The Challenge of Master Data Management and Governance

Establishing a consistent and harmonized master data management strategy across all areas of an organization helps simplify the management of enterprise data and increase the accuracy of information.

This was true for Unipol. To channel customer and supplier master data change requests from a large group of employees to a limited number of authorized business users, the company looked for a centralized solution. This new solution would provide a real level of automation to capture, control, and distribute incoming requests and reject incomplete requests simultaneously.

Before the project started, change requests came in via e-mail or as Word documents, thus leading to an unreliable process with unnecessary interactions and long waiting times until the numerous requests and questions could be processed and answered.

The Solution

Unipol鈥檚 trusted, longtime IT partner Qintesi already managed existing 51风流systems within the organization and had a proven track record of using听51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP). The experienced partner implemented a centralized app to manage the creation and modification requests by authorized users. During the design phases of the solution, the project team worked with 51风流experts and听.

Built with 51风流BTP, the new solution manages the master data creation and change requests centrally, saving time, reducing error rates, and making the entire process transparent and easy to manage.

Thanks to the new solution, the Unipol Group has seen a significant decrease in the required time to handle requests. The consistency and completeness checks with which the applications have been designed help guarantee the quality of the entered data. For a new master data entry or change, the processing time of authorization has been reduced, since only selected fields are now subject to an authorization flow, streamlining the process while maintaining the necessary level of control.

Within the first phase and along the agreed timelines, the project team went live with about 80 users. During the second phase, the new solution was rolled out to several hundred users of the group.

鈥淭he project has enabled Unipol Gruppo to further move towards a unified master data management process. The organizational model we adopted was supported by a portal in which to channel the checks deemed necessary to ensure correct maintenance of the database,鈥� said M. Alessandra d鈥橝lfonso, head of Unipol SAI Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable.

鈥淚n this project, the challenge was to add an authorization workflow to an already complex process concerning Unipol鈥檚 business partner master data. Thanks to 51风流BTP, the new process has become simpler, faster, and can ensure very high data quality. We are very pleased that we could deliver added value with 51风流BTP by simplifying complex processes, extending core capabilities, and integrating heterogeneous systems quickly,鈥� commented Marino Coletta, senior client account manager at Qintesi.

鈥淚ntelligent enterprises are leveraging advanced technologies to effectively utilize their data resources and achieve desired outcomes faster and with less risk,鈥� said Adriano Ceccherini, chief operating officer at 51风流Italy. 鈥淭o regulate the lifeblood of a new IT infrastructure, organizations need a rigorous master data governance system that enables seamless integration and quality control. This was the spirit of the innovative project with Unipol Group.鈥�

The Next Steps in Working with SAP

The project is currently being rolled out to other group companies that have not yet adopted the new process and solution. By involving all the group鈥檚 companies, even those with diversified businesses, the apps will be enriched by additional features to meet their respective business needs and realities.

This also appeared on 51风流News Center Italy.

The post Unipol Digitizes Master Data Management with 51风流Business Technology Platform appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

, the definitive annual event on technology leadership in the financial services industry returns on the 22nd of September 2022 as a brand-new hybrid concept.

The 2nd annual听听is set to take place on the 22nd of September 2022, at The Maslow, Sandton, South Africa. The forum is hosted by听, under the theme;听Bridging the gap between the future and the present through digital solutions.

Following a successful 2021 event,听听will bring together over 200 local and international BFSI industry leaders, fintech founders, industry regulators and technology service providers, to learn about cutting-edge innovations and engage in dynamic discussions addressing how finance is being redefined by technology.

Now, more than ever, we must come together and share our stories and find answers to our questions.

Key topics at the forum will include:

• Why the future of financial services is digital.
• How blockchain is rocking the financial world.
• FinTech vs. Banks 鈥� who is winning, or is it not a competition?
• How analytics beats intuition in customer service excellence.
• The pitfalls of digital transformation in Finance.
• Central Bank Digital Currencies: Challenges & Opportunities for the Financial Services Industry.
• Is South Africa ready for a digital currency and the legal implications thereof?

Confirmed speakers for听听颈苍肠濒耻诲别:

• Tracy Bolton, Chief Operating Officer at SAP.
• Tamara Mkula, Business Information Security Officer at Nedbank
• Abe Wakama, CEO at IT News Africa.
• Shem Kakembo, Managing Director at EFCUG, Uganda.
• Peter Neubauer, Chief Executive Officer at VIPASO, Austria.
• Magda Milas, President at Alice in Blockchains, Croatia.
• Moloti Nkune, Chief Information Officer at MICT SETA.
• Michelle Beetar, Vice President and Managing Director: MEA at FICO.
• Sandy Rheeder, CIO at Mukuru.
• Desiree Reddy, Director at Norton Rose Fulbright.
• Charles Mutigwe, Associate Professor, Business Information Systems at Western New England University, USA.
• Ahmed Ali Saleemi, Chief Operating Officer at AFT (Electronic Money Institute), Pakistan.

