Video Collaboration in the Financial Services Industry

Transcription

1 Video Collaboration in the Financial Services Industry Navigating a Complex Environment with Greater Productivity A Frost & Sullivan White Paper Roopam Jain

2 Frost & Sullivan INTRODUCTION Financial services organizations are known for being at the leading edge in using new technologies to improve business processes, operations, and customer service. In recent years, companies operating in the financial services sector have faced daunting challenges a volatile economy, greater global competition, heightened pace of mergers, increased scrutiny, declining customer loyalty, and decreasing margins, to name just a few. While the current environment presents several challenges, it also opens up unique opportunities for innovation that will attract new customers through differentiation and unmatched service and support. Video collaboration tools have become a strategic asset for financial services firms that are increasingly operating in a highly commoditized and regulated environment. It is helping businesses such as commercial and retail banks and insurance companies to: Improve customer service through high-touch low-cost exchanges Accelerate decision-making Monitor market changes instantly Improve compliance and security Reduce travel time and travel costs Improve reach and frequency of employee training and compliance programs Video collaboration is allowing employees to meet face-to-face and share data with globally dispersed team members, partners and clients; all at lower costs, while reducing unproductive travel time. In an industry where building and maintaining trust is vital, the face-to-face communications experience offered by video collaboration reinforces relationships with clients, and helps to close deals faster. GROWING ADOPTION OF VIDEO COLLABORATION The video conferencing and collaboration market has seen landmark shifts in technology advancements, improved cost-benefit ratio, and greater flexibility in deployment models, as well as choice of devices. The quality and user experience of today's video meetings has improved by leaps and bounds. Video conferencing represents a high growth market that is being fueled by the increasing need to implement pervasive video across the organization. Standing at $3.2 billion in 2012, the market for video conferencing systems and services is forecast to almost double, to $6.3 billion, by Video collaboration is not restricted to conference rooms anymore. In fact, it is rapidly moving to video-for-everyone over enterprise tablets, smart phones and web browserbased clients. Next generation software-based virtualized solutions are supporting cloudbased deployments, as well as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) environments, in a 2

3 Video Collaboration in the Financial Services Industry scalable and affordable way. This is extending the reach of video to a large population of mobile users, providing the rich communications experience to anyone regardless of their location or network. Users can implement comprehensive video collaboration immersive telepresence suites; video in conference rooms; desktop and mobile video; recording and content management; video kiosks; and digital signage allowing for rich communications all the way from personal devices to boardrooms. Many organizations are taking a holistic approach toward video communications, using video not only for real time collaborative sessions, but also managing video as content for editing and making it searchable on YouTube like secure enterprise portals as part of a broader knowledge management solution. All of these advancements, combined with improvements in bandwidth availability and enhanced network management tools, make video collaboration a reality for most businesses. In a recent Frost & Sullivan survey of key decision makers, 85 percent of the respondents indicated that they are aware of the benefits of video conferencing up from 70 percent in the prior year. Also impressive is the fact that 58 percent of the companies surveyed are using video conferencing up from 40 percent the year before. A greater number of decision makers are citing productivity improvements as a key driver for their investments. Fifty-eight percent responded that faster decision making was the key reason for their investments. Furthermore, financial services is one of the leading verticals for video collaboration usage. Sixty-one percent of financial services organizations said they use video conferencing within their organizations (Exhibit 1). This data suggests that video is fast becoming a core communications tool for companies in the financial services sector, due to its inherent benefits. Exhibit 1 Video Conferencing Usage by Industry Manufacturing Hospitality Retail IT/telecom Public Sector Financial services Healthcare 61% 59% Video conferencing 47% 51% 61% 65% Source: Frost & Sullivan analysis 3

4 Frost & Sullivan COMPELLING APPLICATIONS AND USE CASES Retail Banking Branches: Retail banking is moving from traditional transactional services, such as deposits and wire transfers, to high-touch services such as financial planning and portfolio management. This requires serving high value clients more effectively than competition. By deploying self-service video kiosks such as Video Teller Machines (VTMs) for simpler transactions, and video agents on-demand for the high value offerings, branches are providing better support and service via rich face-to-face interactions. A single remote expert can provide services to several branches, cost effectively, and increase customer loyalty and satisfaction. This is allowing specialist sales staff to be more productive, since they spend more time in customer interactions than on the road. Similarly, experts who speak multiple languages are being utilized to provide personalized services. The rich video collaboration experience is transforming passive banking branches into active sales channels, and also resulting in a higher cross-sell rate than with telephone sales. Additionally, banks are conducting other transactions, such as loan interviews, over video saving costs and making faster decisions. Wealth Management: Financial institutions are evolving from being transaction specialists to becoming relationship managers. For high net worth clients looking for services such as tax and retirement planning, and estate planning; building and nurturing long-term relationships is what ultimately drives business. For advisors, it is critical that they offer high quality interactions and build trust with their affluent customers. Video collaboration provides high value customers with real-time access to financial experts via rich visual communications that meets their high expectations and demands for more sophisticated and personalized offerings. Training: The financial services industry is faced today with an increasingly complex regulatory environment that requires extensive compliance training. Regulations are constantly in flux, making it imperative to keep employees up to date. Conducting mandatory training sessions across a globally dispersed workforce can result in high costs, extensive resource planning, and significant time loss. With the use of video, trainers are now able to extend the reach of their events to a wider audience, at lower costs. Real time video training sessions are also keeping the audience more engaged, leading to better retention and compliance. Live instructor-led training sessions can be recorded for later, on-demand replay. 4

5 Video Collaboration in the Financial Services Industry Insurance: Video collaboration is helping insurance agents offer faster claims servicing, as well as richer advisory services. Often, customers are frustrated by cumbersome and non-transparent claims processes. There is a compelling need today for property and casualty insurers to apply rich video collaboration, to lower expenses while improving the experience for all the stakeholders. Video accelerates the claims servicing workflow for damage appraisal or collision repair estimates, by bringing the problem to the expert, rather than having to bring the expert to the problem. Video collaboration also allows a richer mode of communications for policy renewal and cross-sell/up-sell. It is facilitating the transition from a "policy centric" model to "relationship management." Lastly, insurance companies are implementing video in the underwriting process, where other experts can view the property being insured and see any risk in context. There is significant potential to improve the underwriting process by conducting a video analysis of the asset, and comparing it to a video for claims on the same asset, which results in better upfront evaluation of the risk potential. CONCLUSION Much of the focus, over the last few years, has been on cost reduction. While cost and efficiency will continue to be vital, it is imperative that financial services organizations increase productivity for greater speed and agility. The new generation of video collaboration solutions addresses the unique requirements of organizations that are facing ongoing economic uncertainty, continuously evolving products and services, disappearing brand loyalty, and increasing regulations that are leading to constantly changing operating models. Whether it is customer service, training, advisory services, or wealth management, video collaboration offers a rich mode of communications for gathering and sharing information to meet all these challenges. Organizations that embrace video collaboration will have a unique competitive edge and a solid foundation to grow their business. 5

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