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7 Ways The Right CRM Helps You Serve Your Banking Customers Better
The old adage about a bird in the hand being worth two in the bush rings true when you’re talking about nurturing existing client relationships. It’s less expensive and more efficient to cultivate the customers you already have while your marketing department helps you find new ones. This is especially true for retail banks and lenders.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software was designed to keep track of your customers’ data and provide insight and give direction for serving them better.
Building better relationships with your customers will increase their business with you and turn them into a strong and loyal customer base who will be your best advocates for new customers.
Here are some of the benefits your bank can expect from using a comprehensive CRM system like to improve your customer service:
- Efficient data management and reporting
Gone are the days of Rolodex and sticky notes to manage your customer data. A modern CRM keeps your customer information at hand in a convenient, usable form. You can easily share customer data with other team members or even different branches when the need arises.
With all your communication and reporting tools in one solution, your workflow processes will be more efficient, and you’ll improve the quality of customer care.
- A complete view of all customer activity across departments
Team members from customer-facing reps to executive management will have access to complete customer data. Track communications and avoid duplicate effort or inappropriate offerings. All the information a loan officer or customer service rep needs is there in real time.
- Easy reporting and up-to-date information
To ensure consistency of customer service, managers need access to easily understood standard reports. Make sure all customer interactions are handled consistently with high standards.
The right CRM will provide managers with a series of standard reports that can be run and shared with a couple of clicks. Having all information in one system that is easily accessible will eliminate workflow bottlenecks and improve the usefulness of your data.
- Automated workflows
The more time spent on internal work processes and communication, the less time team members have to serve their customers. The right CRM can make your organization more efficient and conserve valuable time. Also, automated workflows will be more consistent. Assign tasks, create and route referrals, track sales, and manage cases more quickly, more easily, and more accurately.
- Anytime anywhere access to your data
To be truly useful, your CRM should be mobile. Crowe CRM for Banking is a cloud solution that is accessible from wherever you need to be at whatever time. Sales reps in the field or onsite with customers and prospects can get all the information they need over their mobile devices. This feature is even more important when team members are working remotely. It allows managers to stay connected to their employees and employees connected to their workflows.
- Immediately identify your best customers
It’s important to identify your best customers and treat them accordingly. Crowe CRM for Banking allows you a complete customer profile and history that will enable you to determine customer profitability. Tie in general ledger costs and allocate soft and hard costs across products, processes, and customers for one transparent assessment of customer profitability.
- Motivate employees to improve performance
It’s essential to motivate employees to work harder and smarter at providing exceptional customer service. With Crowe CRM for Banking, you can create goal and incentive plans and automate them for maximum effectiveness.
Automated tracking allows employees to see where they stand in relation to their goals.
CRM can automate your employee incentive plans and make the process more efficient, accurate, and transparent to all. This will drive better results from your employees and further employee “buy-in” to using your CRM system.
Why CRM?
CRM systems are designed to make customer information understandable, transparent, and actionable to all your employees while providing managers information about employee activities. Today’s employees have come to expect and appreciate full-featured CRM solutions that empower them to complete their jobs with greater speed and efficiency.
When you benefit your employees, your processes, and your customers, you’ll continue to advance your business even in the competitive world of banking.
Crowe CRM for Banking powered by Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a CRM system designed with your needs in mind. We draw on our wide-ranging experience, banking expertise, and independent perspective to help you gain new insights into industry best practices, while offering practical solutions to address your specific needs to help you achieve higher performance.
Learn more about .
at crminfo@crowe.com or 877-600-2253.
By Ryan Plourde, Crowe, a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Gold Partner
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The Key to Success in Choosing the Right CRM Partner For Your Dynamics 365 Purchase
When speaking with a potential CRM partner, you may feel you know exactly what to ask. After all, you know what you want to achieve through the implementation, and you know the budget your company can work with. All too often though, companies end up with a CRM partner that doesn’t deliver on their expectations, even though they felt confident in their ability to choose a qualified partner. How can you avoid that outcome and find the right partner for your company?
By asking the right questions from the start.
What do we mean by “ask the right questions”? Organizations often fail to ask the truly important questions to their potential CRM partners, questions that can give valuable insight into whether they are a good fit. The fact is, every partner is ready for the common questions. Questions about costs, experience, and implementation methodology are simple and commonplace. Partners have plenty of experience answering those questions- and making the answers sound good. But deeper questions that force partners to think will uncover far more about their business practices and commitment to client success.
