TO SaaS OR NOT TO SaaS: THAT IS THE QUESTION……

By Deborah Aubrook, Marketing Manager - IDEALINVENT

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous competition,Or to take arms against a sea of disruptors, and by opposing, end them? 

I hope my paraphrasing of Shakespeare doth not offend thee but it seemed to fit the purpose of this article. 

There is much talk in the BFSI sector about ‘unfair competition’ from upstart disruptors who are free from the encumbrance of regulation - disruptors who are stealing Millennials’ hearts & minds and potentially ‘stealing’ the banks’ future business. But this competition is definitely what the consumer wants, hence their success, and if banks are looking for a sympathetic ear, I think they will be waiting a long time! 

So how to deal with this inevitable competitive future, where banks could fade into insignificance if they ‘suffer the bows and arrows’ & bury their heads in the sand? Of course there are many options; you may choose product specialization, go branchless, transform to digital, become social media mavens, you may even, heaven forbid, look to collaborate with your competition for the good of the consumer. However, at the end of the day two things are essential for any decision you make to be successful – to be competitive you must have business agility and to be agile you must have the right technology. 

Business Agility is an agreed ‘pain point’ for banks and it isn’t something that can be achieved with bolt on tech to your already groaning legacy system. The right technology to support business agility is of course essential. The future of core banking platforms, as we all know by now is SOA, modular, API driven, preferably platform agnostic and with support from BIAN (www.bian.org) will also have a unified architecture. But of course the world of technology moves rapidly on and Software as a Service is the new Agile. Legacy transformation projects of the future will no longer be ‘full fat’ bloated in-house systems - why buy a license with a full stack at insane cost, when somebody else will provide it for you, maintain and update it regularly – for no cost at all and you only pay per use for the SaaS! And for those with data security issues around putting your Core operations on a public cloud you know exactly where your data is stored and how it is managed. All research suggests there is no more chance of a security breach with a hybrid cloud than on an in-house stack.  

The majority of decisions within the business are, at the end of the day, driven by cost. SaaS delivery of your core banking functions will reduce your costs by between 30-70% and take a lot of capital expenditure off your balance sheet. Of course, every bank’s requirements are different, but can you really afford to ignore that fact!? 

The day is already here where we can sit on our sofa and access everything we need on one screen by wi-fi via the Cloud – (even our SaaS based core banking platform can be accessed sat on the sofa via your laptop, smartphone or tablet, see www.B-SaaS.com for details) so how long is it going to be before your competition will also be Cloud enabled, and gain all the benefits that accrue – I’m afraid it’s inevitable! I can guarantee you that your new disruptive competition will be fully digital and SaaS based.

It is time to ‘suffer the slings and arrows’ and risk destruction or ‘take to arms’ and compete with the upstarts  – what will your choice be?!