems and applications across disparate functional and geographic environments. When properly designed and implemented, modern, agile IT infrastructure can provide a powerful competitive advantage.
Several major disrupting factors are poised to have a substantial impact on the financial services model of the future and are driving much of today’s change.
- The IoT: Banks are combining the IoT and big data to gain better insight into customer behavior and deliver more personalized service. This same intelligence allows banks to build partnerships with brands that can push relevant offers to customers in specific geographic or demographic sectors, enabling even greater customization. Through the use of intelligent, connected devices, financial services companies are gaining more opportunities to refine their operations with tighter processes, better decisions, and more targeted offers.
- Artificial Intelligence: One technology that is paying big dividends in the financial industry is artificial intelligence. Companies are increasingly using AI’s enormous processing power to analyze vast amounts of data in near real-time, helping to mitigate risk across a variety of areas. Meanwhile, cognitive computing tools are allowing security teams to analyze transaction details to help identify early signs of fraud, identity theft, money laundering, and other criminal activity.
- Platform Flexibility: As the importance of technology integration intensifies, financial services companies are looking to replace rigid, monolithic platforms with agile, adaptable infrastructure. This agility is especially important to businesses operating in highly regulated industries such as banking and insurance. If applications can’t be easily upgraded to accommodate new functionality (to support shifting mandates), completely new systems may be required, driving up costs and cutting into profits.
- Process Automation: The need for faster transaction speed is driving the demand for more automated processes for high-frequency tasks. Robotic process automation is a good example. Automated tools can help reduce the potential for human error, allowing companies to improve productivity while minimizing manual intervention. With robotic processes, sensors replace human hands, resulting in increased accuracy, less waste of time and materials, and improved workflows.
Managing the Complexities of Security and Compliance
The path toward transformation begins with an assessment of your IT capabilities, prioritizing the key areas that need immediate attention. A detailed roadmap provides a coordinated method of managing changes to business priorities as they evolve. This is an area where BACS can deliver substantial value.
We devise innovative digital strategies that are aligned with business goals and changing market conditions. Our services are designed to optimize IT performance and efficiency while helping to ensure the security and reliability of mission-critical business processes.
IT security is major concern for all business, but is especially top of mind for businesses operating in highly regulated markets, like financial services. According to one report, from 2017 to 2018, data breaches involving financial services firms increased by 480 percent.
A security breach or exposure of confidential data can result in lost business, compliance risks, and a damaged reputation. As cybersecurity becomes increasingly more sophisticated, many companies lack the in-house expertise needed to build a solid, coherent security strategy.
At BACS, we not only understand the latest security trends, but we are well-equipped to accurately define your business requirements and implement a plan that aligns with your current and long term needs. We combine cutting-edge security techniques with a strategic, multi-layered approach to help strengthen your defenses, comply with regulatory mandates, and protect your vital business assets from new and emerging threats.
As your business needs change, more focus is needed to ensure that technical delivery functions and business continuity plans are designed, implemented, managed and controlled in a consistent manner.
BACS provides a holistic approach to risk management and compliance that defines what is most important to you, helping you protect confidential financial data from unauthorized access and also to react quickly when systems are compromised. We work closely with you to assess your current situation and develop a disaster recovery strategy that safeguards critical systems and data, and manages ongoing threats.
Keeping up with fast-changing compliance mandates is another major challenge for financial services companies. Because of the complexities involved and the shifting nature of the compliance landscape, many companies struggle just to meet minimum standards.
BACS consultants understand the intricacies and nuances of regulated environments and work to ensure your technology investments align with your business priorities and will fully meet new and emerging mandates. With daily reporting, quarterly reviews, and personalized training, your team can focus on strategy and growth, rather than worrying about keeping track of constantly changing requirements.
