The Financial Services industry is amid a period of digital transformation that came to life in customer forms such as the offering of neobanks – banks operating exclusively online – crypto payments and more. But FS is still trying to shake a reputation as staid, with a few stakeholders.
The 'world's largest unplanned work-from-home experiment' resulted in traditional, office-based FS businesses needed to move online – completely changing the way the industry usually operates. It became evident that internal processes and workflows needed streamlining to maintain production levels while working remotely. To accomplish this, leaders realized the transformation has to start with tech. Within months, businesses accelerated digital transformation strategies as much as 4 years and focused efforts on employees instead of consumers.
In 2022, nearly half, 46.6%, of FS professionals added several applications for their tech stack. But, this growing number of solutions, which was supposed to make employees' lives easier, is actually making their jobs harder. Actually, more than a quarter of workers believe that the greater tools they will use, the less work they are able to complete.
Document overload
Much of the tech tool pain FS professionals are feeling happens because they're drowning in documents. Employees’ days revolve around contracts, emails, client deliverables and presentations, which require several different tech applications to create. Details are often spread over various drives and folders making finding it a labour-intensive task. Based on research from Templafy, 71% of workers are spending as much as 6 hours per week consolidating information. This disconnect could cause issues of noncompliance or even worse, damaging lawsuits.
The core of this problem revolves around disconnected content. It is sometimes complicated for FS professionals to locate information and in turn, they're putting things off and cash on repetitive, redundant tasks. But automation tools are on the rise and can help streamline processes to complete administrative tasks more efficiently, so employees can concentrate on driving business results. WorkMarket reported 54% of employees could save up to 240 hours annually through automation – an amazing period of time.
The disconnected content problem
The key to solving disconnected content lies in the tech stack. Current tech stacks disregard the role of content even though it is important for maintaining brand reputation and the overall success of the business. After all, submissions are exactly what clients, prospects and colleagues see day in and day out – from emails to start up business proposals to audit reports. It's what we should use daily to bring ideas to life.
However, content is fragmented throughout organisations as a result of lack of proper integration. Research reports 37% of UK employees do double of work as their technology lacks useful integrations. This directly results in disconnected content, which can lead to a loss of revenue of compliance, delays in processing along with a negative impact on business performance.
Enter content enablement
The answer to combating disconnected content revolves around content enablement. A content enablement platform integrates the whole tech stack to connect content throughout an organisation. Employees are served the precise content they require, directly within the applications they're already using. In turn, enabling them to not just create high quality content more proficiently but additionally collaborate, distribute and manage content elements across the entire business.
In FS specifically, a content enablement platform ultimately allows employees to pay attention to value-add activity rather than simple admin work. Rather than searching for different information to build scopes of work or business proposals, employees can concentrate on forecasting and business development – the duties driving better, more impactful results. This degree of automation also cuts the risk of sharing documents that don't adhere to regulations or not have the correct disclaimer.
Content enablement driving innovation in FS
Not only does content enablement technology empower employees to be more efficient and productive at the office, but it also fosters innovation. Employees can concentrate on topics like:
- Running the business more efficiently
- Identifying future trends
- Keeping track of ever-changing regulations that ultimately shape the industry
And because the FS space gets more crowded with newer and fresher competitors the ability to concentrate on these topics couldn't become more important.