Superfast Business Wales. Sector Guide. Finance and Professional Services

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1 Superfast Business Wales Finance and Professional Services

2 Superfast Business Wales Superfast technology for a real-time response Contents Real-time access to information and organisations Getting the benefit of technology... 6 Serving your clients and business better... 8 Top Tips Contact details The financial and professional services sector is about to receive a huge boost from superfast broadband. The prospect of receiving information in real time will allow for a more efficient service, delivered on the spot, to clients of all sizes. There are many specific examples in which the faster network will make a difference. Customer relationship management, the ability to research a huge amount of products and to interface automatically with institutions are among the advantages available. Increased revenue and cost savings should combine to make a financial or professional services company more profitable overall. 2 3

3 Understand Real-time access to information and organisations Financial advisors face a potential dilemma. They visit a client and offer them a number of pieces of advice, backed up by booklets and information. However, the client has done some of their own research on the Internet or seen an advertisement on TV and appears to know as much if not more about what s on offer as the advisor does. In fact they ve set themselves up with a daily alert to keep them abreast of everything that s going on. Notwithstanding the private systems available to the financial sector, the customer, whether consumer or business, is better informed than they ever have been before. The best way around this is to know the customer intimately and ensure their needs are dealt with at all times. This, to all professional service providers including financial advisors but also accountants, management consultants and others, is going to mean having access to extensive case management notes which are accurate up to the minute. Superfast broadband will enable you to keep these notes accessible in real time, from anywhere. It will also enable you to interface with external systems. These include: Banks just about every bank has an Internet version of its accounts for clients, both in the business and the consumer world Other financial institutions stock markets, investment houses, crowd funding platforms (the latter barely exist outside the Internet) HMRC which much prefers your data to be submitted through the Government Gateway system In addition many clients will be using software that allows the professionals access to the underlying system. Accountants with clients using numerous financial packages will be aware that the software comes with an accountants view so with a fast and reliable connection you can log in and check that all VAT and other company returns are up to date. All of this requires a fast connection and the right technology behind it. 4 5

4 adopt Getting the benefit of technology Technologies on offer to the professional services sector are many. You should be able to take advantage of: Remote working so that people can capture data in real time and put it straight on to your systems. Watch out, however, for security see our section on Top Tips and the item on virtual private networks. Collaboration with fellow professionals is achievable with a faster connection through dedicated technologies such as the many social media lookalike networks on offer, instant messaging, Voice over IP and video conferencing. Each is cheaper than a phone and each requires a robust, fast Internet connection. Check into Skype for Business (your IT contractor might know it as Microsoft Lync) and its competitors, which enable you to start communicating with IM, add people to it and escalate it to voice and video if you wish. Validation the Internet teems with reports about salespeople in all sorts of fields making a sale and then finding it falls to pieces as the client is on credit stop, has CCJ against them or for some other reason. Instantaneous accreditation by checking with your database immediately will save this sort of waste of time. Disaster recovery and business continuity planning you will need to plan for every contingency. A superfast broadband connection will allow you the option of using a hosted system in other words your computing system actually resides on someone else s hardware but the connection is so quick that it feels as though you re using your own computer. This way your hardware can happily blow up and your business is unaffected once you ve replaced it. A related point is that you will no longer be as tied to any one device as you were previously. Data entry through smartphone app, tablet app or a laptop becomes simple because it all relates back to the same database. 6 7

5 exploit Serving your clients and business better The end result is that your business will serve clients better and run more smoothly. Customer interactions will improve through smoother interactions as they communicate through social media structures, phone or as they choose (note: make sure you have a good customer relationship management system that will take all of the information in from all of these sources so your case management remains solid). You should find you re paying less for communication as you use Voice over IP rather than the phone and if you opt for Software as a Service, in which a provider allows you to pay for software as you use it rather than as a capital purchase, your software costs will move from CapEx to OpEx. You will also be able to update your website instantaneously assuming you have the right software installed. 8 9

6 exploit Top Tips You will be regulated by the Data Protection Act and other bits of legislation. These will prevent financial sector personnel from storing clients financial data outside the country it is imperative that you ensure, if you use a cloud service, that the provider s servers are located in the UK. Security is paramount. Never take a cloud provider or hosting service s security, back-up and disaster recovery policies as read; they vary. Ideally select a partner based on a track record of working in the financial and professional services sector as they will know the constraints. Two sorts of cloud service exist. The public cloud is cheaper and allows other organisations to share the server space your data and applications will occupy; the private cloud means you get a section of a server ring-fenced. For sensitive financial information, the private cloud is essential, but it does cost more and isn t necessary for all of your back office functions. File sharing for field staff will save time and money and once again needs to be utterly secure. Consider taking advice on virtual private networks to ensure your data doesn t go across the public Internet. Video conferencing will save you a lot of time but you need to take a while to learn to use it. Communication through a screen isn t natural and you ll need to pick up techniques to maintain communication a more varied tone of voice and an allowance for eye contact not quite working, for example

7 Superfast Business Wales To complement the roll-out of superfast broadband across Wales, you can access advice on what you can do once it s available to you, and what you can do in the meantime, to ensure your business gets the most from superfast broadband. Grow your business Boost productivity Increase efficiency Cut your costs Increase profitability For more information and to download your FREE How to... Guides visit: Tel: Keep up-to-date follow us on: