Innovative information management: How financial services can drive digital transformation forward

By Colin Dean, Major Accounts Director at M-Files

Colin Dean, Major Accounts Director, M-Files

Customers today demand instant information access and a seamless digital experience. At the same time, financial services are being hit with a range of traditional challenges such as increased regulation, economic uncertainty, and the rise of challenger banks. Financial services are having to deal with traditional challenges, whilst at the same time evolving at the same pace with new market challenges.

Conquering these tests requires organisations to implement business strategies and technologies that drive enhanced document management, improve collaboration, and secure compliance processes, as well as help team members instantly find the right information in any context.

With this in mind, how can financial institutions deliver a seamless customer experience by eradicating existing digital issues?

Automate manual processes

Costly and outdated workflow processes are manually intensive and are an ideal area to consider overhauling with the power of automation.

For finance organisations, the decision to automate manual processes will save time and therefore improve both productivity and output.

Processes such as loan origination, client onboarding, compliance, and servicing will become seamless due to automation. Furthermore, finance professionals will realise the benefits of automation by eradicating the costly effects of human error.

Saving time and money by automating workflow through intelligent document management is a win-win for any financial organisation. Making such changes will offer a better customer experience and, therefore, a competitive edge over the rest of the industry which remains reluctant to embrace digitalisation.

The privacy perspective

With cyberattacks continuing to rise, finance organisations should not overlook the importance of workflow security. Ensuring robust security is placed at the centre of information workflow will be another feather in the cap of finance organisations.

Intelligent workflow solutions offer finance teams better peace of mind by offering file encryption and intrusion detection. This level of data privacy offerings found in metadata-driven document management platforms guarantees a vigorous security offering at a time when data privacy continues to be placed under the microscope.

The security benefits on offer when it comes to data and privacy are priceless to finance teams. This level of security ensures minimal disruption and speeds up processes. Delays and oversights are often the norm when approving financial agreements. But with intelligent workflow management, disruption is kept at a minimum—privacy/data issues are less likely.

Don’t forget the environment

Banking and finance teams have traditionally used a lot of paper over the years. Digitising business information will dramatically reduce industry paper consumption. At the same time, there is a balance to strike when it comes to digitising as it could also produce complications to processes and therefore hinder the customer experience.

But this doesn’t have to be the case with intelligent workflow solutions, powered by a metadata-driven document management platform. The customer experience does not have to be compromised for the sake of environmental improvements. What this means for financial services is that they are no longer hindered by manually scanning and tagging digital information. With the assistance of AI technologies such as natural language understanding (NLU) and natural language processing (NLP), metadata is automatically and intelligently created and defined.

Eradicating data silos

The problem in today’s SaaS-driven world is that information about customers, products, and services often exists in multiple applications, databases, and files. Finance teams have, for too long now, been slowed down by the impact data silos have had on workflow management and processes.

Finance teams who choose to adopt intelligent workflow management will help make said data silos a thing of the past. Storing crucial finance documents across a variety of folders, libraries, and sites can often lead to defective workflow and thus have a knock-on effect on the customer experience.

Intelligent document management harnesses a ‘single-user interface’ approach. What this means is that information and workflow can be stored and accessed in any system and source-connected to the workflow solution. This leads to eradicating data silos and bolstering document management and accessibility.

Intelligent workflow management is the future

Financial documents are obviously an integral part of the finance process and must be stored securely, and yet still easily accessible. Finance teams can solve a lot of their issues by adopting intelligent workflow solutions, and their customers will feel better off for it too.

Offering a customer journey by automating traditionally manual processes often associated with finance teams will offer a quicker and more seamless experience. Customers and finance teams will also have better peace of mind from a privacy perspective because of intelligent workflow management. Finally, improving finance teams’ green initiatives and eradicating the age-old headache that is data silos all compound together to provide a safer and more secure end-to-end process for finance teams and their customers.

If the right document management solutions are adopted, financial services will successfully eradicate age-old issues brought on by ignoring digitalisation.