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“SaaS sprawl is a natural consequence of the SaaS revolution. An analysis of Okta’s 2020 customer database revealed that companies employing 2,000 or more individuals maintained an inventory of 175 SaaS apps on average” – TechCrunch
The infamous phenomenon that is software sprawl, occurs when the quantity of applications or software components in an environment experiences rapid growth and fluctuations, leading to a substantial rise in complexity and rendering traditional software management approaches ineffective.
In the fast-paced world of technology, businesses often find themselves grappling with the challenges of uncontrolled proliferation of software applications across an organization. Suffice to say that this seemingly innocuous issue can significantly impact Return on Investment (ROI) if left unaddressed.
In this blog, we explore how software sprawl negatively affects ROI and highlight 5 powerful strategies for optimizing software licensing through consolidation, expert guidance and licensing discounts.
Walk Me’s 2022 - 2023 State of Digital Adoption Report showed that large enterprises are spending over $246 million pursuing strategic goals with digital transformation, IT and software spend being the majority portion.
Surveys from this same report showed that large enterprises spend an estimate of over $104 million on their digital transformation and software.
On average, businesses deploy 89 different applications, with enterprises having as many as 187. However, 30% of these apps are either duplicative or provide no evident value.
These findings conclude that many businesses are overspending by millions on software they don’t even need.
Redundancy and Overlapping Functionality
Multiple software tools with overlapping features can lead to redundancy, increasing operational costs without providing proportional benefits.
Inefficient workflows
Workers toggle between different applications approximately 1,200 times a day, resulting in nearly four hours of wasted productivity weekly and increased frustration leading to higher turnover rates.
Licensing Expenses
Unmanaged software sprawl often results in unnecessary licensing expenses, as organizations may invest in more licenses than required for their actual usage.
Integration Challenges
Disparate software systems may struggle to integrate seamlessly, causing increased IT support costs and further workflow disruptions as previously mentioned.
Building a Strategic Approach
In the pursuit of organizational efficiency and streamlined operations, consider these five key strategies to optimize your software ecosystem:
As seasoned veterans of successful digital transformation projects, we help ensure you have the software you need with a measurable return on investment. By leveraging our team you free your company from the clutches of software sprawl through the following advantages:
Managed Solution provides a centralized platform for overseeing software assets, enabling efficient monitoring, updates, and compliance management.
By leveraging our experts, Managed Solution can facilitate the consolidation and efficient management of software applications. Our proactive approach empowers organizations to negotiate more favorable licensing deals, capitalizing on volume discounts and ultimately optimizing costs associated with software usage.
At Managed Solution, we have mastered the art of analyzing our client’s software environments to build better strategies and provide ample guidance and resources to maximize their cost efficiencies.
Managed Solution will enforce security protocols and ensure compliance with licensing agreements, reducing the risk of legal and financial consequences.
Tackling software sprawl is a strategic imperative when building a robust ROI for your technology. Through consolidation, expert guidance and licensing discounts, organizations can not only cut unnecessary expenses but also enhance efficiency, security, and compliance.
If you would like to learn more about how Managed Solution can help you overcome the costs of software sprawl, chat with one of our experts here.
Founded in 2002, Managed Solution was barely 6 years old when the 2008 financial crisis hit. Yet, even as a young company we managed (pun intended) to pull through and grow to become the organization you now know today. That is why, today, we're talking about technology and economy.
With that in mind, we sat down to interview our CEO, Sean Ferrel, to discuss the recent economic events and how they pertain to Information Technology and the Tech industry in general. Read on to explore a top-down examination of a post-covid financial climate and gather insight and advice for your business.
A lot has been a lot going on with the U.S. economy since the pandemic. Recently though, we’ve seen some real negative indicators with bank collapses on a level reminiscent of the 2008 financial crisis. As a business leader, could you share some insight with us about today’s current economic environment?
Sean: In the last 3+ years there’s been a lot thrown at businesses. From COVID-19 to hybrid workforces; all the way up to how the housing markets have been affected. When people started to work from home it changed the places where people wanted to live. This drove a lot of inflation in certain areas that didn’t previously have these high-salary workers in the market before.
