How digitalization in financial services optimizes security, operations, and customer service

While there is nothing inherently wrong with manual processes — like printing and mailing documents, storing paperwork in filling cabinets, and collecting data via physical forms — they can affect your bottom line. Buying ink, paper, and stamps, and maintaining printers and shredders can add up, especially for large organizations.

Automation helps reduce these unnecessary costs — and save employees time — by turning everyday processes into workflows. An example is robotic process automation (RPA), an entry-level automation that uses software “bots” to mimic human actions and execute repetitive, mundane tasks quickly with little input.

Using powerful approval automation software, you can authorize or deny form submissions, send customized notification emails, reassign tasks, request additional information, and escalate issues — all with the click of a button. This type of digitalization boosts collaboration, increases productivity, and minimizes backlogs.

Financial services has a reputation as a secure and streamlined industry, as shown in the innovation of customer-facing applications like mobile banking and investment platforms. And according to Nick Bantick, intelligent automation consultant at DigiBlu, an internationally recognized leader in intelligent automation, “This reputation doesn’t always translate to the rest of the business, where there are many opportunities to improve efficiency and auditability.

Digitization and automation of processes is absolutely necessary to match the standard set in the go-to-market applications. Standardization of data is key to efficiency gains and best-practice compliance and at DigiBlu we use a combination of tools, including Jotform Enterprise, to achieve this. The impact on operational efficiency, internal employees, and customer experience is transformative.”

Investing in a no-code mobile app builder is another surefire way to optimize your financial services operations. These ingenious tools help finance professionals of all programming backgrounds create apps that store financial data, keep project collaborators on the same page, track employee expenses, function as a client dashboard, and manage personal finances.

Apps help you improve the user experience, stand out from the competition, better engage with clients and employees, and streamline productivity. Depending on your needs, you can create an app that’s shared with a simple URL, or reach larger audiences in the Apple App Store and Google Play with a native app solution.

As mentioned above, software with e-signature capabilities can help various financial institutions banks, insurance companies, and brokerage firms improve brand trust and data security. E-signature solutions can also shorten sales cycles and streamline internal processes by allowing you to build and customize reusable contracts and disclosure documents; track, download, and store signed, legally binding documents; and include e-documents in your approval workflows or apps.

The right e-signature platform will even allow you to set expiration dates for your e-documents requesting they be signed and returned by a specific deadline. This feature is especially helpful if you’re working with a large number of collaborators, routing contracts tied to interest rates or market events, or just need to keep projects moving forward.

Thanks to robust online form builders, you can create and share fully customizable, on-brand client forms, feedback surveys, and other e-documents from the palm of your hand.

Simply choose a ready-made template or build a form from scratch, customize it to match your branding, add form fields and engaging widgets, and share it with your employees or clients via link or embed it on your company website. The best online form builders even integrate with the world’s most popular apps from project management tools to email marketing services to ensure your brand look and messaging is consistent across emails, your website, display ads, mailers, and client dashboards.

Workplace collaboration can be stressful enough without having to worry about how you’re going to define roles, assign tasks, share documents, and collect and manage data to keep everyone on the same page. Add on-site and remote collaborators to the mix and you’ve got a recipe for potential miscommunication.

However, if you invest in shared online workspaces, you can help team members collaborate and communicate internally and externally — whether they’re working on-site, across town, or out of the country. These solutions allow users to create online teams, set access permissions, and build, share, and edit forms, reports, and contracts to stay connected, maintain compliance, and work smarter, not harder.

Digitalization in financial services can optimize operations by automating your entire reporting process, including how data is collected, analyzed, and presented.

Say you’re considering launching a new financial planning division at your bank but aren’t sure where to start. Are your customers primarily interested in wealth accumulation, preservation, or distribution? To find out, send an online survey to some of your most active clients to better understand their financial needs and goals, and whether or not they would be interested in learning about your product offerings.

Once you’ve collected your data, use a report builder to convert your survey’s responses into polished, visual reports to help you articulate your findings to colleagues and shareholders. In no time, you’ll know exactly which financial planning stage your sales and marketing teams should prioritize.

Best of all, with the right reporting software, you’ll be able to share your collected data in real time. This gives your entire organization — from sales and customer service to quality assurance and marketing — the information they need to make informed, relevant, up-to-date decisions about which products to offer and when to launch them.

Consumers expect personalization from brands and often favor those that offer engagement and interactivity — as well as high-quality products and services — over those that don’t.

These tailor-made experiences are possible with customer segmentation. By delivering personalized messaging to best-fit consumers across a wide variety of advertising channels, you can provide fast, inexpensive, and accurate services while simultaneously ensuring key customers feel heard, seen, and valued. As a result, you’re more likely to gain long-term customers from your target audience.

Fast response times make customers feel important and reduce the likelihood they’ll contact you through other channels, which can double your workload. Consistently providing prompt, reliable service can separate you from your competition.

Due to the public’s ever-growing digital privacy concerns, new laws and regulations have been cropping up over the past few years, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and several protections enforced by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

The GDPR is the world’s strictest data privacy and security law, and requires data controllers to properly collect, process, and erase personal information — like name, address, gender, ethnicity, etc. — or be subject to hefty fines. Under the GDPR, if you process data, you must do so according to seven data protection principles.

Part of the GDPR is the right to be forgotten (RTFB), which gives consumers the right to ask organizations to remove their personal data to minimize the risk of data leaks and identity theft. However, an organization only has to erase the data if, for example, it’s no longer necessary for the organization to retain the individual’s personal data, the organization is using the data for direct marketing that the individual opposes, or the organization has processed the data unlawfully.

By automating customer data management, processing, storage, and deletion, the best financial services solutions and risk assessment tools help you remain compliant with the GDPR, the RTFB, and other major data protection laws and regulations. They also allow relationship managers to serve clients more efficiently, which results in higher revenue and lower operational costs.

While workplace collaboration can have its challenges (e.g., undefined roles and expectations, employee rivalries, office politics), with the right software, it can streamline customer service and optimize help desk training within your financial institution.

By giving managers access to employee training checklists, progress quiz and test templates, and trainer/trainee feedback forms, you can ensure consistent service levels across your organization. Shared workspaces and databases can also help your employees learn how to work together toward common goals, navigate different personalities and challenges, and develop active listening skills, which can all translate into successful customer service.

Technology can help you grow and scale your business faster than ever before. Today, a CPA, financial adviser, and tax attorney can use a comprehensive software solution — jam-packed with a wide variety of collaboration tools, features, and integrations — to ensure their clients get the best possible service experience from beginning to end.

For a better understanding of how you can use tech in your specific subsector, check out how three types of financial institutions are leveraging digital productivity tools, e-signature software, and shared online workspaces to improve their operational efficiency.

As a financial services professional, you know the importance of proper planning. Whether your client is a recent college graduate who needs assistance creating a budget, a small business owner who is setting up payroll for the first time, or an older investor looking to diversify their portfolio, you know how imperative it is to first gather data. The more information you receive from your clients — including bank account balances, goals, needs, and expectations — the more effectively you can advise them.

Investing in tech for your own financial services organization follows the same process. By sitting down with your key executives and stakeholders; identifying a technology vision and implementation timeline; and conducting proper research on available options, you’ll be better equipped to find the best solution for your business.