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Tackling Tech Bloat: Slimming Down to Boost Efficiency, Security, and Innovation
According to a 2023 survey by MuleSoft and Deloitte, large enterprises now use an average of more than a thousand applications across their organization.
So what exactly is tech bloat, and how can you slim down your stack? Read on to find out more.
Referring to the excessive accumulation of outdated, redundant, or highly complex tech systems that weigh down an organization, tech bloat in financial services is becoming increasingly common. This phenomenon stems from a variety of causes, but the biggest tends to be an abundance of legacy systems that have been patched and repurposed over the years. Of course many financial services providers require very specific needs to be addressed (including everything from core banking systems and risk assessment models, to cybersecurity software, workflow automation, customer relationship management, financial planning and forecasting, data sources, fraud prevention, loan origination systems, and payment processing). As the list of needs (and related tech) grows with your organization, so does the bloat.
But many of the software solutions you have will overlap in functionality, leading to inefficiencies in both operation and cost. A survey by Freshworks shared that “54% of IT professionals say their organization pays for software” that never gets used. And often these systems are not integrated with each other very well, creating numerous silos of information, complicating workflows, and making data access tricky. Not to mention the fact that extensive customizations and add-ons over the years, while useful at first, can quickly turn into burdens, limiting flexibility and making maintenance and updates difficult. And of course those updates are critical, because with constant regulatory shifts, financial institutions do regularly need to update their systems, which can result in a quickly tangled web of temporary fixes that, you guessed it, add more bloat (not to mention leave you more vulnerable to everything from data breaches to lapses in compliance).
According to Freshworks, “the cost of trying to use unhelpful technology amounts to more than $84B annually in wasted time in the US alone, or $10M every hour of every day.”
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Operational Inefficiency: A bloated tech environment slows down business processes and complicates workflows, with legacy systems and overlapping solutions creating bottlenecks. This inefficiency affects day-to-day operations, but also has a compounding effect the longer it continues, leading to longer turnaround times and a lack of flexibility and agility in your operations, ultimately adding friction to customer experiences.
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Risk and Compliance Challenges: The more outdated systems you have to manage, the more the risk of errors, data inconsistencies, and compliance misfires increases. All financial services providers must adhere to stringent regulatory requirements, and the more bloated your organization, the more challenging it is to ensure compliance, leading to potential fines and reputational damage.
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Security Vulnerabilities: Along the lines of compliance struggles, outdated systems are often easier prey for cyber attackers. The complexity of a bloated tech environment makes it much more difficult to implement robust security measures effectively, leaving you open to targeting by cybercriminals. Any breach (data, compliance, ransomware) can have severe consequences, including financial losses and significant damage to customer trust.
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Innovation Roadblocks: Want a surefire way to stifle innovation? Maintaining and integrating multiple tech systems makes it extremely challenging to adopt new technologies, even if those technologies are ones you really, really want to utilize. In an industry where agility, flexibility, and continuous innovation are required to stay competitive, this hindrance to tech advancement places larger, more complex financial services organizations at a distinct disadvantage – making it difficult to explore new opportunities and deliver cutting-edge solutions to your customers.
Any of these consequences should be enough to address your tech bloat problem, but put them all together and you can see it’s not just about security or reducing operational costs – it’s fundamental to unlocking your potential for sustained innovation and sustainable growth. Streamlining your tech infrastructure allows you to overcome these challenges and position yourself for future success and customer loyalty.
Reducing Tech Bloat
Consider the case of Provenir customer NewDay. Some of their existing systems were proving costly in terms of release times and updates, and were due for decommissioning. By implementing a more holistic decisioning solution, they were able to significantly reduce processing time and improve quote response times.
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Sub-1
second decisioning processing time
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99.95%
SLA for availability
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80%
improvement in speed of change
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2.5x
faster quote response
| 1. Conduct a Technology Audit: |
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| 2. Streamline and Consolidate: |
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| 3. Invest in Modern, Integrated Solutions: |
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| 4. Enhance Data Management and Governance: |
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| 5. Foster a Culture of Continuous Improvement: |
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| 6. Partner with the Right Tech Providers: |
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Part of fighting the bloat battle is selecting the right technology partner – one that can enable flexibility, scalability, and an end-to-end platform that you can build and grow your business on. Provenir’s AI-Powered Decisioning Platform brings together the key capabilities you need to turn decisioning into a differentiator, allowing you to deploy accurate, fully automated decisioning across the lifecycle, while also gaining actionable insights to optimize strategies and enhance performance across the entire organization. Featuring solutions for data, decisioning, case management, and decision intelligence, across onboarding, fraud & identity, customer management and collections, Provenir’s platform is a one-stop solution that eliminates silos, brings teams together, and enables sustainable, customer-centric growth.
Want more info on how Provenir’s dedicated team of Principal Consultants and Professional Services experts can help you reduce tech bloat in your organization?
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