However, the housing market is one aspect. At the core of it, we could argue that there’s been a supply problem across the board. We see it an automobile makers and shipping components. For example, we rely on other countries for things as simple as [computer] chips. Manufacturers couldn’t get the chips to put into cars so a lot of cars couldn’t be built, which then created low supply, and the big companies with low supply were able to charge more for the commodities and goods we needed.
Even with our food and beverage companies. There was a problem there as well due to the lack of potential employees. So, whether it was auto-parts or workers in factories: businesses couldn’t produce as fast as they [normally] would. The demand for goods was still high, the supply was low, and ultimately people charged, and are still charging, more for their product.
Now, the more supply that these companies create and market - the less demand they might get for the product if it becomes more saturated. Meaning they’d have to bring down their inflated costs.
They also have to pay more in taxes if they produce more of something. So, a lot of companies have kind of sat for a minute and said, “well, we're getting a lot of money for our product than we used to get, so why should we produce anymore just to get taxed more for it?”. Which is why many have continued to drive the same amount of supply out of their organization and the inflation has remained. Of course, there’s more nuance to it, but essentially that’s where we’re at.
I think the reason why we’ll run into the “recession”, however, is simply because the dollar goes less far. Things are more expensive and the only way to combat that is businesses paying their employees more. This is challenging and leads to businesses charging their customers more and it becomes a very vicious cycle. One that, unfortunately, will eventually come to a head when businesses can longer afford to pay their employees more and will likely automate their processes instead, or they’ll have to downsize. So, I do think there will be more layoffs coming.
What’s interesting though, we all read about the layoffs at Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. It wasn’t because the companies were doing poorly -- they have more cash in the bank than ever. It’s merely due to the fact that their demand is going to go down because of people’s dollar’s not going as far.
How do you feel our current economic situation compares to that of 2008?
Sean: Compared to 2008, it’s a very different market. Back then it was the way banks were lending with negative amortization loans. Essentially, saying “we're going to loan you for this half a million-dollar house -- which you probably couldn't afford with your salary this much money -- and in three years we're going to increase your interest rate adjusted from an initial 5% or 4% interest rate up to 12%.
That increased the cost of the mortgage and people just got wiped out really fast. They couldn't afford it and hence we had a huge market where things were foreclosing, people didn't have the money and they borrowed against the home and their credit was tapped.
In today’s world though, people have been making a lot of money. It’s been a good economy for a long time, and I don’t think people are tapped credit-wise at this point, so we’re not going to see a big downturn where people are liquidating everything they have. But we definitely need to see some changes happen.
From your perspective, what are the main shifts the economy has had on the tech industry?
Sean: In the whole tech-sector; you have four things that happened in the workplace:
What I see there is a problem in general with “can technology solve it?” one, but two, “does the workforce for technologists -- like the people that we employ -- have the skill set”?
Technology has sprawled a ton, so it’s almost impossible to find enough talent out there to keep up. There's a huge lack of it from security talent to cloud talent, etc.
So, companies are struggling to find the right IT people who aren’t over-charging for the cost of their labor because, again, the employee-cost has inflated. That’s why now there’s this notion of “Do More With Less”. Technology and economy, obviously being closely interwoven in this concept.
Could you tell us what “doing more with less” looks like?
Sean: I think one question is; are companies ultimately building tools that are easier to manage by bolting them together? For example, Microsoft owns Microsoft Azure (the cloud).
They also own the operating system within the cloud, which is windows. Then they own the productivity software we all use, which is Office 365 -- and in that you have your communication tools like Microsoft Teams, collaboration hubs like Microsoft Viva -- all the way down to the computer with Windows operating system.
With that, they can control the market from a cost perspective and drive down costs for these suites of products. Not to mention, more Microsoft people in general are probably out there in the world studying and learning.
Making it a little bit easier to find people who do work in that area. And at the ultimate goal; it's easier to manage the process and the technology by consolidating into one or two platforms as opposed to having many, many vendors.
It’s similar to security too. Everybody's coming to market with amazing security tools that do detection at the endpoint or do secure app management to secure applications in the world. But now there's a lot of them and there's not enough resources out there to ultimately manage many different types inside of one business.
So, that's where the big picture of the project-based work consolidation is happening. You have more talent to manage better and more control & cost optimization by consolidating these infrastructures. Today's technology and economy are extremely closely related so business leaders need to emphasize having the right technology for their companies.