A great technology partner, one that is going to deliver on your goals and expectations, will welcome the tough questions. They will be eager to share with you what makes them unique. They will engage the services team to help provide you with complete, honest responses. So what are some of these tough questions?
You aren’t left to guess. 18 industry experts have contributed their insights and ideas to give you a list of 9 questions to ask your potential CRM partner. These questions can be the key to finding the perfect partner for your company. In addition, you will find warning signs to watch out for so you know when to start running in the other direction.
It is true, choosing the right CRM partner isn’t easy, but it can be done. To find the questions you should be asking, download the eBook “9 Questions Nobody Asks Their CRM Partner… But Should” at www.crmsoftwareblog.com/9Questions.
Then check our directory of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Partners specializing in CRM to find the right partner to start the conversation.
By CRM Blog Writer, www.crmsoftwareblog.com
Is The Cloud Right For You? The Short Answer
If you want flexibility, cost-efficiency, and offsite access, then there can be no doubt the cloud is for you.
Pros and cons of cloud ERP
As a significant proportion of the world’s workforce gets used to working via cloud services from home, it is very hard to make a case against the cloud.
In recent weeks, our teams have done everything from holding marketing meetings online to doing virtual project kick-offs in which major ERP projects have been launched with participants scattered across multiple locations.
Working from anywhere in the world on any device is a lot more compelling as a selling point when your city is in lockdown.
The truth is that the advantages of cloud fit very well with the way we live and work now, whether we are in a crisis or not. Many more businesses will be wondering about moving ahead with cloud projects even in better times.
However, there are still legitimate concerns about the cloud, and we should honor them with our time. So here goes.
Downtime
Since cloud computing is Internet-based, outages are possible. But with the majority of the world working at home for at least some part of the next few months, the pros are in your favor.
In the event of a disaster, hosting data offsite in a cloud environment ensures its safety.
Security
You must trust your provider to take care of your data and maintain its data centers. Small and midsize businesses without hardware or access to IT specialists usually have less of a problem with this concept than big corporations. But if you are nervous, rest assured that all reputable vendors provide information about security at their data storage centers. SAP, for example, has an entire website – the Trust Center – based on sharing information about cloud security, privacy, and compliance.
Control and flexibility
Selecting a trusted partner is key here. When you work together as a team to scope and implement your system, you are not handing over control but rather inviting in experts who can help and advise you.
You get advice on the most efficient way of organizing your processes, for example. We recommend always listening to these recommendations, as they invariably lead to smooth-running ERP systems.
Technical issues
If you experience technical issues with a cloud system, you may need to call on support outside your organization. Make sure you know what support is on offer and who to call.
If you understand your responsibilities and the responsibilities of the cloud vendor, there will be less scope for problems.
Partners are very useful here, as they can help you escalate problems with big vendors because of their contacts. In many instances, they can assist you directly via their own help desks.
Lock-in
Vendors are very aware that the cloud model gives you the power to switch providers and are therefore keen to give you the very best service to persuade you to stay. This can only be positive! Take comfort in this and enjoy the updates they roll out quarterly and the education and events they offer. If you are not getting great treatment, you might not be with the right partner or the right brand.
Terms and benefits
The cloud refers to data that you can send and access from a remote server. Your data and applications are hosted on someone else’s server rather than on hardware on your own premises.
Benefits include:
- Flexibility
- Cost-efficiency
- Ease of use
- Backup and recovery
- Offsite access
A good cloud service provider will offer business advice going into implementation and support afterward. You are, in effect, getting the benefits and expertise of an IT department without having to have one of your own.
In Cloud Solutions is a cloud-first company dedicated to working closely with businesses in all sectors. The company focuses on SAP Business ByDesign, the all-in-one cloud ERP for the mid-market.
Choose the Right Marketing Stack to Grow Your Financial Advisory Firm
Despite the fact that 65% of all investor interactions occur online, only 44% of investors say that their financial advisors do a good job of sharing best practices related to their investment goals. This gap in providing expert messaging and content to an eager audience is just one example of why financial advisors need to improve their marketing, deliver better customer experiences, and focus on delivering relevant educational messaging and content to prospective and existing investors.
The good news is that roughly 80% of firms are expected to increase their online marketing budgets moving forward, so clearly most financial advisories recognize the need to step up their game. Now, the challenge for many of these wealth managers becomes determining how and where to spend those marketing dollars to expand their assets under management and grow their respective firms.
