The MADP Route to Transform Banking

By S. Sundararajan, Managing Director, i-exceed Technology Solutions

Happy customers and profitability are two key elements that define a bank’s success. The former with good operating incomes and optimised operating costs ensures the latter. And the single most significant factor that delights any customer is the convenience a bank can offer in its banking experience. Not long ago, banks would offer a mobile app as an added extra. Today, it’s expected to be there by default. A bank without a mobile offering is as unimaginable as one without an ATM or online banking facilities, feels S. Sundararajan.

Today, most banks are in the process of implementing their digital strategy or at least have one on the drawing boards simply because that’s where most of their customers are. But digital banking as a function is quite generic, so how can a bank make a digital offering that is unique? Firstly, banks with a competitive digital strategy teams know that digital trends, though fleeting in nature, provide huge windows of opportunity for business. To aggressively address a dynamically changing market, adopting an agile business model would be extremely beneficial. Secondly, understand the competition landscape; new players, new laws governing how businesses should be transacted, and several other factors are disrupting the market place at a pace that is reeling for most. Figuring out what makes each offering unique and what experiential advantages can be leveraged will play a big role in keeping up with the competition.

Driving Change.

Over the past few years, a lot of maturity has set into the mobility space. A recent report by Gartner points out that users have started declaring themselves as ‘satisfied’ with current engagement rates. But a quick look at the integration levels mobile devices are achieving with our lives indicate that businesses must continue to evolve. Redefining digital strategies must be undertaken as a constant endeavour to maintain customer base and engagement levels to ensure relevance and profitability. With each app an enterprise rolls out, businesses will have to strive to deliver higher value with each app it offers.

S. Sundararajan, Managing Director, i-exceed Technology Solutions

The current landscape of building apps calls for quick go live times and quick continuous improvement cycles. Tools that use templates, APIs, and widgets are better suited to quickly prototype and build apps thereby reducing the cost and time of building application by a large margin (almost 50% in a lot of cases). With over 7 billion active mobile connections and trends like IOT and mobile first gaining popularity and worldwide acceptance, digital transformation of life as we know it will be fuelled by the power of mobility. And since mobility initiatives deal with complexities such as workflow management, user entitlements, seamless integration with backend systems, and much more, it is important to have tools that help businesses address these issues effectively.

This is where MADPs comes in. These platforms enable developers to rapidly build applications based on inbuilt templates that facilitate agility, flexibility, and scalability without compromising or disrupting existing systems, data security, and backend integration. Based mostly on open source technologies, MADPs help developers to bring out the best features in the shortest time without being bogged down by the limitations of being stuck to a single proprietary system.

Advantage MADP

For a bank making significant software investments, MADPs can deliver quick ROI by offering scalable and flexible solutions that can help enterprises go live quickly with their apps. This integrated approach drastically simplifies the complexity and time consumed in integrating back end systems with the front end of any application. With constant updates, releases, and upgrades, banks can ensure their customers the best of what technology can offer; everything from intuitive and user friendly interfaces to cutting edge security features.

Other important features that are desirable in an MADP would include management of the application build processes, providing app versioning, deploying and monitoring app behaviour across all platforms and devices. The platform should also offer real-time analytics to track app performance, troubleshoot problems, and gather data that would help banks make incremental changes in their improving their digital strategy.

Choosing the Right MADP
For any bank, one of the most important considerations while selecting an MADP is the development platform itself. The MADP should be able to provide all the tools and components a bank needs to build the types of apps that reflect its business vision while providing users what they want, presently and in the near future.

The platform should also use widely accepted and used development approaches, provide the necessary technical support for system integration, and have access to third-party app script libraries that help in providing a consistent user experience regardless of the nature of the app or its intended operating system. A bank also needs to be clear on whether it wants to build apps that are native or hybrid in nature.

Security is another top priority for any bank while choosing an MADP vendor. It is essential to find out what types of identity and entitlement management features are present, the different levels of encryption used to ensure data integrity, storage location of encryption keys, and how security features are integrated with existing systems. Modern technology has made it possible to integrate sensors that can identify many biometric functions such as speech, retinal scanning, and fingerprint recognition that can greatly secure the nature of transactions being carried out.

MADP apps should also be designed in way where they are able to seamlessly integrate with a bank’s data access points necessary. The provider should offer API level support for a seamless interaction between data sources, cloud services, and third-party tools such as MDM (Mobile Device Management).

The Future

With plenty of MADPs to choose from, a bank should invest in an MADP that best mirrors their digital ambitions. In a mobile first world, MADPs are slowly turning into tools that are shaping the digital revolution and adopting the right one will make all the difference in how one faces the completion.