Centiq, Europe’s most experienced independent SAP consultancy, today reveals Financial Services are heavily investing in customer insight tools to accelerate their Digital Transformation. Some 250 users of SAP’s digital platform of choice, SAP  HANA, took part in ‘The Centiq State of HANA Report 2018’, believed to be the largest ever independent research into this community. Its key findings are:

Financial Services sector is the most data-driven sector

The HANA platform brings disparate data-sets together to spin out reports, ultimately providing deeper customer insights. Financial Services (FS) organisations are using SAP HANA for data integration (63%), platform consolidation (62%) and data processing (65%), indicating they are moving their data into SAP HANA for real-time data analytics. Notably, these figures are higher than the average across industry sectors, demonstrating the FS sector is paving the way for Digital Transformation.

60% of Financial Services organisations cite customer insight as their key driver for HANA projects

This figure reflects the increased pressure on FS organisations to provide seamless, innovative and exciting customer experiences in response to PSD2, or Open Banking as it is widely known. In the Open Banking revolution, traditional banks are no longer the only choice for consumers, and competition is fierce. FS organisations need deep customer insights to develop more targeted marketing campaigns and point of sale related activities, ultimately enhancing customer experiences and fending off the competition.

Strategy teams in the Financial Services sector are those calling the shots

The research provides evidence of FS organisations are striving to keep ahead of the game in an increasingly competitive sector. As a result, it is strategy teams, not technical experts, who are most likely to drive SAP HANA internally. In fact, 92% of FS organisations cited strategy teams as the driving force behind their SAP HANA project, a 10% leap from 82% in Centiq’s last study.

Cloud skills most in demand in Financial Services

Of all the skills required for SAP HANA implementation, cloud infrastructure skills are most in demand among FS organisations, with 65% citing this in Centiq’s study. This is indicative of a substantial number of organisations choosing to deploy their SAP HANA projects in Public Cloud. In fact, 90% of FS organisations deploy in Public Cloud in production, and 82% in non-production. This is in-keeping with a wider trend, as 88% of all survey respondents also use Public Cloud in production HANA instances, whilst 78% use Public Cloud in non-production.