The reality is that it’s nearly impossible to plan, develop, distribute, track, and optimize a holistic series of marketing campaigns across all pertinent channels manually. Even those financial marketers who are able to miraculously launch their campaigns without a coordinated technological approach are almost certainly delivering mismatched and uninspired programs — and also failing to collect accurate and actionable data to understand their audience and deliver what they truly need to advance along their investment journey.
Simply put, disjointed tactics executed manually are guaranteed to deliver customer experiences that are confusing at best — which means less clients, less assets under management, and less revenue for your firm.
So if you’re part of the 80% mentioned above, you should be thinking about how you can build a marketing technology (MarTech) stack that empowers your financial advisory firm to scale your marketing efforts and capitalize on the most lucrative areas for growth.
What Is a Marketing Technology Stack?
A marketing technology stack is the collection of all the different marketing-related software that an organization uses to plan, develop, execute, track, and optimize their marketing efforts. Due to the wide array of marketing technology solutions available, MarTech stacks vary significantly among different industries and even from company to company within those industries.
In fact, the playing field is so diverse that Scott Brinker of Chief Martec has been creating a digital representation of all of the MarTech vendors every year since 2011 to try to make sense of it all.
Here’s what the “Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic” looked like in 2011…
Is Amazon OTT Advertising Right for Your Brand?
Perhaps you’re a direct-to-consumer brand trying to build brand awareness and tell your story. Perhaps you’re looking to increase branded search volume across search engines like Amazon, Google, Bing and others.
Maybe your brand is focused on new customer acquisition in your sales funnel and you have dedicated marketing resources and asset creation. Maybe your brand doesn’t have a large enough budget for traditional television advertising but you still want your brand featured on televisions across the country.
If that’s you, then you might want to consider taking a closer look at Amazon’s OTT platform.
Understanding OTT
What does OTT mean? It’s an acronym for “over the top.” OTT services deliver video content over the Internet without using traditional coaxial cable network connections. OTT is similar to ConnectedTV, or CTV.
For people who have connected devices such as XBox, PlayStation and the like, the concept of OTT and getting around the network cable company is not new at all. These devices traditionally let us choose from a slew of different apps (Netflix, Hulu, etc.) and deliver over-the-top content — or what also might be called “video-on-demand” — with more flexibility and in a familiar format.
One argument for running an OTT campaign is that you’re able to target the “cord-cutters” or “cord-nevers” who are otherwise a hard-to-reach audience. If you have a brand that’s launching a new product, being able to mount an OTT campaign that hypertargets through lifestyle segments and historical purchase histories could help you reach a more refined audience.
Amazon OTT, specifically, is Amazon video advertising delivered via a Kindle device or a Fire TV Stick, and/or through its Prime Video and IMDb TV media properties, free television, or apps on its network.
With Amazon OTT, you’re putting your asset — generally a video asset that you also might use for linear TV — into a digital format that allows you to target people from a programmatic perspective using the vast amount of data available to Amazon advertisers.
What “programmatic” means is that it allows you to do the buying a lot faster than buying it yourself the traditional way through direct deals or by purchasing a “target market.” Your ability to refine and measure your audience increases immediately.
Refined Targeting
OTT allows you to access a format that is now. It lets you target people off traditional television where many brands are spending a substantial amount of money, and allows you to target people using a data-driven strategy. Because we live in a world of performance marketing, we need to show a benefit for the placements that we buy, even out-of-home placements on programmatic display.
It’s no longer the linear TV broadcast approach to casting a massive wide net, when your choice was to put an ad unit on a particular network at a particular time during a particular TV show, with the hope or belief that the demographic you were targeting in that space would align with your product. Operating on the old saying that “80 percent of all ad dollars are wasted” is no longer acceptable.
A few beneficial things about Amazon OTT: You have the option to geotarget consumers, and/or you can target segments of people by lifestyle. It’s possible to get significantly more refined and be able to say, “Would you like to target people between the ages of 20 and 30 in a specific geography that are also interested in music?” Or maybe you’re a food brand looking for people in your market who are interested foodies.
You can start targeting segments focused on these groups, which is significantly better than linear broadcast television.
With Amazon OTT specifically, the data that you get in order to target a consumer is substantially greater than many other data sets out there. It certainly allows you to target people on a demographic label that is pretty traditional — for example, males between the ages of 25 and 40 who make US$ 50,000 a year.