How to Participate:

听Join local and international CxOs, line-of-business (LoB) executives as well as heads of innovation, technology and strategy to discuss the future of digital finance.

听Showcase your technology innovations, projects, and solutions. Put your organisation at the centre of this one-of-a-kind gathering. Find new partners, investors, leads, and opportunities.

听Showcase your brand and present your technology solutions to a select audience. Position your organisation at the forefront of digital finance.

For more information about this conference, visit:听

[t]: +27 12 012 5801 [e]: events@itnewsafrica.com

This article first appeared on .

The post Africa鈥檚 Financial Industry Gears up for Digital Finance Africa 2022 appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

Physical distancing has been mandated by governments across the globe, consumers are hunkering down in the safety of their homes, rarely venturing out and digital engagement, along with touchless technologies, have exponentially increased. However, it can be argued that in fact, quite the opposite is true; that the Experience Economy, now, is more important than ever before.

And here鈥檚 why. As companies try to connect with their consumers, employees and partners; as they try and meet the unmet and unarticulated needs of their stakeholders, the experiences they deliver, at this critical inflection point of our history, will be more important than ever to their long term success.

As a concept, the Experience Economy is not new. A 1998 article in Harvard Business Review titled 鈥榃elcome to the Experience Economy鈥� highlighted how leading companies understood that 鈥渢he next competitive battleground lies in staging experiences.鈥� Products and services were no longer seen as differentiators.

By 2017, McKinsey had declared 鈥楨xperiences are king鈥� as their research confirmed how consumers had gradually shifted their expenditure from products to experiences. In their report, McKinsey found that personal consumption expenditure on experience-related services had grown 1.5 times faster than total personal consumption spending and nearly four times faster than expenditure on products.

Gartner even declared that 2019 would be the year that experience overtake product and price as the main competitive differentiators for brands and businesses. Positive, hyper-personalised experiences were now required to sweeten the deal for consumers.

Rise of Intelligent Experiences

In line with the rise of exponential technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and the Internet of Thing, the concept of the Experience Economy has also evolved over the past few years. Today, successful businesses manage their experiences as a core strategic business capability. They have seen how customers are willing to pay more for experiences. They understand that the value needle has shifted.

This new approach is powered by Intelligence. Intelligent Experience Management leverages the power of exponential technologies 鈥� AI, IoT, advanced analytics 鈥� to drive a more optimal customer, employee, product and brand experiences. This relentless focus on value delivery through enhanced experiences, is what will allow enterprises to win in today鈥檚 market.

And these exponential technologies powering differentiated business capabilities, are vital to the long term success of enterprises, because of the volume and nature of data that informs modern Experience Economy strategies. Traditionally, organisations relied heavily on operational data 鈥� revenue, inventory, suppliers, workforce 鈥� to make decisions, but today they need insights from a different type of data to augment the value their provide to their customers; they need experience data.

Experience data provides insights into the sentiment and emotional aspects that influence a customer, employee, partner or supplier decisions towards a brand. In short, operational data reveals what is happening in an organisation, and experience data reveals why and how it is happening.

An Intelligent Experience Management strategy would measure and track operational data and experience data and use AI in combination with other exponential technologies to construct and augment individualised profiles of customers, employees, brands or products. Predicitve or Prescriptive actions can then be taken in order to optimally drive outcomes that matter.

Put another way, instead of reacting to problems when they occur, increasing the 鈥榚xperience gap鈥�, companies can now get ahead of the curve and address challenges before they have a lasting negative impact on the organisation.

The impact and advantage of this type of capability will be indispensable to organisations as they adapt to changing customer behaviour in the wake of the pandemic. While adoption of digital services has exponentially increased across the globe, the events of 2020 and the resulting shift in consumer behaviour, will put additional pressure on organisations to transform how they engage with customer and employees.

And nowhere is this shift as apparent as in the financial services sector.

Experience Economy transforming banks, insurers

Banks鈥� relationships with their customers have largely been built on the basis of compliance: often a box-ticking exercise that ensures the bank鈥檚 conduct is in line with a robust set of rules and standards and that the consumer adheres to a strict set of principles.

This dynamic prevailed until the emergence of the internet and other digital technologies that created new channels for customer engagement. According to a recent Qualtrics study, of all the time customers spent interacting with their bank, 47% of that time was via online channels, and less than a third of that time in person. The same study found that 鈥楶oor Service鈥� was the second-most important factor in consumers considering leaving their bank for a competitor.

