How Managed Automation Services fuels banking industry efficiency and growth

Not so long ago, McKinsey proclaimed that they predicted a bright future for banking automation. And it's true that the latest automation technology can offer banks, credit unions, and other financial businesses increased capacity while freeing up IT staff for high-value projects. Most important, automation will offer banking customers the kind of experience that they've learned to expect from technology leaders.

At the same time, McKinsey noted that some banks have struggled to realize the benefits that automation can offer. If any financial business has struggled with automation or even appears stalled getting started, it's time to look at managed automation services as a solution to fill in the gaps.

How can banks and other finance companies benefit from Managed Automation Services?

Before explaining the overall benefits of managed automation services for banking, it will help to look at some of the obstacles that other companies in the sector have faced. Some examples include:

• Difficulty scaling: Some banks started small pilot processes but lacked the internal resources to scale enough to realize any true benefits.
• Lack of trained developers & operators: Other banks may have worked to train developers and operators; however, either they did not have enough people or these employees did not have the experience with automation to transform projects into production-ready processes.

Even though some financial services companies faced obstacles, McKinsey still believed in the promise of automation. They said that struggling banks need to think more strategically to devise the best way to develop and use the power of automated processes.

As an example, they suggested relying upon automation as a service vendor, who could supply the technology and just as important, the experienced technicians at whatever scale the business needed. In fact, they believed that within just a few years, by using the right strategy, automation will actually perform from 10 to 25 percent of bank functions, freeing employees to focus on the sorts of tasks that their intelligent systems cannot do.

This is the kind of benefit that will lead to additional capacity for growth and lower costs. On the other hand, banks who don't manage to leverage automation will fall behind both in the service they can offer and the efficiencies they will enjoy.

Benefits of automation as a service for banks

When banks automate manual tasks, both the banks and their customers can enjoy a number of benefits. Consider just a few ways that automation can help grow and streamline banks:

• Speed Up ACH bank processing: Most important, automation will speed up ACH payment processing time. Not only can this remove much of the manual burden of processing ACH, it can also deal with exception handling and reduce errors.
• Streamline Mortgage and other loan processing: Automation can relieve the burden from employees for time-intensive mortgage and other loan processing tasks.
• Enforce efficient workflows: With workflows fully documented and handled by computers, they're naturally enforced in a much more reliable way.
• Improve the customer experience: Today's bank customers expect fast, online, and error-free banking experience, and automated tools can deliver.

How MAS from SMA Technologies bridges the automation gap for banks

SMA Technologies offers an automated workflow platform called OpCon. While some customers choose to retain control over their platform, others appreciate the benefits of the automation as a service option that Managed Automation Services, called MAS, can provide.

MAS particularly benefits banks without the resources to manage automation internally. At the same time, other customers may rely upon this service to supplement their disaster recovery plan -- or even to take over when the team goes on vacation or just needs some extra support. With managed automation services, banks can finally overcome obstacles to realize the efficiency, simplification, cost savings, and growth in capacity that automation can deliver.

Contact us here today to tell us about your business, and we'll explain how our automation platform and managed automation services will streamline, simplify, and grow it.