Could you speak about how this all ties into managed services and IT outsourcing? What benefit, if any, could customers gain from these types of services and solutions during this time?
Sean: As I mentioned before, you have the whole thing around hybrid and remote workforces. There are two things that happened:
Where previously companies had one IT person in the office. That’s not the same anymore. If people are working from home, they're working 24 hours a day. There's not really a regular 9 – 5 anymore.
That means the calls are coming in more than ever. The person who worked internal IT doesn't want to be the person hanging on the phone taking those calls all day every day and it’s not like they can run into anyone’s house to get everything set. That’s why we see technical call-based Help Desks becoming more and more popular. So, outsourcing will continue to grow in a bad economy. Outsourcing and centralizing the tools that are being managed by companies.
The second reason why outsourcing is becoming bigger, is due in part to the great resignation. With the inflation of salaries and expense of increased employee turnover, people are looking at companies, like Managed Solution, instead.
Beyond that, when it comes to enhancing security, making their users more productive, or having collaboration tools move into the cloud -- many companies are finding that the traditional IT teams are not always tooled up for this. That's why we're seeing more companies outsourcing a lot of that strategy as well; to help them build a long-term footprint that looks at the total cost of ownership. They’re asking organizations like us, “How do we optimize costs and better productivity for my new hybrid workforce of users and make sure we’re secure?”.
For us, it's a nice place to play in the industry right now, being sort of the managed service provider who outsources all this stuff and the consulting arm to be able to go out and help build the future architecture.
We’ve established that the economy today is different than it was in 2008, but one thing they have in common is their negative impact on people and businesses financially. As a business leader who came out of that, do you have any advice or words of comfort for fellow tech companies like Managed Solution?
Sean: For tech companies like ours, it’s always been a good thing to have multiple vendors on your website such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Dell, etc. A lot of the traditional sense has been that those are kind of like VARs, or ‘value added resellers’, who could resell all these products and services.
But my advice, is that you’ve got to pick a horse. Make sure you understand what suppliers (Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce, VMware, Cisco), are building that understand the economic climate. If cost is a big factor and businesses are having to do more with less technology, who's building the technology in one stack of products to ultimately give you all the tools that you need to be successful?
Consolidation is really where I think all businesses should try to head and are trying to head right now. So, ultimately, as it pertains to technology -- I think picking that horse that you think is going to be best in the race is key. Technology and economy is a huge conversation right now. Technology and economy are both make or break aspects for businesses today.
If you’re interested in speaking to one of our team members for more tech-guidance? Contact us and we’ll be happy to help.
Want more resources or interested in more tech content? Head over to our blog page! Technology and economy is a huge conversation right now. Be sure to keep up with us to stay in the know!
Recessions can be challenging times for businesses of all sizes. Due to recent events, many businesses are fearful of what lies ahead economically. Thankfully, there is wisdom abound from the financial crisis of 2008, and a plethora of strategies to help you prepare your business for a recession so that you can maintain growth!
During a recession, customers may be more cautious with their spending. As a result, businesses that rely on a single product or service may struggle to generate enough revenue.
That's why diversifying your offerings and opening new streams of revenue is a great way to get ahead. By expanding your product or service offerings, you can appeal to a wider range of customers and reduce your reliance on any single product or service.
To do this, consider areas of value your business has the capabilities of providing that you aren’t currently making any revenue off of, or additional products that you can invest in creating that may provide a great profit for you.
For example, a restaurant might consider offering catering services or selling branded merchandise. Alternatively, you could expand your menu to include more options, such as vegetarian or gluten-free dishes.
If, like us, you’re a tech company, this concept can still apply to you! Perhaps you have an abundance of expertise in your field that you can use to create and sell courses through sites like Udemy.
You might also consider challenging your expertise and adding more value to existing clients. For example, if you are a software provider with content writing talent, you can potentially use that to create a content writing service for existing clients.
During a recession, customers may be more selective about where they spend their money. That's why it's essential to focus on providing exceptional customer service. Providing consistent, quality customer service will help you build customer loyalty while also attracting new customers through word of mouth.
To do this, consider the areas that may affect the quality of service your staff provides. If there is opportunity to boost your teams’ internal engagement and morale, be sure to tune into that. Creating a healthy and engaged working environment sets the stage for your teams servicing to improve.
