The nature of the banking industry has always been data-driven. In dynamic conditions, dictated by today’s market, banks work in an environment with great competition and huge pressure. Their main goal is attracting new customers and keeping the existing ones, while constantly improving the services they provide and, of course, increasing the overall revenue.
Technology is thriving towards being in step with the market needs. Nowadays, banks are utilizing data management as one of the most important business disciplines which naturally leads to better data utilization at all levels.
One way to use real data power in these financial organizations is to implement enterprise data warehouse solutions. Data warehouse is a data store accumulated from a wide range of data sources and it provides the basis for quality analysis and reporting by deriving accurate information from data.
Here is why having a data warehouse solution can bring tremendous value for the banks:
1. Data is expanding big time and businesses need a reliable solution
Data amount and data complexity are growing in all spheres of life, including banking services. Banks are using many different systems and applications, e.g. from main systems handling with transactions, deposits and loans, to all additional applications needed for different purposes.
Understanding and integration of all these systems can be difficult, especially when working with complex banking data. Having all valuable pieces of information in a clear and standardized manner, transformed and loaded in a data warehouse as a single point of truth, will bring a great value for business intelligence process overall. Users can concentrate on analytics and business decisions instead on how to get the data.
2. Increase data quality and consistency, but don’t compromise on security
Having in mind all types of operational risks present in the banking organizations, responsible parties need to make sure that calculations are done on correct data sets because the business decisions directly depend on it. Hence, excluding possibilities for errors will give a complete and accurate results and ensure the functioning of the organization. A data warehouse will provide maximum data consistency and you can gain all valuable insights from there because data only delivers value if it tells a complete story.
Data security stays a top-level priority for banks and there is no compromise with it. Providing access to the internal systems is not a preferable solution and having a separate place for analytics will be ideal. With a data warehouse, original data will be kept safe but the business users and analysts can still have access to all valuable information and extract great advantage from it.
3. Better understanding of customers trends
Banks need to be able to get a clear picture about customer trends, compare data sets etc. Many successful banks are using a 360-degree view of each customer so they can better understand customer needs and divide the base to effectively attract new customers with direct marketing not to wide segments, but to micro-groups.
They also need to have a clear picture about the services they’re providing to the customers, for example: Why some sections are more successful than others? How good is the performance of the specific department? What area should be improved? How to range priorities and calculate where to invest, in time and money?
These parameters should be considered in real time, while also going backwards and operating on historical data to run specific measurements. Collecting and understanding real-time and historical data can be really challenging if you do not have a unified and robust solution such as a data warehouse that will always provide current and historical data for all examined entities.
In that way the banks can be more involved in customers lives, offer more possibilities and gain more insight into how their brand is viewed in the marketplace so they can stay competitive and constantly improve and grow the business.
