Every year analysts, consultancy firms and industry experts publish the top tech and business forecasts to help the financial services industry plan for the future. Yet no amount of forecasting for futureproofing could have prepared us for what came in 2020.
In a way, the pandemic-induced changes have thankfully forced asset finance leaders to look at technology in a different light. As companies juggle between economic and business uncertainties, nurturing new markets and strategizing for business growth, managing stakeholder expectations, and most importantly, putting consumers at the heart of everything they do- one key takeaway stands out. That legacy, obsolete technology is not going to take us far.
There was a time when technology was a point solution aimed at solving a particular challenge for the organization. Over the years companies keep piling up these point solutions over each other, putting band-aids to join systems to work, eventually creating the complex, rigid technology stacks that they are struggling with today.
That is why asset finance organizations trying to solve today’s business challenges need to keep in mind that any modern technology that they adopt is compatible and built to accommodate the future growth of the company and the uncertainties. The future of enterprise tech is connected, agile, and customer-centric and the technologies that companies adopt today should be able to adopt and adapt to the needs of today as well as the times to come.
Build For Today. Plan For Tomorrow
Technology is the backbone of every business today. As companies accelerate their digital transformation journeys, they must create the perfect balance and build systems that are stable yet agile, standardized yet customizable enough for their businesses, and connected and integrated yet secure.
- Today’s Challenge: Overcome The Rigidity And Challenges Of Legacy Systems: Adopting a cloud-native, end-to-end equipment leasing software will enable companies to build the standard technology foundation to solve today’s challenges. Automation and digitization can overcome a lot of problems that have plagued companies due to legacy-obsolete systems – namely time-consuming, manual processes and repetitive tasks. Solutions like Odessa Platform are built on a platform framework model that uses the most standard technologies of today yet is flexible enough to accommodate future technology advancements as well.
Planning For The Future: Solutions like the Odessa Platform are built on open design principles that enable organizations to build for change. As compared to proprietary software, it is a platform approach complimented by an extensibility suite that enables you to work at your own pace. Being at the edge of technology advancements means that you can always keep pace with the latest innovations in technology. The future is unpredictable- but by building scale and agility within the DNA of your systems, you are prepared to pivot as the situation demands.
- Today’s Challenge: Manage Customer Expectations: Customer expectations can be understood as a hierarchy (with financial security as the foundation) for meeting higher-order needs like establishing trust, personalizing offerings, and embracing a net-positive role in the economy and society. Identifying and meeting these expectations has never been more essential—or more difficult—than it is now and will continue to be for the near future. Customer needs and behaviours will continue to evolve, with meaningful differences across segments. Today customers want fast and efficient services, that are customized for their preferences, available 24/7 on devices and platforms of their choice.
Choosing an end-to-end lease management software like Odessa can enable you to delight your customers, all the while building efficiencies and agility within your business operations. By eliminating manual, paper-based processes you get a complete, 360-degree view of the customer journey – from origination to servicing. Combined with automation and workflow recalibration, it enables frictionless information flow across functions and departments, faster processes, and speedier go-to-market timelines for new products and services- elevating your overall customer experience.
Planning For The Future: Building this solid foundation for your core processes means that you can, in time, innovate with next-gen technologies like dedicated customer portals, data analytics to make your offerings more customized, and APIs (application programming interfaces) and mobility to deliver faster, seamless services that will wow your customers.
- Today’s Challenge: Building A Data-Driven Enterprise: Technological advancements are expanding the quantity and quality of data sources, making access to data flows an increasingly valuable resource. This ever-increasing flow of data will make it easier for asset finance companies to design solutions and business models that meet customer expectations and enable integration across organizations. An end-to-end equipment leasing software solution like Odessa streamlines the flow of information across workstreams and departments. By digitizing, consolidating, and centralizing data – Odessa helps you build next-gen data architectures with data cataloguing and reporting tools.
Planning For The Future: Building this solid foundation for your core processes means that you can, in time, innovate with next-gen technologies like dedicated customer portals, data analytics to make your offerings more customized, and APIs and mobility to deliver faster, seamless services that will wow your customers. As the economy becomes more data-driven, asset finance will fundamentally shift to an environment where data is key to value creation. Choosing the right lease management software solution provider who can also help you build the right data architectures and environments today will enable you to eventually mature into an organization that can become the early adopters of advanced
technology like usage-based pricing models, artificial intelligence, machine learning and predictive analytics in the future. As companies harness data to create offerings that put stakeholder needs front and centre, they will be in a much better position to attract, delight, and retain customers, maintain employee satisfaction, and delight investors.
Asset finance companies that want to keep growing and ensure that they remain in the game must look at what needs to be done now to ensure a scalable, buildable future for their businesses. Building for the future does not mean swanky innovation labs or big upfront investments. It starts with taking baby steps towards creating the right techno-functional base at the backend that is agile and dynamic enough to leave space for incremental improvement in the future. It begins with finding the right technology partner with a well-defined product roadmap that you can leverage when your business needs it.
To maintain a competitive edge and stay relevant, you must make continuous investments in technology. It is essential to continuously evaluate your systems and processes, as well as the technology that enables them, to stay up to date with technology.
About Odessa
Headquartered in Philadelphia, USA, Odessa is a software company exclusively focused in the leasing industry. The Odessa Platform powers a diverse customer base globally, providing end-to-end, extensible solutions for lease and loan origination and portfolio management. Odessa facilitates business agility through rich feature sets including low-code development, test automation, reporting and business intelligence to ensure organizations can more effectively align business and IT objectives. Learn more at www.odessainc.com
