Building an Event-Driven Architecture for Real-Time Process Improvements in Financial Services

Staying competitive at scale—quickly and without sacrificing effectiveness—requires updating your approach to digital architecture. New entrants in the Financial Services industry are able to gain market share while demonstrating greater efficiencies. This is especially problematic for older institutions who still rely on legacy systems to serve customers. Such established organizations may know their architecture needs an overhaul but feel overwhelmed by the complexity of the process.

As a result, companies are stepping back from the technology and reapproaching their digital strategies from the perspective of customer need. While it’s true that financial services organizations finally appear to be excited about ‘going digital’ with mobile applications, online banking, etc., today’s customers expect much more. They don’t just want another app. They want modern digital experiences that actually improve how they manage their money.

In order to connect with customers and expand your customer base, your organization will likely need to transition those internal processes that support your customer service goals. Event-driven architecture makes this possible.

How Event-Driven Architecture Creates Great Customer Experiences

Today’s customers expect fast, responsive digital experiences that are smarter and more intuitive. Event-driven architecture enables these by centering software around the customer’s actions. Customer-centric business events are at the heart of your modern digital architecture. The goal is to make these events immediately available to every employee, system, user interface and business process that impacts the customer experience. This is best achieved by streaming business events through a centralized hub as relevant systems listen in real-time. The result is a more efficient and intelligent organization that can truly deliver on the promise of being customer-focused.

5 Benefits of Event-Driven Architecture in Finance

Whether through a mobile application, a smarter ATM, or via a live person armed with contextual information, an event-driven technology backbone significantly improves the quality of your customer experience by enabling faster, more personalized service.

Consider these five outcomes an event-driven architecture helps achieve:

1. Real-time processing

Customers want responsive experiences, websites that load quickly, are easy to use, and present up-to-date information in real-time. Mobile applications should be contextual and helpful, powered by back-end systems capable of processing thousands or even millions of events, as they occur in real-time.

2. Fully integrated systems

To minimize friction throughout, your internal processes must also take advantage of the latest technologies and innovations. Information shouldn’t be locked in data siloes or legacy architecture. An event-driven architecture helps you integrate disparate systems in a highly scalable manner.

3. Better visibility into complex transactions and long-running processes

Event-driven architecture enables the integration of real-time data into customer experiences, empowering your organization to develop tools that bring the latest, most accurate information and analysis to customers.

Back-office systems involved in processing complex financial transactions can trigger important status events. Digital applications can listen for these events and update the status of a pending transaction in real-time.

4. Improved analytics for value-adding services

Event-driven architecture puts advanced analytical tools in the hands of customers and lets you offer on-demand toolkits to help customers manage their money and plan for the future.

Proactively suggest ways to help them manage their money better, through analytics, and you’ll win over customers.

5. Empower your customer service teams

One of the most important opportunities of event-driven architecture for financial services companies is the chance to provide customers the best possible online and digital experiences. But instead of viewing online and offline as separate and distinct environments, consider how these touchpoints connect and work together to create holistic, cohesive customer experiences.

Win Over More Customers with Event-Driven Architecture

Modern, streamlined customer experiences reduce churn rates and increase customer satisfaction. Event-driven architectures help you get there. Following your customer’s journey empowers your organization to boost engagement and identify areas in need of improvement.

As you craft digital customer experiences, don’t forget to unify your offline and online processes. Bring your internal processes inline with customer-facing systems, and you’ll be rewarded with a more cohesive customer-service experience.

If your organization needs help providing customers a truly superior experience across all channels, check out Anexinet’s new . Ensure your organization is delivering an amazing, connected ecosystem of multi-channel services and digital experiences—all in just three weeks.