ABA Banking Journal - December 2010 - (Page 52)
special advertising section ABA Banking Journal’s White Paper for December 2010: Top Management Solutions E x E c u t i v E S u m m A ry For the full article go to http://www.ababj.com/white-papers-2010 Extend Your Financial Enterprise: Unifying culture, service and performance with enterprise technology by Sam Kilmer VP, Market Development, Harland Financial Solutions www.harlandfinancialsolutions.com T oday’s financial institutions can deliver high-quality services and products at unprecedented levels of efficiency and personalization. They have the opportunity to differentiate themselves, capture market share and create operational efficiencies that ultimately make them more profitable. Unfortunately, these opportunities often go unrealized hindered by manual processes and a patchwork of legacy technology that just can’t work in unison. To compound the problem, the separate cultures that evolve around these fragmented systems leave pockets of expertise and inefficient “silos” of activity. Integration of disparate software across the institution is often expensive to maintain and challenging to keep in sync. The solution is an enterprise-scale approach to technology – one that breaks through the functional silos of legacy systems, streamlines service delivery and produces both superior customer experiences and transformational efficiency gains. To be successful, this extended financial enterprise must give employees the breadth and depth of capabilities they need to build relationships, recognize opportunities and drive productivity. It also must give both customers and members new levels of personalization and intimacy. The first step is changing that vertically organized, siloed technological structure into an “all for one, one for all” holistic approach. customers can approve exception items while serving their customers away from the office—through self service channels. It also means your commercial lenders focus on credit quality and business plans, not origination systems and interfaces. All of this is possible by bringing together the people, process and technology of the extended financial enterprise. Although supply chain management and enterprise resource planning take that horizontal approach, this concept has not penetrated all parts of most financial institutions. This void is due, in large part, to the predominance of legacy systems and a lack of true enterprise software in the market. Yet, extending any financial enterprise demands adoption of this horizontal view. Only when institutions can see beyond function to the full experience of their customers and their employees can they design enterprise capabilities to achieve the service quality and personalization that will define the “winners” and “losers” as the financial industry moves forward. About the Author Sam Kilmer, Vice President of Market Development Harland Financial Solutions 1-800-815-5592 sam.kilmer@harlandfs.com www.harlandfinancialsolutions.com Extend Your Financial Enterprise: Unifying culture, service and performance with enterprise technology Think horizontally, not vertically Too often, financial services technology is viewed in technical or functional terms –“commercial lending” or “core systems,” “cash management” or “ACH.” Thinking horizontally—in terms of end-to-end business processes—keeps the focus on an institution’s customer experience. This means your small business 52 | ABA BANKING JOURNAL | december 2010
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