It’s also wise to consider investing in additional training for your staff. Ensure that your employees understand your business's values and are equipped to handle customer inquiries and complaints. You may also want to consider offering incentives to customers who refer new business to you.
History has taught us that businesses who lean into advertising and marketing during recessions tend to perform better. It can be tempting to cut back on marketing expenses to save money. However, investing in marketing can actually help your business grow during tough economic times.
For one, increasing your marketing efforts in general allows you to reach new customers and increase brand awareness. However, and most importantly, marketing during a recession means there will be less competition.
Many businesses will try to get ahead by giving into cost-cutting temptation or will sadly not have the means to advertise, giving a small amount of other businesses more opportunity to shine. That being said, you want to be sure you budget your advertising and marketing efforts appropriately.
To make the most of your marketing budget, consider investing in online advertising, social media marketing, and email marketing campaigns. These forms of marketing can be highly effective and cost-efficient.
Leaning into free marketing tactics can also make a large impact on lead generation. For this we recommend rolling up your sleeves and putting in the effort to boost your SEO and social presence as much as possible.
Another great and cost-effective strategy is collaboration. Consider partnering with other businesses or organizations to co-promote each other's products or services.
This part probably goes without saying but it's essential to focus on improving operational efficiency to reduce costs and increase profitability. To better help you prepare your business for recession, look for ways to streamline processes and eliminate waste.
You may also consider outsourcing certain tasks to reduce overhead costs, but we’ll discuss that more later.
To improve operational efficiency, consider using technology to automate manual tasks. For example, you could use a customer relationship management (CRM) system to manage customer interactions, or a project management tool to streamline your team's workflow.
If this sounds a bit overwhelming, you can also look into freelancing or booking a consultant to help you identify inefficiencies and implement solutions.
Cash flow is critical during a recession. Make sure that you are closely monitoring your cash flow and again, taking steps to reduce expenses where possible.
If possible, try negotiating with suppliers for discounts or better payment terms, and be on the lookout for opportunities to reduce inventory levels.
To manage your cash flow effectively, consider creating a cash flow forecast. This will help you anticipate your cash needs and plan accordingly.
You may also want to think about working with a financial advisor to help you develop a cash flow management strategy.
As the economy slows, it may prove challenging to fund new projects or initiatives. However, by forming partnerships and collaborations with other businesses, you can pool resources and achieve common goals.
To form partnerships and collaborate with other businesses, start by identifying businesses that share your values and target market. Reach out to these businesses and propose a mutually beneficial partnership or collaboration.
Using social media platforms or attending industry events are also great ways to network with other business owners and find potential partners.
During a recession, it may be difficult to justify hiring new employees to handle non-core functions. That's where outsourcing can be a valuable tool. By outsourcing non-core functions, you can reduce overhead costs and free up resources to focus on your core business.
To determine which functions to outsource, start by identifying the tasks that are not critical to your business's success. This may include tasks such as accounting, human resources, or IT support. Then, research outsourcing providers and compare their costs and services to find the best provider that fits your budget.
Keep in mind that when outsourcing, it's critical to choose a provider that aligns with your business's values and goals. Look for a provider with a proven track record of success and good customer reviews.
It's also essential to establish clear expectations and communication channels to ensure that the outsourcing relationship is successful.
Diving a little deeper here into our area of expertise, outsourcing some or all of your IT services can greatly benefit your business during a recession and in general.
Read our full article on that here. But to keep it short and sweet, outsourcing your information systems can help you reduce costs, improve efficiency, and access specialized expertise.
To outsource your information systems, start by identifying the specific functions of IT that you want to outsource. This may include software development, data management, cybersecurity, or Helpdesk support. Then research outsourcing providers that specialize in these areas.
Like all outsourcing goes, you want to be sure to choose a provider with experience in your industry and a proven track record of success. Look for a provider that offers a range of services and can provide customized solutions to meet your business's specific needs.
As unpleasant as economic crisis are, there are so many creative strategies and opportunities to help your business thrive. By expanding your offerings, boosting your marketing, collaborating with other businesses, outsourcing, or doing combination of these things – you can prepare your business for a recession and whatever else life throws at you!
If you’d like to learn more about IT outsourcing, let us help walk you through the process to give you a better idea of what it looks like and how much you can save!