BACS relentlessly pushes the envelope in our effort to help you get more from your people, processes, technology. Our consultants are well-versed in the importance of integrating IT into your overall business strategy. We help you take full advantage of the opportunities a proactive IT approach enables, whether it’s growing revenue, capturing market share, or enhancing the customer experience.
Our team of consultants will help you:
- Define and clarify your vision and strategic imperatives
- Analyze and identify opportunities, risks, and weaknesses in your technology environment
- Prioritize decisions based on your unique business goals and objectives
- Leverage technology and internal resources for optimum efficiency and scale
- Meet industry standards of compliance, security and uptime
Leveraging Technology for Maximum Business Advantage
As financial services companies become adaptable to change and innovation, technology decisions have gained more importance, especially when they are linked to new product launches, changing business models, or new market opportunities. While every business will build their strategy based on their individual needs and goals, the digital model of the future provides a framework for how financial services companies can bolster their competitive position in a fast-changing world.
Seeking greater efficiency and agility, many banks and other financial service businesses are rethinking their approach to IT deployments, thanks to new modular, cloud-based options. Determining the right cloud approach begins with a careful evaluation of your business goals, operational requirements, internal resources, and a host of other factors. The process can be challenging and often involves tradeoffs and balancing competing priorities to deliver the business impact you desire.
Cloud planning must consider current, as well as future requirements, so it’s essential to build flexible scenarios into your cloud strategy. Your cloud infrastructure should be able to efficiently scale to meet shifting workload demands, improve operational efficiency, and avoid vendor lock-in.
BACS consultants work with you to shape and define your vision, optimizing resources and technology for superior performance and scale. We’ll evaluate your IT infrastructure and internal capabilities and assess your deployment options.
Central to developing a sound cloud strategy is understanding the capabilities and requirements of your current IT environment. This means identifying the types of applications you run and anticipated shifts in capacity demands and resources. With better insight into how applications and services are being created, accessed, and altered, you can better determine the optimum configuration for your business needs.
BACS consultants will work with you to create model that provides a solid foundation for innovation and growth. Whether you are planning a new cloud project or seeking to update your existing infrastructure to meet new business demands, we’ll help you create a cloud environment that’s streamlined, efficient and secure.
Like with any technology investment, there are certain risks that come along with the benefits. Mitigating these risks and capitalizing on the full potential of cloud requires a careful, pragmatic approach, factoring in core infrastructure needs, risk elements, performance requirements, and cost efficiency.
Cloud strategy requires sound infrastructure planning and a long-term perspective. BACS’s experienced cloud experts listen to your needs and the goals you’re aiming to achieve. We partner with leading with solution providers to help bring your IT operation into a new level of performance and efficiency..
Optimize Business Value with the Right Technology Support
To capitalize on the opportunities presented in the digital economy, financial companies need an expert partner that is up to the task. BACS uses its deep business application knowledge and understanding of how technology will impact business models to help guide you to the right solution. Our expert consultants understand the complexities and challenges of application integration and deployment and work to ensure your solutions align with your priorities and will scale appropriately.
As the rate of business change continues to accelerate, your IT infrastructure needs to keep pace. At BASC, we begin with a review of your mission, vision, and goals so that we can determine how best to leverage your technology and software investments to deliver optimum business value. We will work with you to create a strategy that aligns with your goals and can scale to meet shifting business needs.
Our insight and experience working in highly-regulated industries such as banking and finance helps ensure accurate, complete solutions to our customers. From designing IT security and business continuity programs and integrating those practices across the enterprise, we can help ensure that your infrastructure and business software investment decisions are built on a firm foundation.
In the age of technology, IT is no longer a “support” item on the budget. It is now a critical enabler of business growth. Whether you’re seeking to upgrade your existing technology, or make a complete transition to the cloud, our team of experts will make your transition fast, efficient and cost effective. We help you shape, refine and execute a business application plan that optimizes your investment, minimizes risk, and drives competitive advantage.
For more information on our IT service capabilities for the financial services sector, please contact us!
