SAP focuses on key horizontal technology areas within the 24 industries it covers, including mobility, among others. This focus further translates to SAP’s overall banking multi-channel strategy, as the vendor is dedicating more resources to developing front-office solutions.
It is clear that enabling a seamless, multi-channel experience is a long-term focus for the vendor, but in the short term, its mobile solutions are driving overall business growth.
SAP’s multi-channel offering gets a boost
The topic of customer centricity has been at the top of banking executives’ agendas for over a decade. Nonetheless, meeting customers’ requirements in this respect has always been a challenge for retail-oriented institutions. As consumerization of technology progresses, so too do customers’ habits and their requirements for the service they want from retail banks.
In addition, as the bumpy economic recovery continues, banks need to and indeed want to focus more on improving customer satisfaction as it increases the likelihood of the banks being able to up- or cross-sell financial products to loyal customers.
In response to those needs, SAP is boosting its banking channel strategy using a set of newer technologies that it has either developed or acquired. Given the proliferation of communication channels, the vendor is enhancing its online banking and overall multi-channel delivery capabilities, which are already significant due to the acquisition of Sybase.
This set of technologies includes Mobile Platform, an SOA-based multi-channel architecture, Real-Time Offer Management, CRM, and Dynamic Pricing. While seamless multichannel communication and servicing capability are definitely interesting enhancements to retail banks’ channels, the strong pressure on their most important investments drives banks to invest first of all in the mobile banking channel and later in more sophisticated multi-channel integrations.