There is a lot of competition in the financial services industry, and banks are constantly looking for ways to set themselves apart from their competition. However, they can only do this so many ways; it may include focusing on increasing customer options or improving existing customer services. Other ways include bringing the bank to the customer — right to their front door.
With the aid of Microsoft and partner technologies, banks now have the option to go to the customer, rather than waiting for the customer to come to them. To do this, the banks will need to have a computing tool that is portable, powerful and secure. Enter the Surface Pro 3.
“Previously, branch employees might utilize a desktop workstation in the office, a laptop for remote meetings and an iPad for direct customer engagement. Now, Surface can replace all of these devices, so that branch employees (and IT professionals) are focused on one device to offer mobile banking that securely manages their customers’ financial information without having to make trade-offs in productivity when moving between tasks and locations.” – Microsoft
Jack Henry & Associates is one of Microsoft’s partners helping to make this a reality; using their BranchAnywhere application for the Surface Pro 3, banks can centrally manage all forms of customer information on the go, wherever they are, in a secure fashion. In addition, with the full version of Windows 8.1 at their disposal, productivity is at its highest. Of course, having a single device managing a range of different functions that a bank may perform also introduces significant cost benefits.
First Florida Integrity Bank and IBERIABANK are two of the first banks to use the BranchAnywhere app and more should follow in the future, as the trend and need for mobile banking increases.
“We selected the Microsoft Surface as the choice for doing our tablet banking… We are very focused on having our branch managers out in the community, calling on small businesses, meeting with clients. To be able to bring some of their technology with them would ease that service experience so they wouldn’t have to be bringing work back and forth to the client site.” – Andrew Hovet, Director of Delivery Channels, IBERIABANK
Check out the video above to see how Microsoft and Jack Henry are meeting the needs of a changing retail banking world.
