BPM puts people at the heart of banking and financial services

New technologies (cryptocurrency, blockchain, m-commerce, etc.) and the emergence of new digital native players such as FinTech have considerably changed the financial landscape, pushing traditional players to rethink their business model and adapt their business processes. Among the consequences of digital transformation we see is that the customer experience (CX) is emerging as a major factor for market competition and customer loyalty. However, while three-quarters of banking sector executives make customer experience a priority, only 21% believe they have reached a sufficient level of transformation to deliver the expected quality of experience. Here's how business process management (BPM) can help them meet this challenge.

77% of consumers would be willing to spend more if they had a “good” digital customer experience. This is why players in the banking and financial sector in 2023 must target a "partnership" relationship with their customers, centered around the user journey. A profound transformation involves process improvement and a more productive IT-business relationship. Together they are the key to be able to deploy a 360 customer view and engage the entire company to provide a highly satisfactory user journey.

Streamline processes to improve the customer experience

CIOs often have to deal with obsolete and complex legacy systems in financial institutions . This often makes it difficult to create a modern, fluid, omnichannel customer experience. 69% of customers want a consistent experience across all physical and digital channels, which puts a need to connect all back office and customer processes, heterogeneous information systems and all of the company's communication channels on the CIO’s agenda.

This is where BPM comes in! Developing applications based on process automation improves the efficiency of back-office operations and, ultimately, the customer experience all along the chain: from opening an account and onboarding a new client to the automation of payments, transactions, approvals and exception management. BPM also makes it possible to incorporate non-core business processes and case management. BPM offers better agility, easier communication and collaboration among teams, and enhanced competitiveness as it empowers the team to deliver new products and services more quickly.

For the customer, BPM implementation underlies a simpler, faster experience for processes such as loan applications and KYC (Know Your Customer) identity verification procedures. Process automation makes it possible to process the large number of documents requested from the client more quickly, often in different formats (digital and paper). With a BPM solution, traditional banks are better able to manage customer requests in real time to compete effectively with online banks.

Remove the bottlenecks

Another benefit of BPM in the banking sector is to align IT and business needs to onboard employees and accelerate digital transformation. CIOs have to respond constantly to a large number of internal requests from all departments. With an approach based on process automation, they then have the ability to address all requests: core business applications on the one hand and third-party apps on the other. By sharing modeling among all stakeholders, process-oriented platforms promote alignment between IT and business.

This is why it is important to choose a platform established on technological standards - this facilitates its adoption and accelerates team adhesion. In this sense, the Bonita platform is unique. It’s open source, and was intentionally designed for extensibility, freedom and interoperability. Developers have the choice between using its low-code functionalities or customizing the applications through coding. As a result, they can combine automation with existing systems, and circumvent the technical debt linked to legacy. 

While it is important that a new solution does not fully disrupt existing skills and habits, it is still essential that BPM be part of a global approach. Approaching projects in an appropriate way helps overcome reluctance to change. Process management must be thought out at the strategy level and accompanied by real change management.

By putting the human relationship back at the center of the process, BPM promotes the emergence of what Gartner calls the "total experience (TX)." That is the integration of the four disciplines of end-user experience: multiple experience (MX), customer experience (CX), employee experience (EX) and user experience (UX). By 2024, organizations delivering an excellent total experience will outperform competitors by 25% in satisfaction for both CX and EX.

Here are 3 ways to learn more about Bonita:

1. Build highly personalized, process-based applications today, for free, with our open source Bonita Community Edition.
2. See how you can reinvent your business processes with BPM.  Watch our on demand Bonita Platform Demo.
3. Interested in full project lifecycle support and services from development to operations? Try unlocking the power of Bonita Enterprise Edition.  Contact us to learn more.