Overview of the Banking Services Industry

Banking services play a robust intermediary role in the world economy as it transfers money from entities with surplus funds to those with a need for funds. The banking services industry is typically engaged in activities such as lending, investing, insurance, securities issuance and trading and the industry’s clients are individuals, businesses, agencies of government, nonprofit organizations across the globe. This sector also incorporates and integrates numerous services and components in codependent and interlocking parts.

Rising middle-class population and household incomes in emerging markets provide substantial opportunity for firms operating in the banking industry. Also, the rapid technological developments are leading to dramatic shifts in the banking services industry as the processing cost per transaction is approaching zero while simultaneously improving efficiency.

Let’s look at some of the fundamental factors that will influence the growth prospects of the banking services industry in the coming years.

• Consumer expectations: It’s all about the customer experience these days. As a result, most of the banking services firms are feeling the pressure of not delivering the level of service that customers are demanding, specifically with regards to technology while being cost-effective.
• Increasing competition from banking services firms: The increasing popularity of financial technology (FinTech) companies is disrupting the way traditional banking services industry has been performing. This is creating a big challenge for traditional banking firms as they are not able to spontaneously adjust to the changes – not just in technology, but also in culture, operations, and other facets of the industry.

These factors are forcing companies operating in the banking space to leverage the use of spend analysis solutions. Spend analysis solutions help firms measure and improve their business decisions across business units which would consequently help them reduce maverick spends. These solutions also help companies meet the specific requirements of their customers seamlessly in a cost-effective manner.

The Business Challenge and Journey

The client, a leading firm specializing in providing banking services wanted to boost transparency and visibility of their business spends across business units. They also wanted to implement a more efficient processing platform and enhance their spend and categorization capabilities. The client also wanted to drive higher adoption and compliance across business units.

To facilitate enterprise-wide visibility while enhancing spend analysis capabilities and optimizing categorization the spend analysis experts at SpendEdge, tailored a comprehensive research methodology. The research approach comprised of primary and secondary research coupled with qualitative and quantitative data collection procedures.

During the course of this spend analysis engagement, the banking services client enhanced spend reporting capabilities and gained granular visibility into spend data. The client also improved identification of savings opportunities across the supply chain and business units.

Key questions answered in this spend analysis engagement

The Results

This spend analysis engagement helped the client cleanse, validate, enrich, and classify data along with enterprise-wide spend reporting capabilities. The client also gained the ability to generate actionable and accurate intelligence to drive quicker and better-informed decisions. This helped them decrease their turnaround time significantly and save $46 million in spend.

To know more about our spend analysis solutions