The banking industry is extremely competitive. Most banks generally offer the same types of products and services. The real differentiation lies in the experience that customers have when interacting with the bank. And the cost of a poor experience I this industry has become increasingly significant: a 2018 survey by Forrester Research found that, for every one-point decline in its customer experience score, a multi-channel bank loses $124-million in potential revenue.

Banks, competing with more agile fin-techs and a growing ecosystem of non-traditional financial services providers 鈥� including the powerful telco industry 鈥� have taken note of this and have been making significant investment into their Experience Economy strategies. By 2018, McKinsey found that three out of four of the world鈥檚 50 largest banks were committed to some form of customer experience transformation.

Insurers are also taking note.

Insurance provider Allianz recently leveraged Qualtrics, the experience management platform, to collect experience data from customers in 22 countries. Using the platform to filter and priorities insights by location, and function, Allianz could empower their customer-facing teams with the certainty to know what action to take to deliver a seamless and positive experience at every step of each customers鈥� engagement with the company.

Allianz has also used the experience data to develop entirely new products to help protect businesses from emerging risks, improve its reputation for quality consultations and become integral business partners to its customers, building lasting loyalty.

Financial services companies that have not invested in transforming their customer and employee experiences will be left far behind their competitors in a post-2020 world. Leaving experience management to chance is a recipe for failure.

Instead, organisations should seek ways to improve their collection and processing of experience data and combine that with operational data to make informed decisions over the future of their companies.

The post Manage Experiences Intelligently in a Socially Distant World appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

This year, leaders will share their experience, insights, and perspectives on five dedicated tracks: End-to-End Implementation, Customer Experience and Engagement, Operational Excellence, Finance and Risk, and Data and Technology.

This event is designed for senior managers, vice presidents, and executives focused on business strategy, digital innovation, customer experience, sales, business operations, finance transformation and operations, risk management, asset management, IT infrastructure, and data management. Participants can build their own agenda by choosing from more than 25 live webinars based on personally relevant content, and can choose from more than 10 live webinars each day, experience customer case study agenda, and network with other leaders in real time.

On-Demand Keynotes

On-demand keynotes will introduce key themes and topics to be addressed during live sessions. Delivered by global executives, these topics will help impart a better understanding of how 51风流and its customers view the current market during these uncertain times. Keynotes will include:

• Financial Markets in Transition: Christoph Bohm, CIO and COO of Deutsche Borse AG
  
• Shared-Valued Health Platform: Maia Surmava, CIO of Discovery Health
• How to Become an Ecosystem Player: Karsten Crede, CEO of ERGO Mobility Solutions

Three Days of Live Customer Events and Case Studies

A range of executive customers from the banking, capital markets, central banks, and insurance industries will take the stage live from November 17-19, with new presentations continuously being confirmed. Here is a sample of what to expect from customer speakers, live events, and case studies:

• Life Insurance End-to-End Core Transformation with Seong Yeoul (SY) Lee, Samsung Life Insurance: Lee will explore why SLI opted for an insurance core transformation, why SLI chose to partner with SAP, and what SLI has learned from this experience.
• Panel Discussion: Accelerated Launch of Greenfield Insurer: Hear how Greenfield Insurers is accelerating the end-to-end implementation of 51风流solutions. Presenters will discuss the project background and collaboration experiences with SAP, the individual journeys to date, and what is planned next, as well as why they chose to take this particular approach.
• From Valley to Vast Bank – A Digital Transformation Journey: Brad Scrivner from Vast Bank and Andrew MacDowell from Axxiome Americas will discuss how they created a modern financial ecosystem by implementing an agile, open e2e banking platform.
• Steve Everett of Lloyds Banking Group will discuss how 51风流provides a real-time banking platform that meets the complex business requirements of large corporate and institutional clients. This includes how complex transactions can be completed faster, liquidity can be managed more efficiently, and productivity can be increased through additional insight into operations.
• With a background in data analysis for consumer experiences, including automotive and fintech, Tiffany Ng from Consumer Insights at Experian will address how she puts the consumer at the center of strategic initiatives. She will also address how her focus on agile and automated platforms to support traditional objectives is enabling her team to deliver more insights faster.
• Drawing on听over 25 years of market research experience, Richard Waring from Group Insights & Customer Experience at Group Marketing, Bank of Ireland Group will address how he is helping the bank build a new program of insight and research by using 51风流and Qualtrics software to send more than 5 million surveys to customers in real time across key daily touch points.

Register for Free and Attend 51风流Financial Services Live 2020

While it’s not possible to be together in person this year, 51风流is bringing the next best thing. A virtual event platform from Pathable offers an immersive experience with seamless networking and interactivity. This includes interactive breakouts, where attendees can join a variety of group discussions, participate in regional community groups and live demos with 51风流experts, and connect with partners and customers to ask real-time questions.

Don鈥檛 miss this signature industry event: !

