Transforming Business Operations In Global Banking

By M. Isi Eromosele

Transforming and standardizing business processes is, of course, central to any operating model modernization project. All manual processes that remain should be reviewed and automated if possible; and all automated processes should be reviewed and standardized.

Straight-through processing should be the objective where achievable. There are three broad categories of software that can help banks transform their operations:

• Core banking, for managing customer accounts and their financial transactions.
• Customer service, for making it possible for to provide a seamless service.
• Revenue management and billing, for improving the billing of corporate and retail customers and avoiding “revenue leakage” (i.e. failing to bill accurately, on time, or at all, for services provided).

Core Banking

Core banking software can be tailored to suit any banking segment: direct, Islamic, wholesale, treasury, commercial and private banking. It also offers a much wider range of features and benefits than earlier versions, so it is important that banks check whether their software provides or can do the following:

• Straight-through-processing 24 hours a day, seven days a week of large transaction volumes to reduce cost and increase speed and efficiency
• Online validations
• Automated exceptions handling to reduce cost and increase efficiency.
• A highly secure data management system that complies with regulatory requirements and can be integrated easily with third-party solutions
• An application architecture that uses Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) for business processes, is service-oriented (i.e. Service Oriented Architecture) and is web-services based.
• Works on multiple delivery channels, including branches, ATMs, point-of-sale terminals, call centers, mobiles and internet banking
• An XML web-based user interface with context-sensitive help.
• Can be easily integrated with existing systems using flexible Java Platform, Enterprise Edition technology.
• Operational risk controls, including limits, collateral and non-performing assets

Customer Service

Contact center and branch staff can do a more efficient job if they use the latest customer service software, as it will make them an integral part of the bank’s total sales, marketing and service delivery strategy. It will help them to handle service, support and sales seamlessly across all communications channels, thereby improving service delivery while lowering costs.

The latest contact center software should include the following features:

• A 360-degree view of the customer relationship to enable more relevant and targeted sales offers and improved customer experiences.
• Computer telephony integration (CTI) to identify customers before conversations begin and provide instant customer record screens to agents.
• A customer dashboard to present a comprehensive view of critical customer information.
• A contact management module to provide complete histories of all customer interactions.
• A household management module to provide complete profiles of economically affiliated individuals.
• A contextual search feature to retrieve information from anywhere in the application.
• Workflow management, to route and track tasks throughout their life cycles.
• Integrated email management to respond automatically to customer emails without staff intervention
• Contact centre and service analytics to provide pre-built dashboards and ad hoc analysis that are personalized, relevant, and easy to use.

 Similarly, the best branch teller software should offer some of the above, where relevant, plus:

• Comprehensive branch teller functionality to provide transactional functionality, operational control and actionable customer information, including a complete set of teller and supervisor transactions and a full set of support services
• Streamlined transaction processing via an easy-to-use interface with keyboard short cuts and accelerator keys, pre-built integration with peripherals and devices and pre-filled, authenticated, and automatic transaction processing where appropriate.
• Improved operational efficiencies driven by centralizing business processes and operational information that traditionally exists in each branch server, such as electronic journal, cash management, user administration and fee management.
• Targeted and effective teller referrals, to maximize cross-selling opportunities through targeted actionable offers and alerts supporting intelligent referral-follow-up routed in real-time to a branch sales agent.
• Actionable business intelligence, through campaign and sales effectiveness reports, analysis, predictive modeling and alerts
• Advanced J2EE technology to create open standards lowering costs and improving IT responsiveness.

Revenue Management And Billing

Revenue leakage is a persistent problem that is hard to fix. It is caused by a bank’s failure to correctly charge customers, either by quoting a too-low price in the first place, by invoicing for a lower amount once the job is done, by failing to chase outstanding invoices or by failing to invoice at all.

Those leakage points need to be identified, quantified and stopped. Software exists to do that.

A best-in-class application will include tools that provide a robust platform with the flexibility necessary to serve as an enterprise billing application for services across lines of business.

With these tools a bank will be able to: increase revenue and cash flow, create auditable consolidated customer bills across multiple lines of business, support complex pricing agreements, manage high-volume billing cycles, implement rules-based collections, automate the investigation of billing variances, perform quick bill reconciliation and reduce manual processing, and offer multilingual and multicurrency support.

The application should also be scalable, so that new products and services can be added to customer contracts, high volumes of invoices can be processed for major customers and marketing campaigns can be integrated with billing.

The potential benefits are numerous:

• Reduced revenue leakage: banks should be able to find unbilled revenue, bill according to contract terms, eliminate billing errors, and assess late fees.
• Increased account penetration: the bank will be able to cross and up-sell new products with competitive pricing.
• Additional customer revenue: it will allow the quick introduction of new products and repricing of existing products.
• Lower operating expenses: billing can be consolidated into a single enterprise class billing solution.
• Enhanced customer satisfaction, because customers have access to their account balances and transaction histories.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

Copyright Control © 2012 Oseme Group