5 Ways to Boost Banking Productivity
Jenna Trott
5 min read | SEPTEMBER 14, 2022
Your answers may range from market instability to changing customer values or even employee shortages. And each of these challenges can certainly be significant contributing factors to stunted company growth and revenue. But oftentimes, there is a larger, less obvious culprit behind revenue losses that banks overlook – system inefficiencies.
What are system inefficiencies exactly? This Includes things like: cumbersome manual processes (client onboarding, underwriting and accounts payable), working within information silos, and using inaccurate reporting and outdated tools – to name a few. And the price you’ll pay for system and process inefficiencies is striking. According to the research firm IDC, inefficiency can cost banks anywhere from 20% to 30% of their revenue every year. Further, companies that operate in an environment like this can critically impede business longevity as well.
So, without further ado, here are 5 ways to reduce revenue loss within your bank by boosting productivity.
1. Invest in Modern Core Technologies
Adopting digital banking capabilities is not the future for financial institutions – it is very much so the present. Having a cloud-native, component-based core is essential as it enables financial institutions to scale at speeds that will support their development goals without disrupting the client experience. These days, banking institutions’ responsibilities have gone beyond simply offering sound financial advice. Now, they must have an in-depth knowledge of each customer, paint a full financial picture, have premier communication and do it all faster than ever before. This can feel like a monumental task, but luckily there are a number of cloud-native, component-based systems that can seamlessly integrate with your original system.
Salesforce is a commonly suggested solution due to its robust features and customizable capabilities that work for any industry. But for the banking industry, Salesforce addresses the unique challenge of consistently meeting customer expectations without disrupting your workflow. Benefits Include:
- Easily track customer data across channels
- Provide intelligent data insights to better understand and anticipate client needs
- Create personalization at scale
- Create a digital-first banking experience that customers have come to expect
- Simplify marketing efforts and make them more effective
- Streamline and simplify time consuming efforts
- Access critical business insights from any device, anywhere
Further, studies have shown that utilizing Salesforce can Increase loan sales by 29% and can improve customer satisfaction by more than 47%. A Salesforce implementation can help your bank be there for clients in moments of need, while sustaining a competitive advantage.
2. Automate Business Processes
“Automation” is more than just a buzzword. Financial institutions, but specifically banks, should see automation as a key opportunity to implement technology that offers a significant return on investment now and in the future. Let’s see how automation can help to transform your bank.
Let’s consider loan origination. A traditionally document heavy business process with many multi-step tasks, loan origination can quickly become Incredibly time-consuming before even considering the many industry compliance requirements, internal audits and process controls. Beyond that, the lending process has its own set of sub-processes and each of those sub-processes has its own tasks, regulations and requirements…which equals even more people and document-intensive tasks. Phew. By automating this process, lenders can significantly cut costs and save time by minimizing repetitive administrative tasks, streamline proposals, and keeping the entire team in the loop with just a few clicks. Other areas that can be streamlined and simplified with automation Include:
- Eliminate manual document review
- Accelerate client onboarding
- Ensure all client data is up to date and accurate
- Provide real-time auditing to minimize risk and ensure compliance
- Simplify recruiting, onboarding and separation within HR
3. Consider Simplification Tools
Simplify, simplify, simplify. If there’s one thing technology has gifted us, it’s the capacity to make hard work much, much easier. One of the greatest things about Salesforce is their Appexchange, which is a cloud marketplace hosting over 7,000 apps to help you solve unique business challenges and accelerate digital transformation. A great tool for banking industries is the Encompass Connector for Salesforce. A superior loan origination tool for credit unions, banks, and other mortgage/lending companies, Encompass acts as an all-in-one mortgage management solution. Easily streamline the loan origination process, help advisors navigate changing regulations and simplify complex workflows to close loans more quickly. This will not only aid your banking institution in maximizing profits, but also help to turn today’s customers into lifelong clients.
4. Accurate Data and Reporting
It’s no secret that data is the lifeline behind any business, but it can be Incredibly useful in boosting productivity as well. Recent studies have shown that 58% of employers observe their data-literate employees making faster and better decisions than their non-data-literate employees. Data-driven decision making is an essential component that’s needed to make important real time decisions. Within the banking industry, there is an enormous amount of data involved and your team could be struggling to make sense of it all which can significantly hinder work processes. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a tool that could easily prep and clean data to extract meaningful insight no matter what condition the data is in?
This is the clarity banks can expect to gain from CRM Analytics. CRM Analytics from Salesforce is a highly intelligent cloud-based analytics and business intelligence (BI) solution that delivers superior visualizations and predictions directly in the Salesforce customer account or opportunity page. It gives your team the ability to extract data from any source and automatically analyzes hundreds or thousands of rows of data to assist with answering your business’s most critical questions, quickly and with easy to read visuals. Banking institutions that utilize CRM Analytics not only report 38% faster decision making capabilities but also a 22% Increase in productivity as well.
5. Create a 360 Degree View of Client Information
Imagine that you’re on a make or break call with a client – the difference between them staying with your bank or leaving could be as simple as your ability to personalize their experience. Having a full picture of your client with rich data that’s easily accessible when you need it most, enables you to provide better service for your clients instead of wracking your brain for important details during these critical moments. What if instead, everything you needed to know and more was conveniently housed in one place? Customer 360 from Salesforce easily unifies digital channels to connect your contact center and provide streamlined customer services to clients. Whether connecting in-person or online, facilitate real-time collaboration from anywhere to ensure that your clients are getting help from the right agent at the right time. On average, employees spend 1.8 hours per day searching for and gathering information. What does this mean for your company? That translates to roughly 9 hours per week or 450 hours per year. That’s a lot of time your team can get back to instead focus on turning today’s clients into lifelong customers.
We hope you found this guide on boosting productivity within banking industries helpful! If you’re looking to kickstart your journey to more efficient workflows, we can help!
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