Microsoft’s Viva Connections is one of four facets of the Microsoft Viva Suite along with Viva Insights, Viva Learnings, and Viva Topics. Viva connections, specifically, is an application that drills into the employee experience to enable connection and engagement like never before.
With remote and hybrid work settings becoming the norm, connecting your team and preventing isolation is more important than ever. Read on to learn more about how this powerful tool works and how you can implement it to better your organizations culture.
Viva connections’ goal is oriented around (drum roll please) …keeping people connected! It does this by offering users a a personalized view of news, conversations and groups with the same applications and devices they already utilize in their day to day, giving your employees have everything they need to stay engaged.
This application also focuses on enabling team members to contribute their ideas easily and freely, to ensure everyone’s voice is heard. Not only are you sure to gather key insights from your team, but you can drill deeper into them with polls and surveys.
These features and capabilities are imperative tools that allow you to create a culture where everyone feels their voice is heard and build trust in a fun and easy way!
Furthermore, Viva Connections lets you curate your dashboards to provide fast and easy access to company resources, such as events, holidays, even health and wellness reminders! With Microsoft Viva Connections, you can have all the benefits of a remote workspace, while still maintaining that ‘togetherness’ feeling of an in-office setting.
Viva Connections amalgamates content from Microsoft 365 services like SharePoint, Teams, Yammer and more—into a fully-integrated and personalized, singular view for every employee. You can even integrate Viva Connections with other services such as stocks, weather forecasts, and vacation/ holiday schedules to boost engagement beyond Microsoft 365 content.
What ultimately sets Viva Connections apart from other engagement platforms is how customizable and scalable the service is. With Viva Connections, you can build your apps for specific objectives (as needed) and continue to personalize content to improve users’ overall experience as your company grows!
Viva Connections combines the power of your SharePoint intranet with Microsoft Teams, Yammer, Stream, and other Microsoft 365 applications to allow companies to create and display more intentional content for their employees. These functionalities are delivered through three primary aspects of the application: Dashboard, Feed, and Resources.
As we mentioned, the Viva Connections Dashboard lets you to create a customized experience with Dashboard cards that give your employee's access to the most useful content, tools, and task lists for them. It is essentially a digital toolbelt for your team that allows you to pick the best resources for your current needs -- and change them out as you grow and evolve.
The Feed on Viva Connections allows users to connect from a tailored view and explore important announcements and relevant information -- and join in on conversations throughout the organization. You can optimize your Feed by delivering SharePoint and Yammer communities together.
Resources are the navigational links that are set up and customized in the SharePoint app bar from the home site. These resources will get displayed on both the desktop and mobile instances of Viva Connections.
In the mobile app, users can view resources by selecting the Resources tab. This type of functioning provides users with a familiar navigation structure and allows them to open sites, pages, news, and more—right from their mobile devices.
It’s no secret that better engagement leads to higher creativity and productivity. However, a huge challenge for businesses in the remote era we find ourselves in, is developing a culture where that kind of engagement flourishes.
What we (and obviously, Microsoft), have found, is that by connecting and unifying your employee’s, you can build that spectacular culture and enthusiasm in your workplace. Viva Connections allows you to do just that in following ways:
Delivering a modern, custom experience by pushing relevant content, information, and resources to your users in one place, enables a more purposeful way for your team to engage.
Personalizing your engagement platform not only makes the experience more tailored to your team members, but it also makes it easier for them. By customizing the dashboard to your preferred settings for navigation, appearance, and etcetera… you can simplify and therefore streamline communication throughout the application.
Keep your eyes on the prize, so-to-speak. If your goal is to build connection and unity within your company, then you need to get involved with resources that are built to specifically target that.
Ultimately, finding an application or tool that fits your teams’ specific needs for improved connection can be a major step to reaching your engagement goals.
Viva Connections integrates seamlessly into with Microsoft Teams where users will be able to access it. Your organization can easily deploy Viva Connections by building onto existing capabilities in Microsoft 365. Click here and let us help you and your team adopt viva connections today!
Since the pandemic began in 2020, businesses have faced one financial strain after another. The economic state we’ve found ourselves today has certainly raised concerns. Although we are not currently in a recession -- most experts agree that we may be heading for one in the following year.
That being said, no one can really predict the future – especially not when it comes to economics. However, we can prepare for it. Regardless of what is thrown your way, rest assured that there are tools and resources that can help you can tighten the financial belt while also increasing revenue.
