The financial services sector is ever growing and immersed with expanding volume, velocity, and a variety of complex data, predicted by IDC to grow to 40 zettabytes by 2020. Financial services organisations including investment banks, asset managers, venture capital, private equity and insurance firms depend on highly secure systems for exchanging business-critical information with clients, partners and other external parties.
Project management, secure file sharing and internal and external collaboration are four factors that concern every type of organisation. Below we take a look at how these four core use cases of enterprise collaboration software can benefit financial services organisations in particular.
Project management
In a sector as fast moving as financial services, time is often of the essence. Accordingly, you can’t afford to waste time scrolling through your email or computer folders, searching for a file or document. Instead, consolidate your project assets into one place and make it accessible to everyone. Project management with enterprise collaboration software can encompass all your variations of files and content, and consolidate all parts of the project into one residence.
This repository of information is then accessible to all or selected people within the organisation, and allows them to see exactly what stage they’re at in the project. No matter where you or a co-worker are located, the enterprise cloud collaboration platform allows you to access work from a tablet or smartphone, no longer having to rely on being on-site or even close to a work computer.
If someone joins the project half way through, they can easily find all of the information required. Completed projects also become discoverable for the future, with all of the data and info available to aid future projects. Old projects can be examined in their entirety, allowing employees to learn from any possible mistakes and implement this knowledge for new projects.
Secure file sharing
In a recent survey carried out by the Cloud Security Alliance, over 100 executives at banking, insurance and investment firms worldwide were asked about the compliance regulation requirements when moving to the cloud. Topping the list of priorities was data protection (75%), with corporate governance (68%), PCI-DSS (54%) and national regulations (47%) following closely behind. Enterprise collaboration software allows financial services organisations to share files securely and sufficiently.
With consumer file sharing tools, there’s an inherent risk involved due to the lack of control. The tools are not audited or sanctioned, and there’s no visibility of what is being shared. With an enterprise collaboration platform, you audit every file, viewing the user, date, file or action. You are able to keep a close eye on everything sent and anything changed, making sure that nothing passes you by or is lost in the process.
Enterprise social networking
Odds are, you haven’t met or even heard of everyone within your organisation. Nor should you be expected to, however there may be times where you have a question or query, and you don’t know who to ask. Enterprise social networking creates an online community within a company, allowing you to post a question and have it viewed and answered by anyone else within the organisation.
Enterprise social networking allows co-workers to communicate, no matter where they are located, along with sharing links, photos and projects all within the collaboration software. Communication is moved away from email, reducing inbox overload, and having all information stored together and available for anyone to view.
Anyone within the company, regardless of position or hierarchy, can microblog and keep co-workers updated through the activity stream. Working social is about emphasising people and connections. Instead of pivoting around data, files or information, social businesses pivot around people.
External collaboration
In the year 2015, it’s fair to assume that many organisations may already have some internal collaboration tools. But what about externally? Enterprise collaboration software can implement data internally, but still open it up to external people and businesses. External collaboration provides the exact same benefits as internal collaboration tools, but also allows you to work with clients and people outside of your business.
A unified collaboration solution can give people the ability to work in one place, blurring the lines between internal and external working environments. Company staff are able to communicate and work with external people just as easily as someone sat in the same office, whether they’re sharing information with clients, reviewing briefs or coordinating requests for proposals. Not having to context-switch between an intranet and extranet improves efficiency and productivity.
Transactions and processes
No two organisations are exactly the same, and accordingly, each company will have their own particular objectives and requirements which can, more often than not, be enhanced and improved by new technology. HighQ Collaborate provides a complete toolkit that enables financial services companies to securely exchange business-critical information with clients, partners and external parties, and simplify complex transactions and processes. This might include investor relations, regulatory reporting, due diligence and virtual data rooms. With over 10,000 transactions completed in the legal, banking and corporate sectors, HighQ is well established and highly trusted within financial services organisations. You can find out more about HighQ Collaborate and its bespoke financial solutions here.
Conclusion
According to Jaroslaw Augustyniak, CEO of Idea bank, subsidiary of Getin Bank, in the next three to five years, technological innovations in the banking sector will be closely linked to the implementation of cloud solutions. Enterprise collaboration software allows financial services organisations to stay ahead of the curve, whilst keeping your data all within one secure and easily accessible platform.
