How FSI Orgs Can Achieve More Revenue, Less Risk with Unified Observability

Is your Financial Services and Insurance (FSI) organization still analyzing its telemetry ad hoc? If so, it’s unlikely you’re giving your customers or employees the best experience possible. With that comes risk, potential damage to your reputation, and cost inefficiencies–all issues you can’t afford to ignore in your industry, especially when competitors are just a tap, swipe, or job application away

In our 2023 Global Digital Employee Experience (DEX) Survey, which polled 1,800 global IT and business decision-makers across 10 countries and seven industries, we found that 98% of FSI leaders agreed that delivering an exceptional DEX is essential to remain competitive, with 62% describing it as ‘critically important.’

With a continuous influx of data from various sources, from online banking and ATMs to call centers and retail branches, and data scattered across siloed systems, it’s impossible to manually monitor each transaction and identify issues (or successes). Not to mention, this manual data review also incurs significant costs, both in terms of money and productivity.

Matters are made even harder when long-standing employees leave or retire, taking years or sometimes decades of knowledge with them. The Millennial and Gen Z workers filling their roles won’t stand for inefficient processes or outdated tech, either; they are digital natives accustomed to using the best tools for the job. Failure to meet their expectations may result in a costly and time-consuming hiring loop and a significant skills shortage.

But don’t just take it from us–the FSI leaders we surveyed believe 69% of employees would consider leaving the company if adequate DEX was not provided, and 68% say failing to meet digital expectations would disrupt operations, affecting reputation, productivity, and organizational performance. Plus, if you’re anything like the 84% of FSI decision-makers we surveyed who’ve acknowledged the increasing relevance of IT within the C-suite, you’ve undoubtedly taken a more prominent role in the boardroom over the last few years. This has been accelerated as the pandemic has pushed the world towards hybrid working, and tech and data have started to be seen as a strategic driver. With these challenges, the responsibility falls on IT leaders to answer to the broader business.

This is where unified observability solutions come into play: intelligent tools that can liberate you from the complexities of your infrastructure, reduce risk, enhance your reputation, cut costs, and retain your most valuable talent. Unified observability is already considered essential in the industry; 94% of FSI leaders in our survey believe that greater investment in unified observability solutions, providing actionable insights for better employee and customer digital experiences, is necessary. Riverbed’s Unified Observability product suite is differentiated and unique in the industry.

Here’s how you can use this technology to empower exceptional digital experiences for everyone across every touchpoint:

Diagnose problems in the customer journey

It can be tough to look forward when you’re constantly fighting fires. This is something that one of Turkey’s largest and longest-established banks, Halkbank, was all too familiar with. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and customers began using more digital channels overnight, the organization’s mobile banking platform needed to scale to handle more than double the volume of traffic–growing from one million mobile customers to 2.5 million in a short timeframe.

“If mobile banking went down for even a few hours, customers wouldn’t be able to access their accounts or process transactions,” explains Namık Kemal Uçkan, Head of IT Operations at Halkbank. “Our goal is to provide 100% availability for all services, so we need a solution that helps us be proactive rather than reactive when it comes to network management.”

Today, the bank uses Riverbed’s Network Observability solution to monitor critical services across its network and data center through Riverbed Portal, which consolidates and displays data in user-friendly dashboards. It identifies any performance issues across over 40 business-critical applications, before these impact end-users.

Examine user trends

As well as proactively pointing out problems, powerful unified observability solutions like Riverbed’s will examine trends like transaction types and patterns, seek out lengthy processes employees or customers are having to follow, and create shortcuts automatically. So, not only can everyone enjoy the peace of mind that your systems will always work, but they can also rest assured that they’ll work in the quickest, easiest and most logical way, saving them time and you money.

What’s more, having visibility of these trends allows you to work more strategically and make smarter decisions, driven by data–knowing which areas of the business to invest more in and which to scale back, without the usual associated risk. As a simple example, if fewer customers in a certain locale are using ATMs and more are opting to head into a branch, you can remove underused machines and divert their maintenance costs to hiring more in-store staff or offering additional in-person services.

This doesn’t just apply to hardware, either. Riverbed’s unified observability tools provide a unique perspective on users’ actual application usage. That means you can find underutilized licenses and software and reclaim or uninstall where you see fit, saving a considerable amount of IT costs in the process.

Meet compliance regulations

By troubleshooting poorly performing transactions and flagging potential anomalies, Riverbed’s Unified Observability portfolio will allow you to meet increasingly stringent compliance regulations. They’ll also crawl for suspicious web activity, keeping your people safe while they surf.

This is another feature Halkbank put into action, as Uçkan explains, “We were excited to use new features such as SSL certificate monitoring to help keep data secure when browsing the web.”

Identify the slowest machines in your fleet

In our recent research, 88% of FSI leaders say slow-running systems and applications, plus outdated technology, are directly impacting the growth and performance of their organization. Yet often, in businesses of all kinds, hardware is replaced based on how long it’s been in operation rather than by how well it’s working. ATMs are no exception, and neither are the many machines you no doubt use at head office.

The best unified observability solutions will analyze your physical tech’s speed and efficiency, including transaction performance, so you can update and replace where it’s truly needed. This cuts waste and gives employees and customers a consistent and reliable experience. The same principle applies where software is concerned. Riverbed’s Aternity Digital Experience Management solutions can cost-justify and measure the impact of strategic IT projects like cloud mobility and data-center transformation, along with routine changes like OS and application upgrades.

In conclusion, if you’re looking to optimize your hybrid infrastructure while ensuring fast, agile and secure delivery of any application, over any network, to users anywhere, explore our website to learn more about Riverbed’s Unified Observability product suite.