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As a change agent serving the financial services industry for over 20 years, it is a great privilege to collaborate with Bank, Insurance, and Wealth Management institutions to devise and execute digital transformation strategy, solve complex business problems, and leverage technology to strengthen business results.  Ending a chaotic 2022 with the Federal Reserve in their December meeting raising interest rates to control inflation another 50 basis points following four consecutive 75 basis points rate hikes to its highest level in 15 years, here are three best practices action steps to take for advancing your organization’s enterprise digital transformation strategy in 2023 and beyond.

Accelerated Digital Transformation Framework

Fundamentally, does your organization have the digital-ready foundation in place to accomplish business goals?  Are IT and the lines of business in alignment?

Cisco has a strong digitization point of view and holistic approach to digital business transformation.  Whether your digital imperatives are customer acquisition, retention and loyalty design, integrated customer experience, business process efficiency, or connected IoT, bringing IT and business stakeholders together for a strategic conversation helps to uncover digital capabilities, define and quantify economic impact, and deliver and execute differentiated outcomes to customers, partners, and stakeholders.  It’s an excellent way to solidify the optimal operating model mix for hybrid work, digital first engagement, operational excellence and process automation, sustainability, and cybersecurity.

Also, it creates an opportunity to unite internal stakeholders all across the C-suite to different lines of business.  Whether a community bank or a credit union, regional insurer, or multi-national financial institution, cross-functional engagement with champions, key influencers and ultimate decision-makers also helps to eliminate silos inherent in the financial services industry.

Using the digital transformation framework below will help your company’s operating model mix to:

  • Enable – Digitize the Things you Already Do; IT Agility and Increased Productivity; Reduced Tech Costs, both OpEx and CapEx; Better, Cheaper, Faster Response Times to Customer Needs
  • Differentiate – Build, Buy, Partner; New User Experiences, Products, Services; Accelerated Product, Services, and Business Process Innovation; Distributed Ecosystem/ Connectivity and Intelligence
  • Define – Business Model Innovation / Industry Transformation, Machine 2 Machine; Augmented Decisions / Self Learning Analytics; Inventory Digital Assets; New Growth and Constant Innovation

Cybersecurity Readiness Assessment

To stay competitive, financial institutions are increasingly adopting cloud, mobility and the latest technologies.  Data breaches, ransomware and other modern cybersecurity threats have dramatically changed the challenges financial institutions and IT teams must solve.  There is an increasing need to modernize business applications to unify and optimize customer experience while staying industry compliant.

Xentaurs is a next generation consulting and Cisco digital solution integrator partner dedicated to making digital technology transformation a reality. They design from the ground up to architect and build innovative solutions business users adopt, and produce game-changing technical and business outcomes.  Xentaurs offers strategy, integration and enablement services to accelerate digital initiatives leveraging cloud, Infrastructure as Code, and Software-Defined platforms.

A virtual or onsite workshop is a valuable way to explore top-of-mind use-cases, toolsets, and to get a solid understanding of what is available to get started and drive alignment and momentum across teams.  Most importantly, workshops are customized to address the customer’s business problems, including strategy, implementation, and enablement.  With expertise in DevOps, Infrastructure-as-Code, cloud, and Software-Defined Infrastructure, Xentaurs turns complex technology into digital solutions that are easy for businesses to consume.

Contact Center/App Development/Unified Communications Readiness

Cisco digital solution integrator partner, Cloverhound, provides high quality Cisco engineering and development services and solutions for Cisco partners and customers, and brings decades of Fortune 500 experience architecting enterprise Cisco UC, UCCE and UCCX systems: contact center capabilities, data center design configuration and deployment, unified communications and video, and API development and integration are key areas of focus addressed by Cloverhound to further align IT with enterprise business imperatives.

Cloverhound is skilled in delivering solutions with the best of innovation and simplicity.

For over 30 years, Cisco’s comprehensive solutions have enabled more than 176,000 financial institutions in 218 countries and territories to accelerate innovation, power economies, and spread financial services.

With our partners, we continue to help our customers expand the boundaries of what is possible in financial services.  We encourage you to consider these ideas as you execute your digital strategy, and we welcome the opportunity to talk further.

Cisco Financial Services Solutions

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Authors

Tom Filep

Cisco Financial Services Lead for Americas Industry