One key area of opportunity is in your very own IT infrastructure! In fact, there are many ways that you can leverage and optimize IT assets for growth, even during economic downturns.
Reducing costs are important for an onslaught of obvious reasons, but you may be surprised to find just how much an outsourced IT infrastructure fit can help your company’s cost-reduction.
Having fully staffed senior expertise in-house can be expensive. By outsourcing, you can provide your team and clients with the support of knowledgeable IT professionals at an affordable price. You can even find a plan that is customized to your business’s specific needs – learn more here!
Leveraging a quality MSP is not only a wise-investment in-and-of itself, but the money you save by making this calculated switch is then free to be invested further into revenue-building initiatives. More on than below.
As we mentioned, saving money by utilizing external IT will allow you to re-invest that money into your revenue operations. But furthermore, by putting necessary but mundane tasks into the hands of outsourced IT support, you and your team are free to build upon key strategic ideas to bring in even more (you guessed it) revenue.
This makes outsourced IT a wise investment of both time and money, and only enables your company more access to resources that will allow it to thrive in any climate. Not to mention, you’ll be advancing your customer service during a time-period where nurturing long-term business relations is especially crucial.
With a quality MSP, you’ll still be able to meet your IT needs and while also satisfying the needs of your customers. Quality IT technicians with excellent customer support are a critical part of maintaining the business of clients.
It is important to note that where you outsource to is a critical part of your success. International IT companies are notoriously unsatisfactory for callers. Likewise, a spread-thin in-house IT team simply won’t be able to meet the demanding needs of customers.
That is why we encourage you to look for companies who can offer 24/7*365 support on a national level. This quality service allows you to really boost your position in the eyes of clients, form those lasting relations, and reap in new business via word-to-mouth marketing from satisfied clients.
Not only does having the support of an MSP allow you to capitalize on areas of opportunity, but it also ensures that your key data is protected. It’s no secret that hackers are increasing their attacks daily, and they know that economic stress leaves companies vulnerable and spread thin.
Thriving though economic decline makes maintaining security, compliance, data protection all-the-more important. This can be achieved with a pro-active IT management approach when you leverage the support of outsourced IT experts.
In short, working with an MSP will enable to you focus on the important strategic decisions while also ensuring your data is secured.
In conclusion, as we go forward into the economic unknown of 2023 considering IT outsourcing can give you a leg up in the game. The right managed service provider can allow you to reduce costs, increase revenue, and keep that precious data protected in even the most tumultuous climate.
Also do keep in mind that even outside of economic crisis these benefits remain true for clients that utilize an MSP.
“Our switch to Managed Solution was like a breath of fresh air. They carefully and competently analyzed our entire ecosystem and suggested changes (not one option, but multiple) to better our systems. There were a number of cost efficiencies put into place…”– Jeffrey G. Penta, CEO, San Diego Eye Bank”
Today's many technological revolutions are changing the business environment, almost beyond recognition. When it comes to the financial sector, artificial intelligence (AI) is finally addressing some long-pressing compliance issues.
Out of the $35.8 billion projected expenditures on AI across all industries in 2019, banks and other financial institutions are investing $5.6 billion in AI. This sum will go into things such as prevention systems, fraud analysis, investigations, and automated threat intelligence. Alongside retail, manufacturing, and healthcare providers, the banking sector is the top spender in AI.
This investment isn't without merit either, as the McKinsey Global Institute estimates that the financial sector could generate more than $250 billion over the coming years. It will be a result of improved decision making, better risk management, and personalized services. Despite these projections, many financial firms are cautious when it comes to implementing AI. But those that want a competitive advantage need to overcome this instinct and benefit from what artificial intelligence has to offer.
When it comes to lead handling and distribution, most banks employ a "round robin"-type system where every lead officer is assigned an equal number of leads in circular order and without any priority. But NBKC Bank, a midsized financial institution based in Kansas, introduced AI into the process.
They realized that some loan officers performed better in the morning while others in the evenings. To that end, they've implemented a platform that distributes leads based on the officers' peak efficiency times. While a quarter of leads are assigned randomly, the rest are assigned based on this intelligent system. And while it still takes into account individual workloads so that everyone gets an equal number, NBKC Bank managed to improve their loan officers' performance by 65% and their closing rates by 10 to 15%.
