Customer-Centric Management - Siemens Financial Services

The world's leading banks have been keen early adopters of new technologies and working methods over the past decade, and there is a strong business rationale for this. To compete successfully in a tough marketplace, all banks need to keep customer satisfaction levels up, while keeping operational costs down.

Most banks have realised that modest, incremental improvements in their business processes will not provide the step-change in performance required both by consumer demand and by investors targeting higher returns. So they have targeted breakthroughs in everything from consolidating and simplifying their technology infrastructures to bringing higher efficiency and lower cost to their communications; from introducing new channels to market to developing new skills in their workforces.

NEW CHALLENGES

Quite apart from the ongoing need for consolidation and rationalisation, a new set of challenges will certainly test management capability in the next few years. Yet these same challenges could also lead to opportunities for banks to take further bold steps forward, to differentiate themselves from competitors and gain advantage by doing so.

We will begin to see the following:

• Growing consolidation through acquisition and mergers as leading banks seek to achieve high growth rates in competitive markets. This will lead to large-scale globalisation in the banking sector
• Risk and security issues viewed and managed as a single, end-to-end concern, incorporating IT systems, channel management, identity and access management, together with the physical environment
• A move by banks to reposition themselves as leading retailers. They will certainly continue to make creative use of the trend towards remote channels, while face-to-face customer contact is used to achieve greater customer intimacy
• Increased emphasis on compliance issues, reflecting a stream of new regulations including Sarbanes-Oxley, Basel II, and the EU's Markets in Financial Services Directive (MiFID). This will also lead to major changes in some aspects of corporate governance
• Further growth in the use of low-cost locations as banks target greater operations efficiency and continuously reduced fixed costs. These activities will be based on innovative working methods to facilitate seamless management of processes across national borders and between business partners
• A strong focus on recruitment, training and re-skilling of personnel in order to build workforces with the knowledge, sensitivity and expertise to drive customer satisfactions levels higher

CUSTOMER-CENTRIC MANAGEMENT

One factor, more than any other, could make the difference between success and failure: integrated, customer-centric management, based on clear end-to-end vision across every aspect of your business.

In the banking sector, world-class performance depends on working smarter by becoming more innovative and agile; getting closer by building stronger and more intimate ties with customers; and being fitter by constantly achieving new operational efficiency benefits. In each case, performance breakthroughs come from managing the key issues as interconnected requirements, based on an integrated management vision.

INTEGRATED SOLUTIONS

Siemens has the capability to deliver integrated solutions that bring together world-leading strengths in key activities, all managed according to consistent principles and methods. This vision of partnership provides a smarter, closer and fitter way to achieve advantage in the marketplace.