Development Preview: AI Feature and iPaaS Solution
Gain behind-the-scenes insights into the latest innovations in financial services automation
In 2024, more than 90% of financial services companies are either assessing AI or already using it in production.
At the same time, leveraging data ranks as a top strategic priority for many FIs over the next two years, so it’s little wonder that, according to the 2024 State of Automation in Financial Services Report, FIs spend more on integration platform as a service (iPaaS) solutions than almost any other type of automation technology. However, they rank it lowest in terms of satisfaction.
With these and other market conditions in mind, SMA Technologies has endeavored to develop innovations that could effectively meet the evolving needs of modern banks and credit unions. In a recent webinar, we shared a sneak preview of those innovations—in case you missed it, read on for behind-the-scenes insights into the development journey.
Amplifying automation with an AI companion
While 97% of financial institutions plan to increase their AI spending in the near future, a similarly overwhelming 92% plan to maintain or increase their automation investments in the next year. This speaks to a simple conclusion: banks and credit unions recognize the value of both AI and automation. Luckily, they aren’t mutually exclusive.
Otto, the new AI OpCon companion, will soon be introduced to Solution Manager users as a native feature at no additional cost.
“[SMA] spent a ton of time over the past couple years upgrading our technology stack and this year is the first year where we're starting to turn that corner and tap into more modern solutions and technologies … part of this kind of did start from an internal challenge to innovate and start to think about what kinds of options we have available to us now on a modern platform like Microsoft Azure.”
– Todd Holt, Senior Product Manager at SMA Technologies
The two non-negotiables: security and skills
With an eye on innovation and the goal of making OpCon even more useful, SMA identified two absolutes in the AI assistant development initiative:
- Security: The team wanted to ensure that whatever solution was used to build the OpCon AI assistant would keep all data within the “SMA Azure Bubble.”
- Skills: While the product development team wanted the AI companion to function as an “oracle,” capable of searching all OpCon-related knowledge bases, they also wanted the assistant to interact with OpCon and perform actions on behalf of users.
“When you think of ChatGPT, you think, ‘I can ask this thing anything,’ right? We wanted that concept in OpCon because of the breadth of all the information that you're subject to with being an OpCon user … consolidating all that and creating our own oracle was a very strong initiator for us. And then seeing what we could do in addition to that—that concept of asking Otto to do simple things for you—that’s where we kind of turned a corner and are doing something new that most people aren't doing yet. We’re excited to see where it goes.”
– Todd Holt, Senior Product Manager at SMA Technologies
What is Otto and what can it do?
Otto is a conversational GPT-based chatbot designed to return even more bandwidth to skilled staff, enabling them to automate more efficiently and effectively.
In its initial release, Otto will be able to answer all OpCon-related questions by sourcing information from a vast knowledge base (which includes product and integration documentation, FAQs, industry use cases, community knowledge base articles, and more), and perform persona-based “skills” or tasks in OpCon on behalf of the user with the OpCon REST API.
“We didn't want to get too complex out of the gate. This first launch is going to be knowledge and a handful of daily operator tasks that you can perform. We do have a big vision. We want to expand the skill set over time. That's really how Otto evolves.”
– Todd Holt, Senior Product Manager at SMA Technologies
Exploring future Otto possibilities
While Otto will be capable of answering OpCon questions and performing simple tasks in its first iteration, SMA’s product development team is focused on building a roadmap for the AI companion that makes it smarter and capable of carrying out more complex tasks.
Early ideas for future Otto skills shared in the innovation showcase include workflow and job configuration assistance, creating a support case (including the necessary logs as an attachment), and troubleshooting schedule and job failures, among others.
For a first look at Otto, the friendly AI OpCon companion, read the getting to know Otto overview.
Addressing the integration disconnect with iPaaS
As previously mentioned, FIs are investing heavily in iPaaS, even though it lags other technologies in satisfaction ratings. This tells us that banks and credit unions recognize the value of iPaaS solutions in driving digital transformation initiatives but may have been burned by the lack of iPaaS solutions purpose-built for financial services.
Recognizing this gap and the potential of iPaaS to unlock end-to-end automation, SMA set its sights on developing a new iPaaS solution designed specifically to help modern banks and credit unions master unmanageable complexity and facilitate real-time data synchronization.
“In talking with our customers and hearing their pain points and what they're struggling with in automation, we kind of gleaned that there’s this bigger problem around an ever-growing application ecosystem. Some customers we talked to say they have over 50-100 applications that they're using across the business. And all those applications talk to each other at various levels of integration. Maybe some of them are really tightly integrated and it's all smooth and great, but a lot of them are not like that.”
– Hannah Eagle, Senior Product Manager at SMA Technologies
It all comes down to data: integration and synchronization
Nearly every financial institution struggles with data silos. Even though certain information needs to be updated across all or many systems and applications, integration issues make this difficult.
For example, many applications contain contact records; when a contact record is updated in one system, it needs to be synchronized across all systems—this is rarely the case for an entire ecosystem.
“You have data that is maybe in one application, and it would be really great if you could get some of that data out into others, but there's no integration to do that. Some examples we've heard about [are with] the lending department. There’s a lot of information that's going in during loan processing, but the core has almost no visibility into that until the loan is actually funded … All of that is really what brought us here.”
– Hannah Eagle, Senior Product Manager at SMA Technologies
Rather than leaving FIs to solve these pain points with their current options—relatively horizontal iPaaS solutions, manual processes, or custom-built solutions (which require developer resources)—SMA began the development journey on its iPaaS solution in July of 2023 to address the identified challenges surrounding real-time integration and automation.
From idea to development: tacking the journey
Though still in development, SMA’s iPaaS solution has made significant headway in its journey. The cloud-based product, which uses standardized APIs to connect to specific applications, will offer banks and credit unions a secure, no-code platform for leveraging pre-built connectors into real-time triggers and actions.
With the product’s “backbone” built, the team is now focused on identifying the groups of triggers and actions that will bring the greatest immediate value to FIs at launch.
“Over the last year, we've really built the backbone and the engine that makes all of this possible, getting these API connectors ready. Now, we're really looking at those specific use cases; what are the specific events that we need?”
– Hannah Eagle, Senior Product Manager at SMA Technologies
Discover insider insights into the innovation process
Amid evolving priorities, changing risks, and shifting expectations, modern banks and credit unions need solutions built to address the demands of today and tomorrow. To learn more about how SMA is taking a forward-thinking approach, watch our on-demand innovation showcase webinar.