The Record - Issue 19: Winter 2020

93 F I NANC I A L S E R V I C E S Jan-WillemWeggemans Senior client partner and alliances lead at Publicis Sapient “The Covid-19 pandemic has amplified the cost and customer experience challenges caused by manual and suboptimal processes, the use of multiple systems and incomplete data sets. Banking processes which involve numerous functions and hand-offs are particularly under pressure, for example, origination and servicing related to mortgage, SME lending and wealth management. Microsoft has a broad set of digital, cloud-enabled solutions, including Teams, Power Platforms and Dynamics. The solutions enable digital collaboration across clients and colleagues, freeing up time, improving the customer experience and lowering the cost to serve. The key change benefits of these productivity-enhancing products are the ease of configuration, seamless integration and familiarity with both colleagues and customers. Publicis Sapient uses a set of accelerators to help our clients define and deliver improved customer experiences, enhance colleague journeys and integrate these tools with their core systems while realising in-year payback when deploying Microsoft solutions.” “Banks have felt the full force of the crisis. Whether it’s moving to remote working, handling unprecedented call volumes, managing credit risk or quickly getting funds to businesses, Covid-19 has dramatically altered the banking landscape. As Microsoft’s 2020 Global Alliance System Integrator Partner of the Year, we’ve played our part. With our help, we’ve seen customers use Microsoft Teams to boost employee productivity through virtual customer meetings and remote compliance training. We’ve seen banks digitally enable their relationship managers using tools like Microsoft Dynamics 365 to compensate for relatively immature digital capabilities, especially around digital onboarding and e-signature. Meanwhile, wealth advisors are accelerating micro-personalisation to improve sales. With a 360-degree view of the customer, machine learning algorithms generate tailored advice on the next best action for each customer. That’s not forgetting workplace analytics, which has become increasingly important as banks understand how productivity and resilience can be sustained for hybrid-remote work, with leaders using behavioural science to turn these insights into action.” Peter Barrett Group manager and global marketing lead for financial services at Avanade Anders Løkke Senior director of strategic alliances at Pexip “A large part of our customers are based in the financial services industry. As we focus on the quality and legibility of visual communications, we see a massive demand for providing optimal solutions not only for business-to-business communications, but even more so for business to consumer (B2C) interactions. Never has this been more evident than today, where many countries, cities and citizens are in lockdown mode and not able to conduct their day-to-day business – such as meeting with their financial or insurance advisors. As businesses of all kinds face the threats of economic instability and uncertain times, it is more important than ever to meet the customers where they are, which is currently at home. However, we see this as more than a recent trend and many customers are currently developing their B2C solutions to deliver on consumer expectations in the coming years.”