OTT can do that, but it also can drill down into Amazon-specific data that targets people who are browsing in particular categories, like televisions or shampoo. Based on consumer purchases within a specific category, it’s possible to target people who are so close to your type of product that you can spend what used to be your linear TV dollars more efficiently on programmatic using OTT.
This lets you get more bang for your buck and allows you to test different segments and engage with real customers in a meaningful way.
So the biggest benefit is the ability to purchase video placements instantaneously using the biggest treasure trove of consumer purchase data around.
This is great news, but a big question is whether it’s right for your brand. Are you qualified?
Taking the Leap
Amazon OTT can reach a CPM of about $ 25 to $ 30, and has a minimum budget of $ 35,000 per campaign, if you’re running direct with Amazon. Running campaigns at that CPM on OTT can be expensive for many brands. It’s not for the faint of heart.
If your brand already is struggling to make an advertising budget work on search and you haven’t activated display, then OTT is not for you right now. If you’re on search and all you’re doing on DSP is retargeting, then you’re probably not going to engage on OTT. The dollars just aren’t going to go that far.
Imagine that CPM is $ 30 minimum if you want to get 5 million impressions. That’s sixteen thousand dollars! On the other hand, if you have a direct-to-consumer brand that has done traditional TV advertising, Amazon OTT has a vastly lower barrier to entry combined with all of the advantages of the data and targeting platform Amazon offers.
If you consider it that way, then that $ 16k will go father for you on Amazon OTT than it would go on linear television — and you can clearly see the true impact it has had on your brand.
Can you clearly identify the audience you want to target? Important factors to keep in mind are brand awareness and brand reach. That is largely what OTT is for — putting consumers into your funnel. Those are the two biggest things that OTT can do and what can be measured.
This platform really is meant to pull people into markets, so that when they’re transitioning into the consideration phase, they are thinking of your brand first. When people are just beginning their research, it’s one of the first few brands that they see that they likely end up buying.
Running your ads before consumers are getting into the category is a huge plus for brands. In addition to that, you need to define the key performance indicators, or KPI, you want to get out of your OTT ad campaign.
Amazon OTT is a great way to drive awareness, but my recommendation would be to ensure that you have full-fledged marketing effort that is going to support that same message on DSP (demand-side platform) and search so that consumers are clear and confident in your brand message.
Many times brands don’t build out additional marketing efforts that layer those messages down appropriately, really guiding the consumer to purchase. The marketing efforts are split across multiple teams with little communication or coordination.
Advertising managers think, “Hey, I’ll run this great linear TV ad,” or “I’ll just run this one big DSP campaign for the promotion I have running.”
While you might see your branded search go up, if you don’t have campaigns running within display to complement OTT, or if you don’t have search campaigns running or social campaigns running to catch all the additional traffic you created with OTT, then you’re blasting consumers with this beautiful ad that you spent some good money on, but they may or may not know where to go after the fact.
Is your brand the type of brand that will benefit from having your products on every Kindle device across America? Is your brand going national and you want to target new regions of the country that you are launching in?
Look at the KPIs you are trying to hit, or the goal you’re trying to define. When you compare costs associated with linear TV ad buys versus Amazon OTT, the cost is actually a lot cheaper. That’s the beautiful part of the platform: Your brand is paying only to reach the actual customers you want to address. Target, target, target.
What’s still missing on Amazon OTT? It is currently “unengageable” compared to some of the digital platforms you can use. There is no option for pixel firing on Amazon OTT yet.
Consumers see the ad, but cannot engage with it, either to purchase directly or receive additional information. If the folks at Amazon are reading this, those would be great tools for advertisers in future iterations of OTT. If anyone can do it, Amazon will figure it out, and they likely will do it better than anyone.
Find the Right Master Data Management Solution for You
Reading Time: 2 minutes
Master data management (MDM) is a large, fast-growing market, growing at 16 percent annually. And it’s no wonder: every business needs to first ensure that their data are consistent and accurate before it can be used efficiently.
Gartner recently published the 2020 Magic Quadrant for Master Data Management (MDM) solutions. According to Gartner, “Data and analytics leaders can use this Magic Quadrant to help them navigate through a wide choice of enterprise MDM solutions.” We believe, for any data and analytics leaders considering MDM, this report provides essential guidance on making the right choice for amongst the many options available today.
Why TIBCO has been named a Leader
For the fourth consecutive time*, Gartner has named TIBCO Software a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Master Data Management Solutions.
