Challenges and opportunities are knocking on the door of financial services firms like never before.
On one hand, organizations must respond to unpredictable geopolitical events, sudden market movements, and ever-evolving customer demands. On the other, cutting-edge artificial intelligence solutions and analytics capabilities are ushering in a new era of data-driven decision-making.
Everyone in the industry — from CFOs and board members to quantitative analysts and client relationship managers — is looking to harness these new technologies to thrive in volatile times.
But there’s a problem. Traditional methods for managing data can’t cope with today’s volume and complexity of information. Nor can aging data technologies keep pace with the growing need for fast responses and sophisticated analytics.
The solution: Smart data fabrics.
Let’s peel back the curtain and see how smart data fabrics provide radically improved performance, profitability, compliance, reporting, and client experience.
Re-Engineering Decision-Making
Large financial services firms may have hundreds or thousands of systems across various functions, dealing with data from news feeds, CRM systems, investment accounting departments, real-time market updates, and many other sources. At the same time, the complexity of products and services continues to multiply.
Financial institutions often lack the cross-departmental sharing capacities to manage data in this challenging business environment. As a result, they end up with heavily siloed data stored in disparate formats that is too disconnected for effective decision-making.
A survey conducted by InterSystems revealed that 86 percent of financial services line-of-business executives don’t trust their data for effective decision-making. Why? Maybe because only 5 percent of the information used in decision-making is less than an hour old.
To restore their confidence and stay competitive, forward-thinking organizations are investing in smart data fabrics that bridge data and application silos and open the door to real-time and low-latency data and analytics. They help ensure frontline teams get answers to their questions immediately, using more data from more sources inside and outside the firewall.
AI and Analytics Soar with Smart Data Fabrics
Today, financial organizations are incorporating more and more AI-generated insights into their decision-making. Some scenarios demand real-time machine-generated actions. Many scenarios, however, require teams to consider AI driven prescriptive guidance but ultimately rely on the firm’s experts to make the final call and take appropriate action.
Both approaches have the potential to drive smarter and faster operations and outcomes. But for either method to succeed, organizations need to access and harmonize more data from more sources and with lower latency.
This is where a smart data fabric can help.
This next-generation architecture addresses the limitations of prior approaches and technologies by connecting, collecting, integrating, and harmonizing data from more sources, on demand, in a non-disruptive manner. It can access data without duplication or delays, delivering timely, cleansed, normalized, and catalogued data — precisely what AI needs to generate insights.
A smart data fabric is one of the most effective routes to significantly improved data analysis capabilities. Its semantic layer prepares data for retrospective, predictive, and prescriptive analytics, all of which empower organizations to make more informed decisions.
How Businesses Turn Smart Data Fabrics into Success
By taking advantage of smart data fabrics, businesses are already surpassing revenue growth records thanks to reduced delays, automation, and smarter decision-making.
Smart data fabrics are helping financial services firms increase their front-office performance, developing more profitable customer relationships. For example, the approach is powering machine learning models that are enabling organizations to quickly identify which clients need assistance, and to identify which customers and clients are likely to churn, so they can take the appropriate proactive actions.
When preparing for the future, smart data fabrics are a sure step that leads to real-world success.
Discover Insights on Demand
In the era of digital transformation, financial services business leaders already know that data-driven insights are imperative to gaining an up-to-the-minute view of performance, threats, opportunities, risk, assets, and liabilities. And to gaining a forward-looking view into the likelihood of potential disruptive events, and to providing actionable guidance to better inform decision making.
But insights don’t automatically flow from information. That’s why implementing a foundational approach that brings data-driven decision-making to more people inside the organization is essential. It’s the most effective and least disruptive route to gain a competitive advantage in a challenging world.
Find out how smart data fabrics can enable your organization to meet your unique goals today.