Dmitry Oparin, ELMA: To banks not automation, but operational efficiency is more important

Dmitry Oparin: Would not tell that the level of a process maturity on the industry is rather high. Yes, banks have described regulations, but often they are simply not relevant because there is no uniform standard. More precisely it is on paper, but is absent in life.

In general, this such idealized idea of banks, as if inside at them is a perfect order and all work uniformly and strictly according to the instruction. It is right only for the certain types of activity regulated by documents like Basel (the standard of capital adequacy). To a lesser extent it concerns processes of customer interaction.

The example of one of our customers for which ELMA implemented a pilot project is indicative. The bank is included into the list systemically of significant Banks of Russia of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation., It seems, the level of a maturity of bank should be high. Nevertheless, when we began to collect information from the customer, it became clear that in bank there are different ideas of how basic processes look. Each vice president managed, in fact, in own way, the legal persons managers worked "as told how they trained". So our task on the project was in making processes universal.

Dmitry Oparin: There are objective indicators which are connected with Customer Experience and the competition in the industry. Banks watch as far as the cost and speed of their processes and services correspond to the market.

For example, now it is possible to speak about a bank trend on digitalization of products for small and medium business. Sberbank, Tinkoff Bank and other banks develop digital service of this sector. One of our customers of VestaBank in a research of efficiency of Internet banks for small business which carried out the Markswebb agency (Business Internet Banking Rank 2018) achieved the results exceeding the largest Russian banks. In particular, clients of VestaBank pay about 690 thousand rubles for the same set of services for SME for which clients of other banks give more than one million. This difference in cost — in many respects a consequence of the built business processes.

Dmitry Oparin: Speed of processes is important for natural persons. If the person came to bank, he expects that the request will be considered quickly. That will call back tomorrow and will tell: there is your credit card. It is rather simple to employee of the bank to look at credit history — to send the request in scoring. In principle everything, according to the configured policy risk management if the client approaches, will issue it the credit right there.

In B2B because of a large number of verifications of the request in principle are not considered quickly. But an important role is played by time for transfer of the client from prequalification in a scoring phase. Here Customer Experience is directly connected with business processes. There are losses in process which increase the term of consideration of the request. It can be repeated approvals and banal losses of documents in process. The customer can just provide not that it is necessary, and resending will be required. All this speaks about nonoptimality of processes.

Dmitry Oparin: Even if bank — a top in terms of sales of a product, nobody cancelled operational efficiency. It, in particular, interests also shareholders. Yes, it is possible to sell and occupy much a certain share in the market. But the question is in that, business processes are how effective. The question was raised also in the project of digital transformation Kapital Bank (the largest bank of Azerbaijan on number of clients, an editor's note).

Dmitry Oparin: Kapital Bank at first invited consultants from McKinsey. Further the bank looked for the platform for digital transformation — the convenient tool in terms of interfaces in which it is possible to build end-to-end business processes. Such that the employee did not need to address in tens of the different systems.

In respect of analytics the platform for digital transformation should collect data. For example, just transaction system will not consider how many were executed this or that transaction. The method of the same McKinsey — to come to the person with the timer and to carry out process timing. This method has certain minuses — when employees are faced by someone with the timer, they begin to perform work quicker, the objective picture will not turn out. Especially if it is the big company which has 80 branches in different locations.

The main requirement of Kapital Bank to the platform for digital transformation consisted volume that end-to-end processes were automated not "in a monolith". Business changes quickly. Therefore banks need the flexible tool which will help to make changes, fast and low at cost.

Similar story with one our client. The bank transports all the bek to regions. It requires change of processes. Not such that we will write terms of reference now, we will set to developers the task and they to us somewhere in n-months will finish software. And easy and fast.

Or example of VestaBank. The business analyst of bank described process, and in three weeks process was brought into commercial operation. It is clear, that there are integration points which will be made only by the developer. But for changes at the business logic layer all way from the description before putting into operation took only three weeks. And such changes in processes happen constantly.

Dmitry Oparin: In general now banks do not look for the simple automation equipment — anyway everything is already automated. It is a lot of where corporate systems stand 10 — 15 years. They perform the function. There is no task to substitute them, but there is a task to integrate different IT solutions.

It is possible to automate processes using different tools — now all systems provide the necessary functionality. The effect on the speed of implementation will be plus or minus same. The question is in as far as the speed of changes will be high, and cost — low. It is always interesting to the customer, the tool is how flexible. As far as those opportunities which are given by vendor it is no simple "are hardwired in functionality", and are put "for growth".

Dmitry Oparin: In the transaction systems it is difficult to build collaboration between different departments because it is, in fact, only the accounting systems. In them it will not turn out to keep track of operational efficiency. As it occurs now. At first data are collected. Here banks use difficult techniques of BI (Business Intelligence). Or build process in a BPM system — when there is an accurate sequence of tasks, clear who in what is engaged. Data are collected automatically as tasks of process are carried out.

Further the analysis is carried out, there are "bottlenecks". Data for the analysis can be unloaded from a BPM system to the platform for Process Mining or in the same BI and to understand what branches, departments and people are effective. Further the owner of process makes some decisions. Let's say he says: I have a hypothesis that if we make concurrent these transactions and we will enter one more business rule for requests, then process will quicker go. An important point that the hypothesis can remain just a hypothesis if it is not confirmed on A/B-testing.

For fast check of hypotheses the tool to which it is possible to make changes quickly is necessary. If these changes are made within half a year — then there is no opportunity for maneuver. If changes are made quickly, within three weeks as in VestaBank, then it is possible to experiment and find optimal solutions.

Dmitry Oparin: Now the main trend — RPA (Robotic Process Automation). For example, robots are capable to close the whole layer of tasks of integration with a legacy-system without API now. Instead of long and expensively to automate data transmission between systems, it is possible to use RPA. Several such solutions were already implemented by us on client projects — meanwhile not for financial institutions. But we and that is important, customers see big perspectives of use of RPA in bank processes.

As looks robotizations together with BPMS. A BPM system builds end-to-end processes and at the same time uses RPA to close certain sections of these processes. A business intelligence which models process, in general all the same who carries out a task — users or robots. It only sets what information needs to be transferred and what to receive at the exit. Without some difficult setup and writing of the code. The analyst just comes into a BPM system, drags cubes with tasks and receives the performed application. For it RPA is the same cube. The analyst selects a cube and specifies that in business process it is necessary to make integration, for example, with Russian Post. Certainly, before in the RPA solution it is necessary to configure scenarios of interaction with this website.