Digital business requires a new approach to MDM, favoring a holistic solution with strong multidomain and multivector capabilities. That’s exactly what TIBCO EBX™ Software is all about. It’s a single pioneering solution to manage, govern, and consume shared master data assets across the broadest set of industries and domains.
Here are just a few reasons why TIBCO EBX™ should be your MDM solution of choice to gain accurate views across all business functions, generate trusted, insights, and mitigate risk:
- Model-driven: Implement with your data, workflows, and security models
- Multidomain: Manage any domain of data and their hierarchies
- All-in-one: Includes all the capabilities you need across the entire data management lifecycle
- Designed for business teams: Encourage adoption and collaborative data governance
TIBCO addresses every kind of data in your ecosystem in a connected way, including metadata, reference data, master data, and transactional data. A unified view and governance of master data is the key to ensuring your:
- Operational systems are using consistent information
- Analytics efforts are based on accurate dimensions and hierarchies
- Compliance efforts are driven by trustworthy data
Businesses that are able to successfully manage and share all of their data assets, thrive in today’s data-centric economy. TIBCO can help your organization avoid data silos and provide a single trusted view of the business for faster, smarter decisions.
For more on why TIBCO Software was named a Leader, read this complimentary copy of the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Master Data Management.
This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from [insert client name or reprint URL].
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Gartner Magic Quadrant for Master Data Management Solutions, 13 January 2020, Simon Walker, Alan Dayley, Sally Parker, Malcolm Hawker
*Appeared as Orchestra Networks, Gartner Magic Quadrant for Master Data Management Solutions, 2017-2018
3 Ways a Digital Business Can Get Customer Experience Right
Reading Time: 3 mins 30 sec.
There is a secret to success shared by top digital businesses today, and it has to do with providing a positive customer experience. Happy customers are loyal customers, and loyal customers are willing to pay more for better customer experience. But what about those companies that go above and beyond to provide an unmatched customer experience? What is their secret to success?
Read about three digital businesses that are thriving due to the customer experience they provide and to get a glimpse of their common secret to success.
Grupo Xcaret
Grupo Xcaret is a family and environmentally-friendly all-inclusive resort made up of theme parks, hotels, and restaurants. The company takes a holistic approach in providing great customer experiences by creating an integrated ecosystem behind the scenes.
With the all-inclusive approach, visitors can pay for their stay all at once, then move freely throughout the various parks and accommodations without having to stop to pay, weigh decisions on additional spending for food or entry fees, or be held up in unnecessary entrance lines. Their secret to success is….a data-sharing ecosystem makes this all possible; it connects Xcaret’s lodging, restaurant, and park application systems together, combining data to better serve its customers. By analyzing the data collected and predicting next steps, Grupo Xcaret provides its visitors timely, personalized offers that let them know their experience is important to the company.
Caesars Entertainment
Also in the business of entertaining, Caesars Entertainment knows how to provide a great customer experience. But what is their secret to success? Caesars has created advanced engagement models to give each customer a personalized experience, from check-in to restaurant and show deals, to suggestions for making the most of their time on the casino floor. This is possible because they store all of their data in a shared cloud, giving 360-degree access to customers on every Caesars property.
Aeroporti di Roma
Whether you’re heading to Mexico for an all-inclusive family vacation or jet-setting to Vegas or Dubai for a more adults-only adventure, those leaving from Rome’s Aeroporti di Roma will receive a premier customer experience as soon as they reach the airport.
Aeroporti di Roma found its secret to success by integrating its data ecosystem to improve the traveling experience for flyers. From flight reservations to shopping in the terminal to boarding the plane, data is captured and analyzed, giving the airport a holistic view of its passengers. Heat maps detect passenger flow and help the airport streamline the journey from check-in to boarding based on data patterns.
A Data Sharing Ecosystem: The Secret to Great Customer Experiences
Have you figured it out yet? The secret to customer experience success is through data sharing. It allows digital businesses to personalize each individual’s visit and unveils a more thorough understanding of customer preferences. It also increases cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.
All three of the companies mentioned rely on TIBCO to integrate their systems. To learn more about each business’s strategy, check out their case studies on our Customers’ page.
Connecting an enterprise is easier said than done, however. Integrating previously siloed data, sometimes bringing in outside data from partners or even rivals, requires careful consideration and coordination. But the end result helps digital businesses deliver an experience that only looks effortless to the customer.
