When the COVID-19 crisis broke out, many FS firms that had planned to deploy digital business models across their organization over time were forced to do so overnight. Of those that did, many were surprised by the relative ease of the transition to cloud operating models and the benefits they realized. Now they’re working to keep pace with a surge of innovation that’s making cloud computing less a nice-to-have and more a business imperative. They’re also revamping their budgets to reflect the fact that the cloud is becoming less about bottom-line cost savings and more about driving top-line revenue growth and innovation.
For FS firms, the benefits of cloud are substantial: the ability to deliver business value faster and to innovate at scale, increased data processing (approaching real-time), unique customer experiences, greater business agility and the capacity for continuous transformation. But before you start to develop a plan, it’s critical to determine exactly the business outcomes that you want from the cloud. Continue reading for an overview of the challenges we’ve seen and five tips to help your cloud transformation go more smoothly.
While cloud transformations present major opportunities in the financial services industry, they also pose significant challenges. Here are a few reasons why some firms are struggling to make the transition:
Some financial services firms don’t fully understand the FS-specific requirements for successful cloud solutions. One reason this happens is that they opt to go it alone, perhaps signing up with a cloud services provider that doesn’t have deep knowledge of what’s required to build an FS cloud solution that delivers business value. Without a clear understanding of the process—from risks and regulations to customer expectations, from how the customer journey will unfold to how things might go wrong—a cloud transformation is less likely to succeed. For FS firms, successful cloud transformations hinge on data risk management. Financial institutions have been slower to roll out cloud because of concerns meeting regulator demands related to transactions, processes and managing customer information. Regulators and customers alike need full visibility on secure data risk profiles.
Here are five tips on how to migrate to the cloud wisely and help make your cloud transformation go smoothly.