Fintech digital transformation challenges during COVID-19
Digital transformation has been on the radar of most financial institutions for years. In a 2020 Digital Transformation Survey by BDO of financial services professionals, 68% of respondents in 2019 saw a growth in revenue directly related to digital investments. While many have made digital transformation a priority, some have faced roadblocks including risk-aversion and lack of corporate sponsorship.
The digital strategy has taken centre stage on the fintech roadmap
With COVID-19 sweeping the globe, priorities are shifting, emphasising the need for digital transformation. As noted in a state of the industry report authored by the Institute of International Finance and Deloitte, “COVID-19 has generated leadership and organisational support by highlighting the need for digital transformation as a means to reach customers and maintain operational resilience”.
Of those surveyed by BDO prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, 36% see industry disruption as the primary digital threat. In addition, a recent survey by IDG Research states that 59% of respondents are seeing an acceleration of digital transformation in their companies driven by the pandemic.
Now that implementing the digital strategy has taken centre stage on the fintech roadmap, developers are looking to meet the needs of leadership as well as customers and employees in a timely and budget efficient manner.
What is digital transformation?
The name digital transformation embodies a wide assortment of initiatives, from the customer engagement experience to transforming legacy systems. In an article by The Financial Brand, financial executives were asked to select their top digital transformation priorities for 2021. Out of the long list of initiatives, four of the highest priorities are:
- improve customer experience (CX);
- improve use of data, analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI);
- enhance innovation agility;
- improve back office efficiency.
Financial institutions are prioritising several diverse initiatives to remain relevant during the global pandemic. Project managers need to shorten development time, meet executive mandates, and launch products that significantly improve the employee and customer experience.
SDK and API integrations streamline fintech development
Development teams can effectively meet those timelines by partnering with software manufacturers who build and maintain software development kits (SDKs) and application programming interfaces (APIs). Developers can integrate these SDKs and APIs into their product offerings to add unique document processing capabilities.
By partnering with a high-tech software solution, your team can save development time, shorten sprints, and reduce maintenance cost. While these are significant benefits, partnering and integrating third-party software manufacturers come with many advantages, including the ability to:
- remove the burden of building and maintaining extensive document processing libraries;
- access the manufacturer’s support and engineering team who can assist with implementation and resolve issues;
- significantly reduce time to market of your product.
Let’s take a deeper look at each of these advantages.
Integrate versus build and maintain document processing libraries
Consider how many different file formats are available in the market for submitting data to financial institutions. Fintech users receive everything from Word documents to PDFs to images taken with cell phones. All of those file formats need to be taken into consideration when building a fintech application that streamlines the process of capturing data from those files.
Building out libraries of code that can address every possible option is extremely cumbersome and time-consuming. However, developers can leverage an SDK or API that has been developed specifically for document processing and open up time to focus on their core competencies.
Access to support and engineering experts
When financial institutions embed third-party document and image processing solutions, they are also gaining access to a team of experts. At Accusoft, each customer has access to technical support and product developers that have helped hundreds of companies with implementing and utilising these document processing SDKs and APIs.
Digital transformation is a pressing concern for financial organisations. You can help them meet their needs with our SDKs and APIs. Get this new functionality up and running quickly in your application so your developers can focus on more mission-critical tasks.
Reduce time to market
As noted in the report by BDO, “most financial services companies anticipate high returns on revenue and profitability from digital transformation”. Project managers that prioritise research and implement third-party software solutions can significantly reduce the time to market. This, in turn, will allow their company to realise profits faster than their competition.
With the recent changes in the world, the need for digital transformation is not slowing down. Financial institutions that prioritise those initiatives and research ways to develop and implement their new offerings quickly will be ahead in realising revenues and returning profits to shareholders.
By Tracy Schlabach, senior manager, product and customer marketing at Accusoft
About the author
Tracy Schlabach is senior manager, product and customer marketing at Accusoft. In this role, she supervises the customer and events teams as well as leads the marketing direction and strategic vision for Accusoft’s SDK products.
Prior to Accusoft, Tracy handled product marketing for Tech Data and Arrow Electronics. At these companies, she was responsible for driving product strategy and direction.
In her free time, Tracy can be found mentoring young marketing professionals, reading a good book with a glass of bourbon, or heading off on adventures in her WinnieWeGo camper with her Australian Shepherds.
Accusoft is a software development company specialising in content processing, conversion, and automation solutions. From out-of-the-box and configurable applications to APIs built for developers, we help organisations solve their most complex content workflow challenges. Our patented solutions enable users to gain insight from content in any format, on any device with greater efficiency, flexibility, and security.
Visit us at www.accusoft.com
