Continued technological advancements are necessary in the financial industry. Companies that are either unable to do so or fail to place the proper importance on keeping up will be left behind by their competition.
There are many reasons for these ongoing innovations. New software affords new capabilities. Any business that offers a unique and useful service will be rewarded by the market.
But the main driving factor behind this continued push is that customers demand it.
The general public expects more from their technology every year, and the financial industry is no exception to the rule.
So how does a bank keep up with this growing hunger for new resources?
Frequent rollouts of new updates, services, and applications are necessary to avoid falling behind the competition.
Salesforce is a powerful platform being used by many in the financial industry to develop these necessary updates. However, Salesforce was developed as a CRM and not a development platform. This means that while it can offer many useful tools, there are some shortfalls that will need to be taken into account.
We’ll look into the customer trends that are driving this continued need for technological updates, and the ways Salesforce addresses them.
Customer Expectations That Are Driving Technological Advancements in Banking
Mobile Services Are Essential
The prevalence of smartphones is undeniable. They are everywhere because they have streamlined functions that were previously convoluted and time-consuming.
Banking is a great example of an errand that has been simplified through mobile technology.
Customers expect the ability to check their account balances, transfer funds, and deposit checks without stepping foot into a bank.
These capabilities make the banking experience much easier for customers, and your software and technology need to be able to support them. Frequent updates are necessary to keep up with the continued advancements in smartphone technology.
Smooth Functionality for Online Banking
Websites have never been more important than they are today. User experience is a major concern in how they are constructed, and mobile devices need to be taken into account.
Your website should be functional on every device—no matter the size of the screen. The images, text, and buttons should all be easily found and easily used.
Websites that don’t load correctly will send your visitors looking for a resource better suited for fulfilling their needs.
People take their banking seriously, and rightly so. Properly managing your money is essential. A smooth website or application experience is necessary.
Quality Customer Service
People are going to have questions. This is inevitable and you need to have systems in place to answer them quickly and sufficiently.
Many businesses are making use of technological means of doing this. FAQ sections on your website might be somewhat useful, but they aren’t going to answer every question.
AI has been an increasingly important tool in many ways.
Chatbots have become much more helpful. Customers will frequently have questions that don’t necessarily require a human touch. And every process that can be automated will save you team time and your company money.
Security of Information
Cybercriminals will continue to grow more wily as technology becomes more advanced. As such, financial institutions need to combat this with continued efforts toward data security.
Customers expect their information to be kept secure. Beyond that, governmental regulations require it.
Financial information is incredibly important. This is why it’s such a prized target for cybercriminals. Customers need to be able to trust that their information is being kept secure.
Any faltering in this confidence will lead them to seek other places that are better suited to properly handling their financial information.
How Salesforce Development Can Help
Source Code Management
The quality of your code is everything when it comes to functional updates and applications. There is likely a team of people working to get your updates to market quicker. So how do you make sure everyone is working together in a coherent and organized fashion?
Code can become overwritten. Merges can contradict each other. And you never really know how everything is going to work until it’s put together.
Salesforce gives you what you need to write this code. However, another step is needed to make sure it’s working as well as it can.
Version Control is one such method of managing this source code to make sure you are creating top-quality products.
Go Beyond Regulatory Security Needs
As we mentioned earlier, security is a major concern for the customers of financial institutions. Regulations are in place to hold banks accountable, but there should be more reasons for you to keep your customers’ data safe beyond these requirements.
A multi-layered approach to Salesforce security gives you the best chance at fending off cyberthreats and keeping sensitive data secure.
There are many things that can be done to work toward this goal, and you should be utilizing as many of these as possible.
Salesforce, as a platform, is very secure. However, there are plenty of things users can do to compromise this level of security. Instituting a series of best practices can help guard against data disasters.
Continuous Integration and Delivery
Secure and well-constructed applications and updates are great, but that alone isn’t enough to put you at the forefront of your industry. You also need to be able to launch these products quickly.
Continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) are two methods of getting your products in front of your customers without sacrificing quality.
Salesforce unfortunately doesn’t offer this capability, but AutoRABIT does.
CI and CD allow your developers to automate the integration of new code commits, perform quality checks, and position them in front of an approver to get the product launched quickly and safely.
Prepare for Data Disasters
Data recovery might not seem like a production issue. However, your team will be busy getting your system back to base level instead of working on new code if you don’t have a recovery plan in place.
Backup and restore systems are essential to maintaining a solid environment to promote technological progress.
Playing catch-up doesn’t move you forward. In fact, it’s a drain on time which costs your company money. Backup and restore functions are essential to meet regulatory requirements, but their benefits stretch far beyond that.
Giving yourself a safety net allows you to make bold jumps. You want your bank to be moving forward instead of worrying about getting back to basic functionality.
