• Paul French, Director of Business at Intelligence at Nationwide


• 24.03.2021 11:30 am
data

Technology is revolutionising the way the financial services sector operates. Across the industry, organisations are adopting innovative solutions to consumer pain points that deliver exceptional experiences. But while innovation has been accelerating in recent years, the reality is, historically, the financial services sector has been slow on the uptake of many cost and time-saving technologies, leaving internal processes lagging behind the innovation demonstrated externally. This digital adoption lag in the industry is costing companies significantly in unrealised benefits.

Nowhere is this more evident than in financial services organisations’ data strategies. Time and time again business leaders invest in data software that has the analytical power to provide insightful data on key business challenges, only to use it for basic reporting requirements. This default approach to data is severely limiting the value financial services organisations are deriving from their data; restricting its potential to inform decisions and deliver real business outcomes.

To buck this trend, at Nationwide we have been working with our data partner, Qlik, to implement analytics solutions across the company that streamline activities, minimise manual processes, and optimise spend. By shifting the organisational perception around data and encouraging employees to integrate analytics into decision-making processes, we have been able to use data to deliver innovative solutions to business challenges that drives tangible value. A great example of this is how the business intelligence (BI) team helped transform the procurement processes that ultimately delivered multi-million pounds in savings across the business – here’s how we did it.

Streamlining processes to save time and money

The procurement team’s need for reporting, insight and analytics has grown significantly in recent years, which resulted in individuals being tied down with time-consuming and costly manual processes, particularly when it came to details of contractors and suppliers. Eager to free up employees time to invest in more valuable activities, the procurement team was interested in investigating how an improved data strategy could streamline processes and optimise spend.

The BI team, in close collaboration with the procurement team, identified the opportunity to change the culture of how procurement data was used across the company, implement a self-service approach to data insights, and shift away from hindsight reporting of ‘what happened’ towards proactively using data in decision-making processes.

The core tenant of the solution was the creation of a Qlik Sense data visualisation application; interactive dashboards that could integrate data from disparate sources and provide a one-stop-shop for the procurement team to access, analyse and compare data from contractors and suppliers. With the ability to clearly evaluate benefits and risks associated with each potential supplier through analytics, the procurement team has been in a better position to negotiate contracts with suppliers and third parties, resulting in over £1 million supplier optimisation benefits. In shifting away from a reporting-only model, the procurement team has been able to use data analytics to proactively review relevant data and make informed, data-driven decisions about which suppliers best suit our needs.

Company-wide collaboration

Beyond the procurement team, a data-driven culture is being embraced more widely across the business to drive innovation. By breaking down inter-team data silos and encouraging data sharing across the business, we have been able to capitalise on the procurement data model to produce additional value and cost-savings.

For example, when the finance and audit teams saw the benefits the new data applications delivered, they wanted to understand if the same systems could be set up in their business units to achieve comparable results. Fortunately, the BI team behind the procurement application created core components that were adaptable for other areas of the business. This allowed finance and audit to adapt and utilise the same solutions and data to suit their individual requirements. Using the third-party spending application created for procurement, the finance team was able to identify £2 million in sustainable savings. By encouraging the sharing of data, knowledge and good practice between teams, we have been able to deploy data analytics software strategically across the company to drive even further cost-savings and demonstrate the value of an effective data strategy.

Delivering value into the future

These use cases reveal the significant benefits the innovative use of data analytics can offer. While we are making great strides in implementing a company-wide data-driven culture, there is still work to be done. In the past two years, we have gone from having 50 active Qlik users to 2,400, but we want to take this even further to get to a place where all 17,000 of our employees feel confident and empowered to use data to improve outcomes in their work lives.

To accomplish this, we are planning to encourage increased participation in self-service analytics, equipping employees with the knowledge and skills to create data solutions to business problems when and where they are needed. By demonstrating the value data can provide different teams across the business, we hope to encourage the entire organisation to consider how data can support their role. Ultimately, we want to put data at the forefront of every decision to maximise the benefit of our data management and analytics investments and empower every employee with the data they need to improve business outcomes. The potential if we get this right is massive: an IDC study, commissioned by Qlik, revealed that following investments in data management and analytics, the vast majority of financial service firms (77%) increased their profit and by an average of 18.4%.

Overcoming data hurdles in financial services

The financial services industry is in a perfect position to capitalise on data analytics solutions to improve outcomes. With a highly skilled workforce, swathes of valuable data waiting to be tapped into, and capital to invest in the best technologies available, organisations in the industry are ripe to transform their data strategies and accelerate the business value from their data.

Financial services have been behind other industries in adopting data strategies beyond simplistic reporting. But, with the right approach, the financial services sector can embed data decision-making across the organisation and not only drive significant cost-savings, but also ensure employees’ time can be invested in more valuable activities that require human engagement. It’s time for the financial services industry to start placing equal value on internal innovation as external – when they do, they will see significant tangible benefits.