For more on the importance of customer experience, specifically around airport strategies, read this piece by TIBCO exec/SVP Erich Gerber. If you’re interested in seeing how TIBCO can help you build a connected customer journey, learn more here.
[Whitepaper] The right RFP response tech and tactics to closing business with D365
Can you think of a more critical step in your sales process than getting a customer to sign a quote? (If so, please tell us.)
How are you currently using the power of D365 in this critical part of your sales process, to help move someone from “proposal sent” to “proposal signed?”
Most businesses are using D365 to capture and store prospect and customer information, but when it comes time for building a quote, they typically import a spreadsheet or Word doc and pass that on to their customer. But…
There’s a better way to create and send sales quotes in D365.
. You’ll learn what to say — and how and when to say it — along with what technology you can and should be using together with Dynamics to ensure every sales proposal you send has a better chance of being signed.
The Right Tool Makes Order Management Easy
If your experience is that order management software is slow, complicated, and frustrating, we’re betting it’s because you don’t have the right tool for the job.
Recently, a client came to us with the following challenge:
The client had developed an innovative product that fills a need in the marketplace. The good news is that the product has really caught on, and orders are pouring in. The bad news is that orders are pouring in, and their present software can’t keep up with the demand.
The client was looking for a simple, easy to use solution to manage their customer orders from conception through fulfillment to billing.
At , the challenge was right up our alley. Our technical understanding of business automation solutions, coupled with our practical expertise in small business operations, allows us to design business management solutions that meet our clients’ unique needs.
The P2 Automation team quickly identified the client’s need. They had a great product and they were willing to consider an alternative to their present system of marketing and delivery. All they needed now was an efficient method for automating their processes from initial order all the way through to billing and payments received. They needed the right tool.
We approached the project logistically by consulting with the client’s teams: Sales, Fulfillment, and Accounting. We observed how they had been processing orders and identified pain points and inefficiencies at each step of their process.
We found out that the out-of-the-box software solution they were using was the source of their slowdowns and bottlenecks. The software was far more complicated than it needed to be, and the time spent trying to figure it out and make all the components co-operate was causing frustration and delays. They wasted time with duplicate data entry during various stages and had a hard time seeing a 360-degree real-time picture of each order.
In this case we equipped the Sales team with an easy way to start the process with basic company and contact management tools, a simple tool for tracking activities and emails, and an module.
Once the Sales team has entered the order, the information generates a packing slip that goes directly to the Fulfillment department, so they know exactly what they need to get orders out quickly and efficiently. Then the information goes to the Accounting department where an invoice is generated. The whole process is simple, accurate, and efficient.
When you get a task done quickly and easily, it’s because you have the right tools. The right tool made all the difference. Our client now easily keeps up with the demand for their product and they’re already dreaming up the next big thing.
So, if you’re working on a project and you think it’s harder than it needs to be, ask yourself if you have the right tools for the job. If the answer is no, now is the time to schedule a strategy session with P2 Automation.
We can help you evaluate Microsoft Dynamics 365 and to see what is the best fit for you!
with our experts at P2 Automation today.
By P2 Automation,
GRC And Intelligent Finance: How To Get The Human Factor Right
Part 4 of the “Finance Transformation” series that explores how finance can take the lead in driving their companies towards an intelligent enterprise
By definition, automation means removing the human factor from a given process. This is as true for finance as it is for manufacturing or any other line of business.
But the truth is, the human factor can never be removed entirely – particularly for finance processes where governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) is non-negotiable. Visibility into and oversight over automated processes is a requirement. We are in control, not the robots, and we must maintain appropriate oversight of automated processes.
The question is this: how much of the human factor can be legitimately removed from processes while still maintaining control? Managing payments is a good example. As finance organizations have long known, instead of paying people to check every invoice against every purchase, technology can be used to automate the process of matching purchase orders (POs), goods received, and invoices. This is known as the three-way match.
In this instance, you might maintain the human factor in the form of an auditor. This auditor comes in periodically and pulls, say, 25 transactions at random – examining them to make sure there is no sign of error, fraud, or noncompliance to policy. If the auditor finds an issue, the next step is to pull additional transactions to ascertain the extent of possible anomalies and exceptions and finally recommend remediation steps.
Most certainly, this approach provides some level of assurance and is a compromise between auditing every transaction and helping ensure adherence to policy based on sampling. In the end, however, this is primarily manual in nature and does not provide full coverage of transactions.