This article first appeared on the 51风流News Center.

The post 51风流Financial Services Live 2020: Building Resilience in a Volatile Digital Economy appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.

As a concept, the Experience Economy is not new. A 1998 article in Harvard Business Review titled 鈥樷�� highlighted how leading companies understood that 鈥渢he next competitive battleground lies in staging experiences.鈥澨齈roducts and services were no longer seen as differentiators.

By 2017, McKinsey had declared 鈥樷�� as their research confirmed how consumers had gradually shifted their expenditure from products to experiences. In their report, McKinsey found that personal consumption expenditure on experience-related services had grown 1.5 times faster than total personal consumption spending and nearly four times faster than expenditure on products.

Gartner even declared that 2019 would be the year that as the main competitive differentiators for brands and businesses. Positive, hyper-personalised experiences were now required to sweeten the deal for consumers.

Rise of Intelligent Experiences

In line with the rise of exponential technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and the Internet of Thing, the concept of the Experience Economy has also evolved over the past few years. Today, successful businesses manage their experiences as a core strategic business capability. They have seen how customers are willing to pay more for experencies. They understand that the value needle has shifted.

This new approach is powered by Intelligence. Intelligent Experience Management leverages the power of exponential technologies – AI, IoT, advanced analytics – to drive a more optimal customer, employee, product and brand experiences. This relentless focus on value delivery through enhanced experiences, is what will allow enterprises to win in today鈥檚 market.

And these exponential technologies powering differentiated business capabilities, are vital to the long term success of enterprises, because of the volume and nature of data that informs modern Experience Economy strategies. Traditionally, organisations relied heavily on operational data – revenue, inventory, suppliers, workforce – to make decisions, but today they need insights from a different type of data to augment the value their provide to their customers; they need experience data.

Experience data provides insights into the sentiment and emotional aspects that influence a customer, employee, partner or supplier decisions听towards a brand. In short, operational data reveals what is happening in an organisation, and experience data reveals why and how it is happening.

An Intelligent Experience Management strategy would measure and track operational data and experience data and use AI in combination with other exponential technologies to construct and augment individualised profiles of customers, employees, brands or products. Predicitve or Prescriptive actions can then be taken in order to optimally drive outcomes that matter.

Put another way, instead of reacting to problems when they occur, increasing the 鈥榚xperience gap鈥�, companies can now get ahead of the curve and address challenges before they have a lasting negative impact on the organisation.

The impact and advantage of this type of capability will be indispensable to organisations as they adapt to changing customer behaviour in the wake of the pandemic. While adoption of digital services has exponentially increased across the globe, the events of 2020 and the resulting shift in consumer behaviour, will put additional pressure on organisations to transform how they engage with customer and employees.

And nowhere is this shift as apparent as in the financial services sector.

听Experience Economy transforming banks, insurers

Banks鈥� relationships with their customers have largely been built on the basis of compliance: often a box-ticking exercise that ensures the bank鈥檚 conduct is in line with a robust set of rules and standards and that the consumer adheres to a strict set of principles.

This dynamic prevailed until the emergence of the internet and other digital technologies that created new channels for customer engagement. According to a recent Qualtrics study, of all the time customers spent interacting with their bank, . The same study found that 鈥楶oor Service鈥� was the second-most important factor in consumers considering leaving their bank for a competitor.

The banking industry is extremely competitive. Most banks generally offer the same types of products and services. The real differentiation lies in the experience that customers have when interacting with the bank. And the cost of a poor experience I this industry has become increasingly significant: 听a 2018 survey by Forrester Research found that, for every one-point decline in its customer experience score,.

Banks, competing with more agile fin-techs and a growing ecosystem of non-traditional financial services providers – including the powerful telco industry – have taken note of this and have been making significant investment into their Experience Economy strategies. By 2018, McKinsey found that were committed to some form of customer experience transformation.

Insurers are also taking note.

Insurance provider Allianz recently leveraged Qualtrics, the experience management platform, to collect experience data from customers in 22 countries. Using the platform to filter and priorities insights by location, and function, Allianz could empower their customer-facing teams with the certainty to know what action to take to deliver a seamless and positive experience at every step of each customers鈥� engagement with the company.

Allianz has also used the experience data to develop entirely new products to help protect businesses from emerging risks, improve its reputation for quality consultations and become integral business partners to its customers, building lasting loyalty.

Financial services companies that have not invested in transforming their customer and employee experiences will be left far behind their competitors in a post-2020 world. Leaving experience management to chance is a recipe for failure.

Instead, organisations should seek ways to improve their collection and processing of experience data and combine that with operational data to make informed decisions over the future of their companies.

The post Experiences are Even More Important in a Socially Distant World. Manage them Intelligently appeared first on 51风流Africa News Center.