By Mikhail Kryuchkov, Director Global Markets, Diasoft
After analyzing technological innovations which appeared in the banking industry within the last 20-30 years, it is easy to conclude that all major banking breakthroughs were connected with the ways in which customers interact with banks and the speed and quality level of customer servicing.
It is well known today that the best banking products are created when customers are directly involved in their development. That is why financial institutions need new instruments to collaborate with customers, predict their needs and quicker adopt new approaches to customer interactions.
Requirements of the modern financial institutions
We live in the century of technological progress and innovations. To stay abreast of the changes, retain clients and meet the requirements of a new generation of customers, which cannot imagine life without various mobile devices and gadgets, banks should quickly develop and be flexible to meet and even exceed all of the most demanding requirements. They must offer their customers something new and exciting, provide them with value-added services, and make available to them new opportunities. To solve these tasks, banks have to create a single information environment, with the client placed into its center for him to be able to access and manage all the information he needs.
According to Gartner, by year-end 2015, 40% of all in-person interactions between banks and their customers will be initiated or completed using a tablet computer. This make banks pay increasingly more attention to the raise of the number of operations, which can be delivered through remote channels.
Remote channels are beneficial for both a bank and a client. Firstly, this means the reduction of tellers and even bank branches, for the latter this means considerable time-saving and convenience of personal fund management. It is clear that in order to reach this the bank has to expand its delivery channels to allow client access to the broadest range of bank operations and to also take measures to provide a higher level of information security. Only the most flexible and technologically advanced companies will easily adjust to the new business conditions and turn new challenges into business advantages.
This ends the era of rigid banking solutions built on irresponsive legacy technologies. Today, the banks focus on projects that can be delivered in a short period of time and allow them to drastically increase the level of customer servicing through the quick launch of new products and channels, real time response to ever changing market, customers’ demands and ongoing control of business performance.
Addressing and Predicting requirements
Modern remote banking solutions are mostly used to provide information services. Only part of them supports other services. These can be good reliable solutions but they are limited in their functionality. It was taken into consideration, when Diasoft, a leading provider of software solutions for the global financial industry, started the development of its innovative next-generation FLEXTERA solution for the front-to-back automation of the modern banking business. As soon as the bank configures new business processes in FLEXTERA Front Office, they automatically become available to tellers, bank agents, mobile banking users or remote banking users through every delivery channel. With FLEXTERA the most current and prospective operations can be transitioned into remote channels. This allows for reducing the cost of operations, relieves the tellers, and reduces operational expenses.
Providing the access to the integrated customer information, or a 360-degree view of the customer, FLEXTERA allows strengthening the bank’s competitive positions in the market through proactive communication with its clients and effective promotion of financial services based on the deep customer knowledge. The bank’s employee can check what services and products the client uses and analyze the history of his/her financial operations and previous interactions with the bank before coming up with a new offering.
With the SOA-based JavaEE FLEXTERA built in tight collaboration with IBM — a globally acknowledged SOA industry leader, the bank can continuously expand and streamline the specter of its financial services. The user friendliness of the solution significantly simplifies the work of end users, increases the speed and the quality of services. This allows for strengthening client loyalty, which in its turn facilitates the growth of the customer base.
Exceeding customers’ expectations
Leading banks, which include Sberbank, Alfa-Bank, Unistream, Investtradebank, BFA Bank, ISBANK, SMP Bank and etc., have chosen FLEXTERA to transform their operations. One of most recent projects` was delivered to VIB (Vietnam International Bank). Being one of Vietnam’s leading banks and a pioneer in reforming business activities, the bank always takes its customers as the focus and its service quality and innovative solutions as the business motto. To support its development aims, VIB has selected the cutting edge FLEXTERA suite of financial products. The first project involved the implementation of a centralized payment system that allowed the bank to centralize and raise the efficiency of its payment management processes and to reduce operating expenses associated with these processes. VIB is highly satisfied with the results of the first project that already allowed the bank to increase the level of its customers’ servicing. The bank embarked on other project with Diasoft that involve step-by-step automation of other critical business processes.
“The choice of FLEXTERA and Diasoft is not just the selection of a technology to support our today’s development. It is a thorough selection of a strategic partner for a long term development of our business. We believe that a multi-component FLEXTERA solution based on the most advanced technologies will allow us to streamline our business processes and increase the quality of our clients servicing”, said Mr. Tran Nhat Minh, VIB BOD member.
Discovering new opportunities
This year Diasoft has launched to the market FLEXTERA Framework Marketplace (AppStore) allowing for easier delivery of FLEXTERA components.
FLEXTERA Framework Marketplace is a centralized FLEXTERA developer portal and a new self-service tool providing customers with access to limitless opportunities, including: find and discover relevant solutions from our vast selection, access information about any application, download free-of-charge applications through the store, provide references/application reviews, share their own renovations, fix applications` prices, access purchase conditions for the paid apps, order customer` education programs and apply for consultation with Diasoft specialists.
FLEXTERA Framework Marketplace offers the opportunity for the clients to come together in the same place, gain more knowledge and control over what they buy. Diasoft believes that FLEXTERA Framework Marketplace will serve as a groundbreaking environment for the ongoing innovations and will drive the development of our clients businesses.
Diasoft doesn`t stop the technological race and continues contributing into the functional expansion and technological enhancement of FLEXTERA solutions. The company implements into its system the best global technological achievements and improves the system ergonomics (both for the user and the administrator). To follow market demands, FLEXTERA can be deployed using a cloud (cloud-ready) and supports multi-tenancy. Diasoft has a dedicated department which works together with IBM cloud division and ensures the system availability on the principles of SaaS.
In 2013 Diasoft started to invest into StartUp companies of financial software market. The company invested into cloud-based business intelligence company (Seeneco), as well as plan to invest in one more company which has an innovative product complementary to FLEXTERA modules.
FLEXTERA has become the first solution certified to comply with 3 out of 4 available domains of the IBM Banking Industry Framework. Due to its technological and business advantages, the solution is named a finalist of the IBM Beacon Awards 2013 in the banking industry category. The most important, Diasoft with its FLEXTERA solution is positioned as a leader in Gartner Magic Quadrant for International Retail Core Banking 2013 — the leading analytical research in the banking industry analyzing the most advanced international banking solutions.
Conclusion
FLEXTERA is a huge step forward in the evolution of banking solutions. The state-of-the-art technology and SOA principles implemented in the core of FLEXTERA allow banks to create new products in days and change business processes in the real time mode. The solution flexibly responds to the modern business needs and meets the most ambitious aims of the most dynamic financial institutions. FLEXTERA’s automation of business processes can reduce branch opening costs by up to 60 percent, while boosting the efficiency of existing branches by up to 40 percent and reducing operational costs by up to 30 percent.