Data Junction - The Next Competitive Advantage
Banking Frontiers organized an online panel discussion to discuss the above topic in depth. Edited excerpts:
Manoj: Which applications are currently making transitions to real-time mode from a business requirements point of view?
Varundeep: In t oday’s world, customer experience is a very important component of the financial digital business. Most of the applications in the BFSI space focus on real-time. Change from monolithic databases to microservices requires data availability on different data planes. Design, Data and Security are 3 pillars which are important to define the level of experience.
Dominic: Real-time process happens with the payment cycle. A real-time process needs an accurate decision in fast mode.
Yashwant: Reconciliation and complaint resolution are perennial problems in the business payment system. Shifting reconciliation to a more real-time tech-driven way addresses the simple risk of manual error. Once reconciliation is performed or the transaction is over, then grievances are to be addressed and solved amicably. And this will lead to reducing the timeline for customers in delivering a better customer experience.
Ajay: Transactions work in real-time mode. Managing a few regulatory things will pave the way for a better customer experience. In terms of reconciliation, the banking industry focuses on file-based systems.
Biju: Transactions and reconciliations are vital components for customers for service in fast paced environment. Utilization of additional data in a better way is key to enhancing customer experience. It needs consolidating all data and additional components in a singular location. Acquiring knowledge from all data and using it in real-time for serving customers is the important perspective of data junction. The utilization of such information is the key factor in ensuring
a better service and customer experience.
What are the practical problems and difficulties that arise in running an application?
Yashwant: Each transaction is more and more complex in the connected world which is expected to move to realtime. The core thing is backups of every data for better clarity and convenient operations. Backups should be triggered by the system and humans should be triggered by the system. And humans should not intervene in solutions.
Ajay: Apart from backup, the initial microservice system works in parallel with backup for getting a better experience. It will trigger backup efficiently and gives the response on a faster basis. This helps to reduce latency with proper backup.
Biju: Data enrichment enhances existing information by supplementing missing or incomplete data. Enriching the data maximizes for a better customer experience.
How do you make an investment in scalability and with human judgement?
Dominic: Cost is always involved in scalability. For a huge database, there should be proper computing with
connectivity & infrastructure. Move all to the cloud and start building a data model.
Varundeep: When govt announces some subsidy or taxes, transaction traffic rises steeply. The company seizes an opportunity to scale its business. So data center is the option which gives infrastructure and flexibility. If the traffic is really bad, either opt for a cloud or SaaS kind of service where you don’t have to invest hugely in infrastructure.
Ajay: As a payment company, our management invests in flexible and scalable real-time processes and less latency mode.
Biju: The scalability starts from network to storage capacity along with infrastructure also plays a vital role. If scalability is done individually, then architecture is important for the process.
What do clients expect in terms of scalability?
Kamal Goel: Data center provides enough space as per digitalization needs of business. As per the data size, transactions will provide scalability, infrastructure and a cloud-type environment. So, adoption is done as per convenience to provide a seamless environment.
Low Latency – what are the challenges and solutions?
Yashwant: Real-time check during the course of the transaction enables knowing the availability of resources and latency measurement which is critical for better experience.
Biju: Fraud detection has been the most important activity in real-time to identify fraud and reject it instantly in the process. Machine learning has become a part of the process as we have localized algorithms. Latency gets reduced by using algorithms, and this plays an important role in the machine learning world.
Kamal: Depl o y i n g a n e t wor k ecosystem with cloud service providers will enable the end customers to achieve the best connectivity and low latency rate. This will enhance performance and experience.
How to reduce latency and improve security in the organization?
Dominic: Security plays an important role in customer data. Latency evolves challengesfortheorganization.Companies should fine-tune the applications and build region-wise data centers. Customer acquisition is very vital with consideration of low latency and with efficient cyber security.
Varundeep: Low l a t e nc y c a n be achieved with acute automation.
Automation is vital for maintaining security and reducing latency. Technology tools are there to serve realtime requirements.
Kamal: Edge Data Centers are distributed and scattered for better behavior and experience.
Ajay: Quality and high security minimize the cost with a faster process leading to a better customer experience. From the business point of view, one must check the cost and increase the customer experience quality.
Yashwant: Scalability is a prime i mportant link in technological transformation. The core requirement with decentralization emphasizes better availability of data.
Biju: Technological understanding as per the business standards is the most important factor for leveraging customer experience. Decision-making on the adoption of digital technology is vital for the scaling the business and customer acquisition.