Advances in technology are changing the way consumers want to conduct business and as a consequence financial institutions need to get with the programm.

Banking customers want to be in control of the transaction which is why omnichannel banking is set to revolutionise the way banks are doing business.

Creating an anytime, anywhere, any platform (triple A) digitalised service is the way forward says Ronald Fons, Global Head of Financial Services Industries for Huawei Technologies Ltd, a leading global information and communications technology solutions provider.

Huawei has a major presence in Africa since it first opened an office in Cairo, Egypt in 1999. It now employs more than 5,800 people in 18 offices and seven training centres across the continent as well as a Research and Development Centre in South Africa.  Its solutions are deployed by more than 60 operators in some 20 African countries.

Fons said: “For banks to harness the triple A service and embrace an omnichannel world they will need to make changes to infrastructure architecture as well as business process work flows.”

“The customer wants to be in control of the transaction and by this I mean, if you take into consideration the physical attributes of that triple A, they want to begin a transaction, suspend it resume it and conclude it and that could be on three or four different platforms.”

Spreading the word

Fons was spreading the word of omnichannel banking to a plethora of South Africa’s banking CEOs, financial gurus and experts at the continent’s largest banking and technology show last month.

He was a keynote speaker at Future Bank Africa 2013, held at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg, where he gave a presentation about the challenges banks face in evolving integrated omnichannel services.

Just before taking the podium, Fons spoke to African Business Review about some of the transitions the banking industry in South Africa and the rest of the continent faces if it is to keep step with constantly evolving technology platforms used by its customers.

“Our lives are changing and not just from social networking, but from the very advanced technology that is in people’s homes right now,” he said.  “Obviously, banks need an underlying infrastructure that can seamlessly bring in 4G, 3G, online, internet, self-service kiosks which traditionally in consumer banking have been tied to one technology.

“For many years banks have talking about multi-channel integration, but what I think that really means is how the bank finds out information and can interact with the customer in terms of knowing what the customer wants.”

Making better use of on-line video is one example of where banks could heighten their infrastructure to meet the demands of customers.

For example, if a customer wanted to have a meeting with an advisor, but they didn’t want to go into the bank, they should be able to make a video call through their HDTV at home to an advisor who might be working on a tablet at their home via the bank’s infrastructure.

Smarter banks

For the past year Huawei, has been leading the debate on innovative or smart bank branches. Changing the face of retail banking to provide customers with an array of digitalised services the minute they walk through the door would effectively help banks to offload high volume, low revenue transactions traditionally carried out by tellers, making them more efficient and appealing to consumers.

“I would say that because of the heavy loading of consumers still wanting to go in a bank and conduct transactions the innovative or smart branch idea in Africa will come up pretty robustly,” he said.

To help banks make the transition to being smarter and more in tune with their customer’s needs, Huawei Technologies has the solutions.

Fons said: “The message we want to bring is that whatever banks are looking for in terms of carrier-based technologies, social media enterprise, any platform triple A, we have all the solutions.

“From an Africa point of view we have some unique qualities we can offer that can help with issues such as less bandwidth. For Huawei mobile telecommunication is bread and butter to us, just like WIFI and traditional land-based technologies we can integrate all of these seamlessly compared to some of our rivals, because we are major innovators and manufacturers in each of those sectors.”

Fons believes that South Africa banks are well placed to take advantage of the omnichannel world, although there is a need to re-architect a lot of things and security issues to address.

“The omnichannel focus is really on how you can bring self-service to a new level by not only offering banking services, but things such as cross-selling, vouchers, cinema tickets, book flights and a whole lot more, which brings me back to my original statement that the customers wants to be in control,” he concluded.

Source : abdas.org