107 The Baltimore incident is just a single example of the severe supply chain disruptions that have impacted all types of businesses across the world in recent years. “Banks are at the centre of the global supply chain because everything has to be paid for and therefore entails risk,” says Peter Hazou, director of business development for financial services at Microsoft. “Disruptions to the global supply chain can happen quite unexpectedly and, since the banks are doing the financing and taking those risks on shipments, they require quick access to data from delivery companies to track cargo.” In addition to helping them to calculate risks, accurate data insights can help financial institutions to make smart decisions and identify opportunities for growth. “Banks first discovered the value of data when they were investigating financial crime,” explains Hazou. “Of course, data was valuable before that but they hadn’t realised it yet. Data helped banks to uncover spending patterns in real time and notify clients about suspicious activity in their accounts. Now, data can drive even greater value as new technology can piece together information from different departments and legacy silos to provide a full 360-degree view of organisational performance.” For example, banks can use Microsoft Fabric to bring all their data and analytics tools into a single experience by connecting data silos through OneLake. Employees can access this data through Microsoft 365 applications and analyse it with tools like Microsoft Copilot to improve decision-making and customer service. “Banks are interested in focusing on a much narrower set of data to ensure accuracy and context,” says Hazou. “They do this by starting with internal use cases for internal users. For example, relationship managers in call centres can use agent assist solutions to improve their customer service.” Generative artificial intelligence tools like Microsoft Copilot for Sales enable employees to better understand customer context along with the historical data they would naturally have access to in their customer relationship management systems. “Generative AI is a fast-moving technology that has gone from providing the right response to a natural language enquiry to being a model that is more conversational so clients can interact with avatars that actually ‘speak’ with them,” says Hazou. “It gives the context of the person or enquiry, such as whether they have a retail or business-to-business account, and helps relationship managers or call centre agents to frame their responses. “But Copilot has its name for a reason – it assists the human in the loop of the work to provide better insights so they can address customer needs. It also enables employees to access their organisation’s knowledge bank during meetings so they can answer questions quickly and confidently, providing the best solutions for clients. After meetings, Copilot is perfect for summarising talking points and highlighting any actions that need to be followed up on. It’s a tremendous aid in making relationship managers’ jobs more efficient and minimising mundane activities that are currently a major use of resources in the bank.” One bank which is putting the power of generative AI into action is Akbank, which has 10.8 million customers across more than 700 branches and 12,000 employees. Akbank developed a smart digital chatbot assistant, based on Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, to search through approximately 10,000 records to help its employees save an average of three minutes in every interaction with a customer. “The chatbot presents the most up-to-date information in every query, which is crucial in a fast-paced banking environment,” says Gizem Yalçin, the smart digital assistant applications technical product owner at Akbank. “When needed, branch employees save time in every customer interaction using the chatbot. And with every minute saved, our productivity increases.” Looking ahead, Akbank plans to bring the chatbot directly to its millions of active customers and enable them to address their queries without middlemen. FINANCIAL SERVICES “ New technology can piece together information to provide a full 360-degree view of organisational performance“ Image: iStock/3alexd
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