Gary Duggan, VP Technology Solutions EMEA at Riverbed Technology
Throughout the pandemic, software as a service (SaaS) and collaboration applications have become a necessity for financial institutions. From having video calls with clients and supporting customers via instant message platforms to connecting with colleagues and accessing files from a remote server – these tools are being used daily across the entire workforce. The sudden popularity rush of collaboration technologies is predicted to continue over the next 12 months as banks push forward with investment into digital transformation. In fact, Gartner expects that the global SaaS industry will grow to a valuation of $121B this year, up from $102B in 2019.
The adoption of SaaS applications presents a huge opportunity. Financial institutions and their IT teams can now ensure the tools they are investing in don’t hinder but rather accelerate employee productivity. As the pandemic continues across Europe and employees embrace working from anywhere, financial organisations and banks are successfully able to optimise experience, eradicate connectivity challenges and maximise the benefits of SaaS application and collaboration tools. But the question is, what is the key to banks and financial institutions effectively achieving this? Performance, visibility and understanding the applications running across the network, is the answer.
A surge in SaaS applications and collaboration tools
As organisations across the world went into lockdown at the start of the pandemic, banks and financial institutions were forced to completely overhaul communications methods. Overnight businesses rapidly accelerated digital transformation initiatives and embraced new technologies to maintain distribution channels and operations. Whilst also refreshing working practices to comply with social distancing and adopting collaboration technology to unify an industry that was never designed for remote working.
To tackle the challenges of now operating remotely, banks and financial institutions turned to collaboration tools and SaaS applications such as Slack, Zoom and Office 365. In Zoom’s last quarterly results of 2020 alone, the company reported its total global revenue for the quarter to be up 369% year-over-year. It cemented itself as a critical communication and collaboration service during the pandemic. Fast forward over the last 13 months, these solutions have been fundamental for business continuity and maintaining employee productivity within every aspect of the financial services sector. From financial accounting, customer service and HR systems, to mortgage lending, retail banking and CRM.
But the swift implementation of SaaS applications and collaboration tools created a serious challenge for IT teams as they faced having to manage the huge influx of new devices and applications onto their network. All of which had to be done with little to no visibility over what was happening or where it was happening at any given moment. Considering that almost half (44%) of finance business decision makers state that slow running and outdated technology is currently impacting their business, according to recent research from Riverbed, it was crucial financial institutions quickly adopted technology that would support this revised way of working. At Riverbed, many of our customers began utilising mobile client acceleration solutions and SaaS to help resolve this issue.
Optimising applications and gaining visibility in finance
An instant consumer level experience is the expectation that many banks and financial institutions are receiving from both employees and customers. As such, SaaS applications and collaboration tools that are slow running or outdated are unacceptable and will have a negative impact on the customer and employee experience. To overcome this, it is vital financial organisations have in place solutions that provide holistic visibility over the network. With the right level of visibility, businesses are able to quickly troubleshoot any problems on the network and prevent detrimental network outages. For this to happen, businesses need to invest in network management solutions that collect and analyse data coming in across every device and each application in use. Armed with the insight from this data, IT teams can pinpoint any issues on the network and implement solutions to correct them – regardless of whether employees are working remotely or in the office.
For example, poor network performance has major implications on productivity as employees battle with bandwidth and latency challenges at home. This is true for any situation but is especially compounded during times of disruption. With employee productivity damaged, this in turn has a serious impact on the effectiveness of financial operations and ultimately the customer experience. A single slow running system or a network outage could result in the failure of an investment being made, a mortgage being approved or customers trusting the bank to complete their requests. However, these kinds of outcomes are easily avoided when solutions such as application acceleration and network performance tools are put in place. But with complete visibility over the networks and applications, financial institutions and banks can avoid errors, outages and app delays and instead optimise applications and deliver on connectivity at the right time.
Putting Saas, performance and visibility at the heart of finance success
For banks and financial institutions to successfully maintain employee productivity and ensure business operations continue without disruption, having the right technology in place is critical. While the first step to this is adopting the right collaboration and SaaS solutions, the second is most certainly to ensure that the performance of these tools is optimised. By adopting technology that maximises application performance as well as provide visibility across the network, financial institutions and banks can efficiently boost productivity, continue to innovate and, ultimately keep the business growing. Both during times of disruption and beyond.