Various statistical models have been used to evaluate risk by financial institutions for some time now. The most significant difference today, however, is that the use of such algorithms is much more extensive than it was in the past. Likewise, the amount and type of data available are also much more considerable than in previous years. All of these put together, coupled with the introduction of AI and machine learning (ML) will result in solving many problems.
Fraud analysis is one such example. By using AI, banks and other financial institutions will be able to spot frauds faster by detecting unusual activity in real-time. Similarly, AI can detect and filter out fraudulent or, otherwise, high-risk applications. Agents will, thus, only have to review those that have made it past the system, significantly increasing their overall effectiveness.
Alternatively, AI can use alternative sources of data, allowing banks to offer lending products to new groups of people. In the future, AI is predicted to take on even more complex tasks such as deal organization or Financial contract reviews.
Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp (SMBC), a global financial organization, is one institution that's deploying AI for its customer service. It makes use of IBM Watson, a question-answering computer system, that's able to monitor all call center conversations, automatically recognizing questions and providing operators with real-time answers.
The introduction of Watson into the mix, the cost of each call reduced 60 cents, with equates to over $100,000 in annual savings for the bank. The system also managed to increase customer satisfaction by 8.4%.
SMBC also uses IBM Watson for employee-facing interactions, answering questions that staff members may have about internal operations. The AI system is also used to deal with a variety of cybersecurity issues.
Investing in AI should be on every financial institution's priority list going forward. Nevertheless, knowing how to navigate all implementations and compliance issues can prove to be a challenge. With Managed Solution, you can find the application that will best suit your needs. Contact us today for more information.
We live in a time and age where you can’t even say the words finance, or financial services without having them almost immediately interconnect with IT. It’s that simple. Today, in the midst of the IT challenges in the financial services industry, they can’t go one without the other.
IT is present in every industry, and its role is even more critical when it comes to Financial Services, Healthcare, Biotech and many more. But let’s stick to Financial Services for now, due to the vast IT challenges currently facing this specific industry.
Hackers are continually attacking financial Services and the entirety of the financial sector from all around the globe. Whenever someone works on any devices connected to the Internet or even an office network, those devices are in danger of being hacked.
Some online attacks happen, and no one notices them, especially if the internal IT department is overcrowded with other types of work (which are plenty!) related to financial services. To be sure that your company and your clients are secured to any IT challenges and outside threats, consider hiring IT management professionals. Security is imperative to any business and the sooner a company incorporates specialized IT protection and prevention systems, the better.
Although financial services and the entire financial industry are very well connected to everything that’s taking place in the world, in some emerging economies, making people trust IT systems with their accounts or money is still proving to be a challenge.
Most people in emerging countries are afraid of using credit or debit cards for online payment. It is a huge IT challenge because it’s the role of IT specialists to make online payments as accessible and user-friendly as possible. They also need to inspire trust, and some people seem to rely more on traditional forms of money, rather than virtual accounts.
The big IT challenge here is convincing people that no matter what they do online when it comes to your company’s services, their money is secured and in the unfortunate event of a cyber-attack (like mentioned above), they will receive their funds back. It is why you need to make sure that your company has a professional IT department when it comes to dealing with financial services. You don’t want to waste vast amounts of money on compensation when you can spend money wisely on IT management.
As technology evolves at a more and more rapid pace, staying up to date is not only proving to be hard but also very expensive for most companies. It is especially important if you are in financial services where you always need to have the best of the best to secure your company’s reputation and your clients’ funds and trust.
IT infrastructure is aging fast and spending money on new technology usually means that companies can’t afford to hire top-notch IT specialists at the same time. IT Directors, CTOs and CIOs are always faced with deciding in this sense. They either renew their IT infrastructure or hire new people who better qualify with the latest IT challenges facing the financial sector today.
However, there are still some ways in which you could have the best of both worlds without having to affect your company’s cash flow or economic stability.
IT management companies offer their IT services at lower costs than the ones involved in hiring new IT specialists as part of your own IT department. It can cut the price of continually renewing your infrastructure, spending only a fraction of the cost of hiring new personnel.
If you’re interested in learning more about our services and solutions, be sure to visit our official website where our specialized consultants are prepared to answer your questions and give you any additional details you require.
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