Financial institutions (FI) are uniquely challenged in quite a few different ways. Initiatives from the business sides are often met with technical limitations on the technical side within the bank. Frequently, there is no in-house expertise or capability to design increasingly complex solutions that the business side needs to bring to the market.
Can vendors help in cases like this? Most of the time, the answer is yes. However, in almost all cases, it will take way longer than the bank can wait, and consume way more budget than the bank can allocate. This means after spending a lot of money, banks could still lose competitive advantage waiting for the desired solution to be brought to market.
What should the FI do then? One approach that many FIs have taken is to bring a consultant in to work with the business and technical sides of the bank, and represent the bank to work directly with the vendors. This approach has proven to be able to exponentially save money and shorten the time it takes for business initiatives to translate into technology delivery.
We have successfully helped our FI clients through the following services
- Solution Architecture & Design: translate business requirements into technical requirements; work with FI technology department to create high-level to mid-level solution architecture and designs; provide implementation guidance to FI’s and vendor’s development team, and testing strategies to FI’s QA teams.
- Branch Transformation & Optimization: provide guidance on requirements for implementing a branch transformation strategy, including branch and self-service transaction analysis, branch identification and selection, technology requirements, and building a phased-approach roadmap for transaction migration.
- Business Case Development: create and assist business case development for technology investments, including ATMs, Deposit Automation ATMs, Teller Cash Recyclers, Assisted Self-Service solutions and multi-vendor software platforms.
- RFx & PoC Design and Analysis: provide guidance to FI on the creation of RFI, RFP and PoC ensuring scope is defined accurately; participate in vendor presentations, demos, and deep dive discussion sessions to understand solutions proposed by vendors, analyze vendor solutions and explore the suitability of individual solutions to FI’s unique operating environment.
- Multi-vendor ATM Applications: Â guide FI on migrating from a single to a multi-vendor ATM application to improve user experience, Â ATM vendor performance, self-service security, compliance and profitability for branch and self-service channels.
- FI ATM Channel Optimization: based on evaluation of FI’s current ATM state and understanding of its vision for future ATM architecture, provide guidance on ATM industry trends, competition, solution design and staffing strategy to support implementation of future architecture.
- Omni-channel Integration: design ATM channel solutions that will fit FI’s omni-channel initiatives; represent ATM channel to contribute to FI’s omni-channel solution and architecture design discussions.