Toward full automation
A better way forward is full automation with real-time management by exception. The idea here is to pull humans into the process only as needed. Any process – procure-to-pay, order-to-cash, treasury management, billing and credit, and much more – can be fully automated with proper real-time monitoring to alert process managers of outlier events.
What’s more, whereas the auditing approach involves a statistical sampling of transactions, real-time management by exception means that your system monitors 100% of transactions, configurations, and relevant master data in the here and now.
Getting the human factor just right with full automation, however, requires a different approach to financial process management. You might find it helpful to think in terms of intelligent access, intelligent controls, and intelligent detection.
Intelligent access
Automation and hybrid landscapes can complicate access to financial systems. In the past, you needed to authenticate individuals – or not – based on credentials provided. Now, to facilitate end-to-end automated processes, you need to provide access across landscapes, and in some cases, to robots, as well.
To manage the access risks, you’ll need to manage digital identities across systems as well as be able to provide access capabilities to authenticate robotic identities. A good practice is to define the incoming machine in terms of a defined role that allows the person or machine sufficient permissions to perform the needed business function. And from an audit perspective, every transaction and user requires monitoring. This means that every action taken by users and robotic processes must be logged, producing an audit trail and an alerting system to detect anomalies and potentially malicious activities.
Technology such as machine learning (ML) can help. By reading process data in real time, ML algorithms can detect security and transactional anomalies at the application layer and alert process managers. ML can also be used to intelligently optimize role definition, which can then be assigned dynamically in a secure and traceable manner.
Intelligent controls
Fully automated financial processes are controlled primarily through configuration, master data, and transaction monitoring.
Configuration settings are key to establishing and maintaining processes that are aligned to policy. To optimize processes, leading organizations are adding continuous control monitoring to provide a feedback loop on how these settings can be monitored. Take, for example, a setting that alerts a process owner to a change in the thresholds assigned to a three-way match before manual intervention is required. Or consider monitoring depreciation calculations tied to automated postings, changes to charts of account tables, or modifications to posting and reconciliation rules associated with accounting periods and the financial close processes. By replacing manual controls with fully automated controls, process owners and auditors can gain greater visibility and trust in processes, including robotic processes, managed by core ERP systems.
Proper master data monitoring is also critical to help prevent policy violations or potential fraud. Fields that contain sensitive data can be monitored to help ensure accuracy and completeness, as well as for changes that might be motivated by policy aversion such as one-off transactions. Master data that can be monitored can be found in key fields in vendor or customer master accounts, including bank account information, or fields related to key information in POs or invoices, or conversion values used in various calculations. And in today’s world, which requires greater data protection and privacy, the ability to also mask or log data access to sensitive information is also needed.
Finally, transaction monitoring provides another layer to help identify unexpected outcomes in core processes. Although effective access management, configuration, and master data monitoring are all important in a detective and preventive approach, transaction monitoring adds an important final check to help identify where these prior approaches might not be yielding the expected results and adjustments might be in order. And by receiving alerts, a process owner can also have the ability to drill down quickly into the transaction details residing in back-end systems. This is enabled now more than ever, as SAP S/4HANA allows for tighter integration of core processes that help provide a more consolidated view of enterprise business data that serves as a single source of finance truth.
Intelligent detection
Constant monitoring of finance processes is required to detect intrusions and potentially fraudulent activity. Proper detection is critical at the point of system access – but it doesn’t stop there.
On a 24×7 basis, your systems must be monitored to detect both external and internal threats. Beyond traditional cybersecurity and monitoring approaches, many companies are now turning to ML algorithms as the risk landscape grows in complexity.
You can stay on the offensive by using ML to analyze and correlate logs from past and current security events. Based on this historic data, ML can help you run forensic investigations that uncover new attack patterns before they impact your systems. It can also help you detect patterns of system activities in real time to generate alerts to anomalous conditions that might require immediate attention.
ML can also be used to map structured and unstructured data across systems and highlight personal information, which is relevant under various data-privacy regulatory pronouncements.
The advantages of intelligence
With intelligent access, intelligent controls, and intelligent detection, organizations can get the human factor just right for automated finance processes. The outcomes, though, are not merely a new set of requirements for managing finance risk, but tangible business benefits that serve the business well and provide greater assurance to process owners and stakeholders alike. These include trusted processes that drive business performance, expected results that instill confidence, and streamlined audits that drive down the costs of compliance.
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