Imagine yourself as the manager of bank where automation is to be made. Explain the steps you will to do it?
......... The speed of growth, innovation, and change in the banking industry has always made it challenging for banks to standardize data sourcing. Customers, today demand personal service whenever and wherever they like, and each financial institution’s competition is just a mouse click or a street corner away. Additionally, there are major challenges presented by mega mergers, decreasing margins, a stricter regulatory environment, and fierce competition, in some cases coming from nontraditional sources.
Operating business lines have a natural tendency to enter the data that’s most relevant to their businesses using their own definitions, formats, and methods without necessarily considering the needs of other parts of the business. Over time, this can lead to increasingly disparate data streams flowing from multiple operating units to management and to support functions such as risk, finance, and treasury—which in turn can make it costly and time-consuming for banks to gain the firm-wide view that has become so critical to their success. To combat this tendency toward divergence and to improve data standardization, today, the banks are turning to a combination of organizational structures, policies and controls, and technologies.
As a result a revolution is taking place in retail banking. A marriage of high-tech equipment and high-touch service has created a new level of automation, promising not only to control costs and enhance service, but to boost sales capabilities, as well. Driven by a growing movement to turn the retail branch from a transaction processing center to a sales environment, banks of all sizes are using technology to gain a competitive edge. Today, money has evolved beyond physical form, and can be measured by electronic pulses. This electronic representation of money has made it easier to progressively increase the use of information technology for banking operations.
Today, different types of computer packages offering ``Total Branch Automation (TBA)'' are available to automate the various activities of a typical branch. It is also possible to make banking more global due to electronic automation of work processes. As the manager of a bank I can adopt a technological innovation in my branch with regard to the automation. Technological innovation has also speeded up bank transactions, in the process, reducing human drudgery and possibilities of human error.
Banking operations have become more customer-friendly and flexible. Approach to the bank branch concerned has become multi-channeled and more and more customers are finding little need to visit the bank. Introduction of automation has also liberated the banks from a lot of paper-work. While banks in India have not become fully paperless, there is a steady movement in that direction. Banks have realized that persuading customers to carry out transactions using electronically available channels without physically visiting the bank is less expensive for them.
STANDARDIZATION AND ALIGNMENT BEGIN WITH DATA GOVERNANCE
Many banks say that standardization begins with central determination and control of data definitions, formats, and attributes. Often a data-governance body with representation from finance, risk, IT, and operations is charged with promulgating a unified data-governance policy and coordinating data standards across the bank.
IMPROVEMENT THROUGH ORGANIZATIONAL, TECHNOLOGICAL, PROCESS, AND POLICY CHANGES
The constant evolution of banks’ businesses assures that standardizing and bringing together data will always be a work in progress, but several banks say they are also pursuing major standardization and alignment initiatives, which they anticipate will lead to substantial improvements.
DATA ALIGNMENT YIELDS BUSINESS BENEFITS
It can be difficult to attach a monetary value to the contribution that faster, more flexible reporting makes to decision making, because the cost of avoiding a bad decision is not knowable.
However, the benefits that financial institutions stand to reap from better data alignment help to make the long time frames for improvement worthwhile. For banks that are struggling to meet reporting requirements using many manual workarounds, seeking improvement may not be optional. Other banks are seeking improvements in alignment because they will ultimately help free resources in finance for more valuable work. To make the most of always-scarce resources, banks are working to make sure that their investments in regulatory compliance also help improve data alignment and automation.
As the manager of a bank I will exploit the following new technologies, in automation which will also improve the profitability of the bank.
Automation
Automation came to banks, beginning with ALPMs (Automatic Ledger Posting Machines). The repetitive and cumbersome task of ledger maintenance had been simplified. A server at the branch will contain the entire database. It was realised that it would be more fruitful to have the total database at a central location and create a wide area network, WAN. Such a system required a lot of redundancy to ensure 24 x 7 availability to the ... (for the completed and new version of improved answer- click here)
