金融服务业的运营转型

A blueprint for aligning customer experience,resilience, and efficiencygoals Rico BrandenburgMatthew GruberNoah Katcher INTRODUCTION Why do so many projects to improve corporate operations produceunsatisfactory results? Too often, so-called transformation efforts end up siloed and unambitious, achievingincremental and narrow improvements. Our experience has demonstrated that trueoperational transformation requires firms to rethink their services from end-to-end, whileeffectively balancing customer needs, resilience requirements, and efficiencyexpectations. In most cases, organizations think about changes to business processes through alensof incremental process improvement — focusing on a single issue and addressing a singleobjective, such as efficiency, customer experience, or resilience. Rarely do organizationslook across their business and consider all three objectives together as the executives andteams involved often have narrowly defined mandates and little incentive to go deeper.While these organizations succeed in meeting a single, short-term objective, theymissan opportunity to optimize their business and create more effective, longer-lastingoutcomes. Ultimately, incremental improvement only refines what exists.Transformation creates what’s next. To be a financial servicesleader of tomorrow means choosing a bolder pathtoday. THE URGENT CASE FOR OPERATIONAL TRANSFORMATION While the impetus for operational transformation will vary by institution, a consistentnarrative emerges across companies: Institutions struggle to balance the competing pressuresof efficiency, effectiveness, and resilience — even in favorable market conditions — oftenresulting in deficiencies across all threedimensions. Among financial institutions with less mature or less disciplined operational practices, weconsistently see higher non-interest expense growth — in some cases exceeding 20% overa five-year span.1In addition, these institutions also experience higher customer complaintvolumes, longer and more frequent technology disruptions, and higher operationallosses. Organizations now face a critical juncture where end-to-end servicetransformationsare essential to achieve operational excellence and foster innovation. This is notmerelya strategic choice, but an urgentnecessity. Still, the challenge remains in designing and executing an initiative that truly deliverstransformativeimpact. THE PITFALLS OF INCREMENTAL PROCESS IMPROVEMENT Frequently, firms will approach operational enhancements with the intention of onlyaddressing a specific goal or issue. For example, consider the following twoscenarios: Scenario 1 A company faced several challenges with a legacy payments platform, includinglengthy outages, security concerns, and increasing customer complaints. To tacklethis, the company launched an initiative to replace the platform as quickly as possible.After defining requirements and performing a rapid market scan, the companyimplemented a top-of-the-line, modern system that directly replaced the functionalityof the legacyplatform. At first, the company celebrated initial markers of success: The new platform featureda modern user interface, exceeded security expectations, and maintained reliablyhigh uptime. Yet, after a year, the payments service had not improved on key metrics,such as processing time and customer complaints. While the company successfullyreplaced its legacy platform, it failed to consider how it could redesign the serviceitself and the associated core processes, resulting in additional investment after theinstallation and implementation to improve upstream and downstreamprocesses. Scenario 2 A company spearheaded an initiative to address issues with its legacy lending operationsservice that had experienced numerous cost overruns in recent years. The companyconducted an end-to-end review of the service, prioritized opportunities, andbegana redesign of certain processes. Yet, when assessing potentialenhancements,the company only considered efficiency-focused improvements and chose todelayan initiative to overhaul their customer-facingplatform. Initially, the effort resulted in improvements to operating expenses, but in thefollowingtwo years, the company experienced increases in customer complaints and operationallosses, as the platform continued to degrade. While the company took an end-to-end,service-focused approach, they were still forced to invest in resilience upgrades,followed by a customer remediation effort shortlyafter. Taking a holistic, transformative approach isn’t easy. Initiatives are typically led by oneteam tasked with one primary objective. For example, a risk team may drive aneffortto improve resilience, a finance initiative may drive an initiative to reduce cost, or a productteam may spearhead a project to improve customer experience. In some instances,organizations are forced to redesign a process for reasons they don’t fully control,like a major outage or a regulatory failu