From Legacy to the Cloud – Orchestrating Digital Transformation

Keeping up with rapidly evolving customer expectations is the order of the day for every financial institution (FI). Clients and members are expecting an enhanced digital banking experience, and they’re not going to compromise. As a result, more and more banks and credit unions are migrating to cloud-based applications to help scale operations, cut costs, and enhance organizational agility.

According to Cornerstone’s “What’s Going on in Banking 2021,”40% of banks and 41% of credit unions have deployed cloud technologies. Further, another 53% of banks and 46% of credit unions are either planning on some level of cloud migration or have discussed it at the executive level.

Follow along as we explore the advantages of the cloud, the most common concerns FIs have about the cloud, and how to maximize the benefits of cloud-based automation technology.

What are the benefits of cloud migration for financial institutions?

The cloud economy is booming. Research firm IDC reports it will exceed $1.3 trillion by 2025. With such investment in the space, there are many FI-friendly advantages to cloud-based applications, including:

• Moving some applications to the cloud can eliminate the burden of expensive hardware maintenance.
• Cloud-based applications can remove the barriers posed by an aging IT infrastructure that may not have the agility to support new product and service initiatives.
• FIs are less reliant on skilled IT staff at a time when the current labor crisis may be stifling your ability to innovate.
• Time-to-market for new launches can be reduced dramatically.
• Upgrades and patches can be automated without depending on internal resources.
• When you move applications to the cloud you do not need to create and test a formal disaster plan for that application.

Put simply, cloud-based applications create new opportunities for growth through easier scalability, agility, and cost efficiencies. With a cloud-based automation application supporting your operations, your FI’s IT team is free from dealing with time-consuming installations, hardware maintenance, and multi-device updates.

How do cloud-based applications create new opportunities?

Entrenched legacy systems can hold FIs back from the innovation members want. In fact, they’re demanding it. According to a study conducted by the Harris Poll, 40% of financial consumers are willing to leave their primary FI for an improved digital banking experience.

On the other hand, providing a seamless digital banking experience can increase member and client retention rates, according to a study by PYMNTS and PSCU.

And when cloud-based applications are supported by tools like workload automation and orchestration, it creates a fast path for FIs to meet the demand of financial consumers. How? A robust workload automation and orchestration solution frees up IT resources, minimizes complexity across multiple environments, and reduces IT infrastructure costs.

But is the cloud secure?

Remember, adopting cloud-based technology or even implementing a cloud-first strategy is not an all-or-nothing proposition. Having said that, the most common concern that FIs have is around the security of the cloud, given that they are responsible for their customers’ sensitive data.

Though it may seem like there’s a new cybersecurity breach reported daily, cloud platforms take diligent steps to secure data. These include regular security updates, artificial intelligence-based algorithms that look for abnormalities, firewalls, multiple data backup locations, and more.

Gartner reports cloud security is the fastest-growing information security technology and services market segment. End-user spending in this segment grew 41% between 2020 and 2021, reaching $841 million. Cloud security is now finally catching up with cloud functionality, and there are additional measures FIs can take to enhance the security of their systems.

In a joint statement on risk management best practices, the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) and the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) offer guidance on risk management best practices, including:

• Align your cloud application use with your FI’s overall IT strategy, architecture, and risk appetite.
• Identify potential security risks before you implement a new platform. This should happen during the planning, due diligence, and selection process. Leverage independent audits when possible.
• Maintain a clearly defined contract with your cloud application provider that includes delineated responsibilities for tasks such as management of encryption keys, security monitoring, vulnerability scanning, system updates, patch management, and more.
• Enlist security controls for sensitive data such as encryption, data tokens, and other loss prevention tools.

Orchestrate your digital transformation with cloud automation services

Once you’ve committed to cloud-based applications, you’ll likely find your credit union or bank has more freedom to scale infrastructure as your technology capabilities evolve. While workload automation and orchestration can have a multiplier effect on the benefits of your FI’s digital transformation, few workload automation vendors are able to fully support a complex cloud-based environment.

As FIs operate across multiple IT environments, the need for workload automation with true orchestration capabilities is greater than ever before. Tools like OpCon sync up quite neatly with the ultimate goals of cloud migration and even magnify its benefits while simultaneously reducing the complexity.

Workload automation and orchestration allows your IT team to automate manual, repetitive processes and orchestrate them across multiple, complex IT environments. When applied to cloud-based applications, workload automation and orchestration has a multiplier effect on the benefits of cloud technology.

If you can think of an important IT task, we can automate it for you. Here are just a few examples of processes that may be cloud-based and how workload automation and orchestration can have a multiplier effect on the benefits:

• Mortgage/loan processing: Automate your mortgage and loan servicing platforms to eliminate manual processes and improve overall quality.

• Business intelligence: Automate your ETL, data transformation, and data movement to your data warehouse through automation to ensure your business leaders always have the latest data to make strategic decisions.

• Online banking and bill pay: Automate file transfers and interactions with your online banking and bill payment providers.

Just as the cloud can help your FI scale, cloud-based workload automation and orchestration frees up your team to focus on more strategic initiatives.

We're in the cloud, too!

With our upcoming workload automation and orchestration SaaS option, OpCon Cloud, you will have the same automation and orchestration capabilities users love about OpCon, but with the added value of the cloud.

The buzz around digital transformation has grown to a roar for banks and credit unions. To meet customer needs and raise satisfaction levels, take advantage of the powerful combination that cloud computing plus workload automation and orchestration offers.