Speaking ahead of this month's Software AG Digital Business Day in Johannesburg, Gareth Whitaker, Presales Director at Software AG South Africa, says Africa does not lag behind the world in terms of financial services innovation, and in some areas leads by example.
"We have seen the industry in Africa, especially in South Africa, coming to market with new services such as mobile banking, often driven by necessity, but leading the world in terms of digital innovation. Our continent has an entrepreneurial spirit and a willingness to change and constantly adapt that fuels the innovations we have seen in the financial services industry."
However, many local financial institutions are held back from developing further by legacy systems, manual procedures and siloed data, he notes.
"Local financial services organisations are keen to get a single view of the customer, improve efficiencies as well as optimise and automate processes. They also want to implement omni-channel to improve overall customer experience and make customer on-boarding and interaction much easier and simpler, but in many cases their ability to do so is hampered by back-end systems that don't offer enough flexibility to support ongoing change."
Most are moving to address these challenges, says Whitaker. "Local banks, intermediaries, insurance firms and other financial services are taking steps toward becoming agile digital enterprises. There is a lot more investment taking place in technologies to support agility and faster time to market, that can still leverage the existing systems and data, allowing organisations to optimally use what they already have, and then to extend with modern capabilities and to new channels."
"The time window to implement a new market opportunity or offering is shrinking, and your technology should allow you to capitalise on these valuable opportunities or gaps in the market, rather than being what prevents you from realising them."
However, which technologies are enjoying the most focus depends on where each enterprise is along its digital journey, he says.
"Ultimately, the entire back-end has to become a future-proof backbone supporting continuous and rapid change and agility. Organisations that are new to the digital journey still need to address master data management, process automation and integration issues, while others who are further along are now looking to capabilities like real time analytics, complex event processing, fraud detection, advanced customer experience solutions, and customer sentiment analysis."
"In the end, they need to integrate all these solutions in a way that allows data to flow smoothly through the organisation, they need to achieve a single view of it and be able to process it with real time visibility, and link it to customer touchpoints in a seamless secure way, with all the necessary governance and risk measures in place."
Software AG sees the Digital Bank of 2020 as one that is able to reimagine customer satisfaction through digital transformation, providing customers with a seamless omni-channel experience and providing staff with up-to-date customer insights, Whitaker says.
* Software AG will showcase its modular financial services-focused Digital Business Platform deployed by financial services organisations around the world at the Software AG Digital Business Day on 15 September, at The Park on 7 in Hyde Park, Johannesburg. Click here to RSVP.
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