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Why Transformational Results in Financial Services Require Refreshing Your Data Strategy

Blog: The Tibco Blog

Reading Time: 4 minutes

The financial services sector has been tackling data challenges for several years. However, the proliferation of data access points, the dramatic fall in processing and storage costs, and the increasing regulatory focus on data governance have prompted a change of priorities. Today, many financial institutions are engaged in transformation programs designed to deliver business results by harnessing data’s immense potential.

Proper data utilization can yield enormous benefits. According to McKinsey & Company, institutions can grow their bottom line by as much as 25 percent in target products and segments due to data-driven business initiatives.

Despite the value of data and analytics, many financial organizations struggle to realize their envisioned transformations. An Accenture report reveals that only 37 percent of companies are achieving the full value expected from their investments, while more than 70 percent of business leaders are not confident their data initiatives will deliver the projected value within the planned time frame. In the survey, the most commonly reported hurdles were bottlenecks from legacy infrastructure, security and compliance risks, and misalignment between data project owners and the business. While these challenges can be addressed individually, they all point to one fundamental problem: an ineffective data strategy.

If your data management efforts are not translating into valuable insights that support your business objectives, refreshing your data strategy can be the key to turning things around.

How Revisiting Your Data Strategy Can Help You Maximize Transformational Results

Effective data utilization hinges on a well-defined data strategy. The right strategy establishes a framework for mobilizing and directing data toward meeting business needs, ensures every piece of information is optimized, and aligns stakeholders around common goals and expectations. Here are five reasons you should re-evaluate your strategy to gain the full benefits of data and analytics:

  1. Evolving Technology and Architecture

Technology evolves at a dizzying pace, and as it changes, so should your data management strategy. McKinsey predicts that “By 2025, nearly all employees will naturally and regularly leverage data to support their work.”

A solid data strategy addresses questions like what to do with legacy systems, how to deploy and use the right solutions, and whether you require third-party data management services. TIBCO technology helps financial institutions create API-led customer experiences, connect operations across the organization, manage customer data to create personalized services, and enable market and competitive insights. 

  1. Exponentially Growing Data Volumes

Financial services providers today hold more information than ever before. Not only is there a tremendous amount of data, but it is also rapidly increasing in variety and velocity, necessitating that companies continuously update their data management technologies and skills.

Gaining sustainable value from data requires flexibility and adaptability. A proper data strategy considers the tools and capabilities needed to meet changing demands.

  1. Increased Demand for Quality Data

Data quality issues can be a significant obstacle to effective decision-making. If data points are inaccurate and inconsistent across systems and product lines, they lose their informational value and fuel poor decision-making. McKinsey reports that: “An average of 30 percent of respondents’ total enterprise time was spent on non-value-added tasks because of poor data quality and availability.”

Re-evaluating your data strategy enables you to determine whether you have a robust data governance system in place to ensure the right data points are captured and aggregated. That way, you can refine your understanding of data demand while ensuring that all sources adhere to the same standards. Robust data governance is more than checking the data security and privacy boxes. Data virtualization ensures that your data is accurate, consistent, and available to those who need it.

  1. A Sharper Focus on Data Security

As financial data becomes more pervasive, its risk of being compromised increases. According to a recent study by Zimperium, “42 percent of enterprises reported mobile devices and web apps led to a security incident” along with a “466 percent increase in exploited, zero-day mobile vulnerabilities” in 2021 alone. A comprehensive view of your company’s data footprint presents an opportunity to strategically assess where you are most vulnerable (such as with misconfigured clouds) and reduce that risk.

A proper data strategy provides a roadmap for prioritizing data security initiatives, evaluating state-of-the-art technologies, and deploying advanced risk analytics techniques to identify and manage risks proactively.

  1. A Need for Collaborative Efficiency

Collaboration is a vital element for gaining knowledge and achieving results in an interconnected world. Today, organizations are increasingly moving away from traditional data warehouses and embracing integrated data lakes, which encourage knowledge sharing and collaboration.

A strategy re-evaluation helps you determine what infrastructure best meets your team’s needs and promotes adequate information sharing across business units. This assessment also gives you a deeper understanding of the specific rulesets needed to support optimized and secure cross-functional data access.

Let TIBCO Help You Optimize Your Data and Analytics Strategy

Today’s ever-changing financial services landscape demands institutions adopt a data strategy that can continuously adapt their data investments to keep up with market requirements. Regardless of your data management solutions, relying on the same strategy you had several years ago can severely diminish the value of your data.

TIBCO is dedicated to helping financial services institutions modernize their data and acquire transformational results. Explore how to optimize your data and analytics strategy to drive better business outcomes in our latest FSI ebook.

Download the ebook today and take the first step toward refining and future-proofing your data strategy.

The post Why Transformational Results in Financial Services Require Refreshing Your Data Strategy first appeared on The TIBCO Blog.