"When you ask what mobile banking looks like, South Africa - and indeed Africa - are sterling examples of how financial institutions are pushing the envelope when it comes to revolutionising technology in their sector," says Claude Schuck, regional manager for Africa at Veeam.
"Today's bank has become an icon on your phone, it's no longer the bricks and mortar building of old. That brings with it both pros and cons. As much as it offers the user speed and convenience, it also means that a customer's relationship with and loyalty towards the bank relies on technology."
An application enables customers to do pretty much everything on their mobile phones, but when that technology fails, the reputational damage is huge because other technology - i.e. social media - means that people can share their experiences instantly with all of their contacts.
"The ability to be available 24/7 is critical in the banking sector in order to retain customers," says Shuck. "While people may not easily move from bank to bank, there is a trend towards people having accounts with more than one financial institution that meets their needs differently or better. This makes the banking space incredibly competitive from a technology point of view. Everyone wants to be first to market with the latest capability, because they know that if they don't offer it, their customer will turn to another provider who can."
A great example of this is a local bank and its iPad offer to customers. Within the space of three years, that bank became one of the biggest retailers of IT equipment in the country. That's without having any bricks and mortar shops, or opening and closing hours; it was all about the ability to innovate fast and create new revenue streams. And they aced it. Customers received devices that they could do their banking on, it locked them into that bank as a supplier and it even encouraged other banks' customers to open accounts with that bank.
"It comes down to the use of analytics," explains Schuck. "All too often, businesses look to external sources (for example, what is my competition doing?) for trends, but often the solution lies within the organisation itself. You need to uncover what your customers are asking for during their interactions with your business, what are the problems that they bring to you for resolution?"
And let's face it, the one thing that all banking customers want is availability as well as all of the bells and whistles that they've come to expect from mobile banking applications, particularly around data security. The 2017 Veeam Availability Report says that 82% of enterprises are facing a gap between user demand and what IT can deliver, resulting in unplanned downtime costs averaging $21.8 million per year.
Schuck cautions: "When we talk cost, we're not just referring to money, we're also talking to reputational damage, which often outweighs the cost of the actual breach that caused the downtime. While you may be able to recover lost data, you can't always recover your customer base's lost trust and faith in your business."
He continues: "Every company today is a software company, regardless of business that they're in. Securing your business means securing the software that keeps the business running. By the same token, banking is more about technology than it is money. But you can never forget that the while the customer wants a flawless technology experience when using your app, which you can deliver through digital transformation, there's still a human being at the end of the line that has to be considered. That app has to deliver the total banking experience to the customer, and not just what's technologically possible."
Read more about the digital transformation of the banking sector here.
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