You probably have a junk drawer somewhere in your home—probably in your kitchen, possibly more than one. It’s the catch-all for everything that, for whatever reason, has lost its original, proper place: batteries that might have a little juice left in them, some Hello Kitty Band-Aids, a ball of rubber bands, a lone envelope, loose pushpins, a packet of sunflower seeds, a 2-cent stamp, a flip phone from five upgrades ago, and a Lego you stepped on in 2014.
Some of these things were once useful and they still could be, if they could find a way back to their former lives. If that Band-Aid could find its old first-aid kit or if those batteries could make their way to a remote—or, even better, a charger—then they could reclaim their purpose (and declutter the drawer).
How traditional FI back offices are like junk drawers
When it comes to financial institutions’ back-office processes, there’s legacy tech all over the place—you can’t get rid of that, it was so expensive—and spreadsheets, workarounds, plugins, patches, a lot of software leftover from an acquisition, so many manual-entry processes, and regulations piled everywhere (let’s not get started).
There are solutions to make complicated back-office clutter more manageable. Sure, some things need to stay, but some can be replaced with automation.
Thankfully, there are solutions to make complicated back-office clutter more manageable. Sure, some things need to stay, but some can be replaced with automation—in particular, all that error-prone manual entry, the endless spreadsheets, and terrible user interfaces. Regulations can even be made more manageable. You can’t get rid of them, but you can organize them better and automate the way you handle them.
For example, if your junk drawer is full of disputed transactions, consider a system that automates your response to those disputes—maybe even one that lets your account holders log in to their banking app and submit the dispute themselves.
The same goes for loan applications. Automate, simplify. Adopt a technology that streamlines the application process for your borrowers and the origination process for you—and accelerate lending for all involved.
These are just two of a vast array of decluttering, simplifying solutions to learn more about. Others include tools for transaction management and reporting, lease lifecycle management, onboarding, cross-selling, risk assessments, fraud detection—the list goes on.
If you’re interested making your back-office more manageable, take a look at our simplicity solutions. If not, we hope someday something in that drawer turns out to be useful. But remember, if you aren’t actively increasing your efficiency and improving experiences throughout your FI (frontline and back office alike), your account holders might just leave you in the junk drawer.
And you should probably just have that flip phone recycled—some technology’s never coming back.
