The banking sector has faced ongoing disruptions for a while 鈥� from new fintech players in the ecosystem, new regulatory changes, margin erosion and new ways of working, to new digital channels and rising expectations around customer experience. It鈥檚 easy to lose sight of how to unlock potential when the competitive sand keeps sifting under your feet. And it鈥檚 even harder to innovate without having the fundamentals in place.

But it鈥檚 now becoming urgent. Industry disruption shows no signs of slowing, and growing dissatisfaction from customers is on the rise with just one in five UK customers saying they鈥檙e satisfied with the support they receive from their bank. Over half of UK SMEs are reassessing their bank鈥檚 suitability, according to new . There are also significant differences around the gender and generation of customers and turnover of companies that are shaping banking behaviour and preferences.

It’s time for banks to hit the reset button 鈥� and fast. While the disruptive gap is widening between traditional and digital banks, customer tolerance for over standardised, impersonalised products is wearing thin 鈥� all of which tie back to outdated technology architectures. It鈥檚 not just a question of brand reputation, but also loss of market share and legacy maintenance costs and restrictions. This isn鈥檛 just a functionality fix. It鈥檚 a platform rethink.

A helps the bank鈥檚 business to run better by bringing together data, analytics, artificial intelligence, application development, automation, and integration in a single environment. It takes you from a closed and complex architecture to an open, opportunistic approach to services, processes and landscapes.

It means you can unlock your organisational potential and functional innovation to easily create new disruptive customer offerings with back-end integrations, real-time connectivity between ERP, procurement and the bank鈥檚 core.

That鈥檚 way more than just putting the fundamentals in place. It means banks can unleash and accelerate innovative ideas, such as self-service analytics to ensure consistent decision-making across the front and back office with richer reporting and dashboards. They can harness Machine Learning for Know Your Customer and Anti Money Laundering regulations, gain greater insights for workforce analytics, and ensure seamless integration with partner solutions and applications for a better user experience.

When banks know better, they can do better 鈥� which means the cumulative and continuous results of insights and intelligence drive more meaningful innovation and better performance.

But results require action 鈥� and that action should be now. Banks should start looking at different functions and processes and identify the best use cases that could benefit from technology driven transformation. They should then experiment with proof of concept environments and leverage 鈥榝ail fast鈥� learning methods, so they can execute rapidly with their vendor partner of choice. Focusing on long-term benefits and identifying value drivers lets banks put innovation into practice through flexible and agile commercial models based on need and usage.

Failing to unlock business potential, has become obvious and urgent. If the technology fundamentals aren鈥檛 right, efforts to bridge the gaps around disruption, competition and customer attrition will always fall short. Act now!

Michael Walsh is Head of Financial Services at SAP, UK

The post Undisputable Urgency: Banks Must Unlock Business Potential Now appeared first on 51风流UK News Center.

Yes, but it鈥檚 a mistake to think that fast-growing companies don鈥檛 have similar business needs to the bigger players. Some examples I come across a lot include: needing full visibility of their organisation in real-time, getting a tighter grip on their financials and becoming more competitive through the efficiency and innovation benefits of intelligent technologies (which are embedded with 51风流S/4HANA) such as AI, predictive analytics and machine learning.

You might be surprised to know that around . Even pre-revenue start-ups are choosing 51风流S/4HANA to enable them to achieve their ambitious growth plans. To date, we have over 16,400 51风流S/4HANA customers and half of these are midsize businesses.

We know that the ability to be agile drives operational excellence. In the face of constant change you need to pivot quickly. 51风流S/4HANA allows the office of CFO to plan in real-time, to innovate fast and to quickly respond to change.

I鈥檇 like to share a few examples of our SME customers鈥� successes with 51风流S/4HANA. Founded in 2011 to shake up the UK broadband market with its 鈥渇ull鈥� fibre optic technology, now has around 940 employees. Their disconnected systems were limiting their ability to grow, and their CEO told us that they knew they needed a world-class ERP platform if they were to scale and progress.

51风流S/4HANA, implemented by 51风流partner TATA Consultancy Services, is now an integral part of Hyperoptic鈥檚 technology landscape. They can access real-time data for deeper insights and to make better business-critical decisions especially in the area of inventory, supply chain and
finance operations. In fact, they鈥檙e achieving 25% faster decision-making and 60% faster financial close due to having 鈥榦ne source of the truth鈥� for their business.

We have some great commercial offerings which make 51风流S/4HANA more affordable, and digital transformation more accessible, for the midmarket. For example, our new makes 51风流S/4HANA even more attainable for small, growing businesses.

To truly transform a business at your preferred speed and on your terms, you need more than infrastructure-as-a-service or software-as-a-service. You need a more holistic offering, business transformation-as-a-service. RISE with 51风流is a subscription service which brings together everything you need to transform your business in a way that works best for you. It allows businesses to change not only once, but to continually evolve to address new challenges and changing business needs.

In March 2021, we signed the UK鈥檚 first RISE with 51风流customer, engineering firm Briggs of Burton. They selected RISE with 51风流as the vehicle to help them increase revenue to 拢100m by 2024, from about 拢16m in 2016. We are currently working with , to ensure they go live by the end of this year.

[] Briggs鈥� Finance Director, Nathan Beddoe, realised that was the right platform to achieve their ambitious growth targets and to provide them with the real-time reporting and efficiencies they need to proactively manage the business.

Like Briggs, many fast-growing companies get to a point where getting onto an intelligent ERP platform is essential if they are to continue their growth journey in a sustainable, controlled way. Data-driven insights can nurture growth as this explains. Moving from an onpremise CAPEX model to a Cloud OPEX model also means they can reduce IT spend and have more cash to invest in their business growth.

For small and midsize companies, the digital transformation journey can sometimes seem pretty daunting. I liken it to running as fast as you can off the edge of a cliff and hoping that the drop is two feet and not two hundred feet. To make your digital transformation way less scary, you need a transformation partner you can trust, who is experienced and has the programs in place to support your growth plans.

This is where the security of almost 50 years of ERP know-how, along with our market-leading partner network, can reassure you that we have got your back. In fact, we focus on having some of the best people in the industry and the most advanced, yet easy-to-use, technologies to ensure that there is no drop ahead and to help you fly 鈥� or should I say RISE?!

I invite you to join us in the for thought-provoking insights from business leaders, industry experts, and transformational stories from your peers.

The post Grow, RISE with SAP, and Fly 鈥� how we鈥檙e helping fast-growth, midmarket companies to transform appeared first on 51风流UK News Center.