For 14 years I have had the pleasure of collaborating in the banking and financial services industry of Mexico, in this period I have had the opportunity to experience the selection, implementation, operation and maintenance, and the evolution of the banking and financial systems of the country. This has been enriching from different perspectives such as technical professional and collaboration with great professionals and institutions.
One of the main achievements has been the implementation of SAP Banking Solutions that allowed me to experience first-hand the complete business and technology cycle that this type of solutions live from within organizations, in both a regulated and regulated field. I have also had the opportunity to contrast the benefits of specialist industry knowledge compared to other solutions on the market, as well as custom-made systems.
Differentiators for the business
Financial systems solutions have been evolving and focusing their value delivery on aspects as relevant as user experience, multiculturalism, and high availability. But at the same time, they have shown that the back-end part already has a level of maturity in terms of the offer of the products, transactionality and support it requires.
The types and conditions of financial products, as well as the management of their portfolio, are already a well-known financial mathematical modeling in the industry. This allows institutions to wrap these products and focus their differentiation on the average channels and experience that are delivered to end users at each of the points that are defined to the target market and integrate the innovative and satellite functionalities that the operation of the business or regulation requires.
Solutions as mature as Banking Services, in addition to providing this type of knowledge and industry conventions for the modeling and management of the portfolio of products in financial services, provide a technical and extensibility framework that allows not only the integration of external or internal systems and channels, but also a solid technical base that allows compliance with the models of reference security architecture, availability, elasticating, data governance and data integrity.
The ability to receive consulting and support services anywhere in the world, in a specialized way, with proven models, and with the support of one of the largest and most valued software providers in the world whose technological solutions are continuously reviewed and audited under the expertise of different regulators and regulations worldwide is another of the attributes that inherently has when implementing these solutions.
These differentials are reflected not only in the operational and strategic aspects of the business but also directly in the CTO that the platform itself contains.
From theory to practice
When a process of evaluation and selection of a platform for financial services is carried out, the differentiators mentioned above are always put on the table. At the same time the solution is rented to time to Market challengers, which reflect the arduous competition and dynamism of financial services.
During the evaluation of this tool one of the premises that the top management gave me was the implementation in a period of time no longer than 6 months, attached to the best practices of the industry and in compliance with the regulations of the credit institutions of the country where I am, I am clear that the capacity of the software and the good practices of Industry with which it will have would be the decisive factor for the successful implementation of the strategic plan.
Training and support to form a financial services operation team is always a challenge in the institutions that implement it. To achieve this successfully, there must be extensive documentation and expert consultants that allow not only the implementation of the software solution, but the transfer of knowledge about it, ensuring a correct and orderly transition to the operation while the expenses are controlled so as not to impact the business case and specifically the CTO.
One of the biggest challenges that you will possibly find is that the implementation of this type of solutions is for the regulated financial industry is the ability to integrate with the huge list of internal and external satellites that are required for the execution of the value chain of the Institution. There, the Banking Solutions software gave me a great surprise to have the technical ability to integrate literally with any system and medium which was required, and surprisingly in a transparent and standard way according to the technical architecture of the application.
As the continuous implementation goes and the operation began something that undoubtedly surprised the different business units coma regulators and technical team was: the native capabilities of having a robust capacity of audit trails com operational and technical blogs that allowed us to know not only the final result (successful or unsuccessful) of the operation we were carrying out, if not its origin and configuration that gave rise to that result… I had never seen that before.
The ability to provide information that gives certainty to the regulator about the operational and technical capabilities of the software that supports the business is a challenge at the time of implementation, it was surprising to find a series of technical and operational knowledge that was possessed naturally and worldwide about the tool. This allowed to focus the effort of documentation and explanation towards the regulators on the operation of the business and the technical integrations that were possessed not in the Cor systemand, without a doubt, another satisfactory surprise.
Conclusions
The specialized knowledge of Industry, the maturity of technological solutions and the correct network of consultants specialized in both business and technology are a huge intangible capital that Banking Services solutions allow to possess and positively impact institutions that digitally transform their operation to provide financial services, SAP and SAP Fioneer are the right bet.