Recently, Protiviti hosted technology executives from leading financial services institutions (FSIs) for a roundtable discussion to explore what those leaders see as their strategic priorities and emerging challenges. It was a lively discussion with several common threads.
Run and change agendas driving value
Each of these execs are dealing with similar concerns ranging from how to best modernize legacy technology systems, while maintaining cybersecurity, privacy and regulatory compliance. Artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics are top of mind in the C-suite and boardroom, as are rising costs and efficiency pressures, all to be accomplished while driving digital transformation and innovation within the traditionally conservative, risk-averse financial services environment.
Much of the conversation dealt with how CIOs can shift their tech model from expense to generating revenue, effectively contributing to each organization’s growth goals, finding new ways to satisfy existing customers while attracting a new customer base, with increasingly complex expectations. CIO challenges include:
- Growth in a low-growth environment: All executives are under pressure to demonstrate growth and deliver shareholder returns despite a challenging economic environment and the onus often falls to the CIO’s organization to serve as a catalyst to manufacture the growth.
- Balancing run and change agendas: CIOs must manage both the operational (run) and transformational (change) aspects of their IT portfolios. Historically, 70-80 percent of the budget is allocated to the run agenda, leaving limited resources for transformational initiatives.
- Legacy systems and modernization: Modernizing legacy systems is a critical priority, along with addressing cybersecurity, data analytics, and efficiency pressures.
Setting the stage for a change agenda
So how will a CIO transform an organization’s legacy systems (and get CEO buy-in) when 80 percent of the average tech budget is dedicated to maintaining the status quo, with just 20 percent allocated to change initiatives? Our conversation then turned to the ServiceNow Financial Operations (FSO) platform. While most of the CIOs in this conversation are on the FSO platform, we were struck by the variation in how effectively some were using it, while others have barely tapped into the tool’s potential.
ServiceNow began as a robust IT Service Management platform, primarily serving the office of the CIO. However, as CIOs seek to modernize their enterprise architecture to gain efficiency, agility and resilience, they are also looking to leverage robust, scalable and secure enterprise platforms that minimize technical debt, reduces risk and position the organization to quickly respond to changing business needs. ServiceNow has rapidly evolved to meet this challenge, providing leading enterprise workflow through out-of-the-box solutions that serve all members of the C-suite. While technology holds the promise of modernization, CIOs are faced with significant transformation and change management efforts to onboard cross-departmental teams to a shared and collaborative environment.
FSO is a purpose-built, cloud-based digital workflow platform designed to help financial institutions and insurance companies streamline operations, improve customer experiences and manage risks. It connects various departments like employees, IT and customer service, allowing them to work together on digital workflows. The platform helps institutions reduce costs through automation, improve customer satisfaction and embed risk and compliance controls across workflows.
Something for every FSI CIO
These CIOS (and others we work with) want to know: Will the ServiceNow FSO let me transform my legacy systems, while addressing efficiencies and costs? Can I introduce digital transformation to my organization and do all this within a limited change agenda budget?
At a high level, FSO is designed to help financial institutions streamline their operations, enhance customer experiences, and improve efficiency by connecting front, middle and back offices together through workflow and integration. The solution specifically enables the customer onboarding and servicing processes to streamline disputes handling, triaging and fraud detection. . . all with compliance baked into the process by design. By leveraging ServiceNow’s AI-powered out-of-the-box solution, CIOs can reduce time spent triaging, researching and resolving issues while also improving customer satisfaction resulting in direct bottom-line impact while also fulfilling their operational and compliance obligations.
What makes FSO especially compelling for CIOs is the potential to integrate with existing treasury, core banking and payment enterprise systems. That would mean faster implementation, lower risk and quicker time to value. FSO automates routine tasks like blocking lost and stolen cards, card re-issues and providing provisional credit. Not only does this reduce errors and cycle times, but it also frees up treasury and payment operations teams to focus on customer service and new product implementation.
Ultimately, FSO helps CIOs extend the value of their digital ecosystem, drive smarter investments, and bring more agility to financial services operations — all without the overhead of a major systems overhaul.
Building agility, sustainable growth
The financial services industry is characterized by its dynamic nature, with regulatory changes, market fluctuations, and technological advancements constantly reshaping the landscape. ServiceNow’s agile framework enables organizations to adapt quickly to these changes. By providing real-time insights and predictive analytics, the platform empowers decision-makers to make informed choices and respond swiftly to emerging opportunities and threats. This agility is crucial for staying competitive and achieving sustainable growth.
ServiceNow’s Financial Services Operations (FSO) solution is designed to be highly interoperable, enabling seamless integration with other enterprise platforms — including core banking systems, customer relationship management (CRM), payment processors and risk management tools. This interoperability is essential for modern financial institutions seeking to unify operations, enhance customer experiences and accelerate digital transformation.
The leaders at our recent roundtable have learned that having an enterprise architecture that addresses the needs of internal stakeholders while adjusting to the ever-changing demands of customers and regulators is critical to driving greater transformation within the organization. ServiceNow’s FSO solution provides the workflow management and growth agility FSIs need now. The CIOs we work with are using the platform to experiment and deliver use cases that expand their core capabilities while driving operational efficiency ratios. And that expands those capabilities into new use cases across the organization.
To learn more about our ServiceNow consulting services, contact us.
