Oracle’s Cloud-Based Solutions for Banking and Financial Services – Helping Companies Respond to Changing Consumer Expectations

The Hackett Group Director Jay Ruffin discusses how Oracle’s fit-for-purpose cloud-based solutions for banking and financial services offer unique benefits to both banks and their customers.  With Oracle Senior Director John Andrew Prabaharan, Oracle Cloud CTO Yonas Yohannes, and The Hackett Group Manager Matt Williams.

Show Notes

Welcome to The Hackett Group’s “Business Excelleration Podcast,” where week after week we hear from experts on how to avoid obstacles, manage detours and celebrate milestones on the journey to world-class performance. This episode is hosted by Jay Ruffin, transformational strategist at The Hackett Group. Today’s episode will discuss how companies like Oracle are helping financial services companies exceed customer expectations with fit-for-purpose, cloud-based solutions. His guests are John Andrew Prabaharan of Oracle’s field cloud CTO team and Oracle cloud CTO Yonas Yohannes. We are also joined by Matt Williams, manager in The Hackett Group’s Transformation practice.

Going into 2023, it is important to note the vast change in customers’ expectations of their bank. Additionally, banks are expecting a great deal more from their solutions partners. In the last podcast, we heard how Oracle is focusing on meeting needs by building industry-specific cloud platforms called fit-for-purpose. John shares the most important factors for Oracle’s fit-for-purpose, and how organizations should think about preparation. Largely, we are hearing that banking is moving from an infrastructure-centric model to a more service-centric model. This new operating model aims to improve the speed-to-market and operation efficiency while lowering cost. Oracle creates a financial-institution-specific, fit-for-purpose platform containing five key components: pre-building the financial application, integrating this application to fit a customer-centric approach, cloud-native development, bringing operational efficiency and optimizing price performances.

Next, Matt asks John and Yonas to elaborate on the specific capabilities and modules when designing Oracle’s fit-for-purpose solutions. There are six key tenants, they explain, that Oracle cloud is focused on to make the experience simpler and better for enterprise banking customers. First is a complete and integrated application infrastructure cloud platform for all banking customer needs. Second is making the platform flexible and agile. Third is that the platform is simple and easy for the bank and customer to use. Fourth is ensuring security by design. Fifth is maintaining a consistent performance across the platform. The final focus is to maintain operational excellence.

Looking toward the future, hear how fit-for-purpose solutions can help organizations be prepared not only for today, but also for what is to come later on down the road. John highlights three key areas he predicts to see in the foreseeable future. First is pervasive payments, a cloud-based backing solution enabling digital payments. Digital identity is expected to evolve as a counterbalancing force to prevent fraudulent risk. Meanwhile, he foresees the leveraging of the fit-for-purpose platform to efficiently manage the way money is created, stored, valued and exchanged. Second is around the customer digital experience as a whole. Last is bringing these new technologies to scale after their adoption. Yonas adds his prediction regarding how fit-for-purpose allows for agility and acceleration to market.

The Oracle fit-for-purpose platform itself is a unique differentiator in comparison to other cloud service providers. First, it is not a general-purpose cloud, but rather directly supports the financial-institution-specific solution top to button. Secondly, its security as a design principal is a crucial component when working with banks. With Oracle, security is infused into the application rather than being an afterthought. Third is its optimal price performance in comparison to competitors. Similarly, they have redesigned their network design to allow for latency. From the ground up, Oracle boasts significant differences on their cloud infrastructure side, platform side and application side. The software offers all of the capabilities needed to run a bank effectively and efficiently integrated into one platform. Additionally, it is industry-centric, as opposed to other competitors who operate from a general-purpose standpoint.

In closing, John shares his excitement for 2023 in terms of the challenges and opportunities in store. The Oracle fit-for-purpose platform is well-suited to deliver those set of requirements and enable banking customers to achieve their objectives going into this new year. John outlines Oracle’s additional products, which clients may find useful on top of their fit-for-purpose platform.

Timestamps:

• 0:56 – Welcome to this episode hosted by Jay Ruffin.
• 1:31 – Addressing the rising expectations customers have of their banks.
• 3:27 – The new service-centric operating model banks are operating by.
• 7:55 – Why aren’t financial institutions jumping onto this service faster?
• 12:52 – The five key focuses of Oracle when designing their fit-for-purpose solutions.
• 17:58 – How fit-for-purpose solutions help prepare users for tomorrow.
• 22:13 – How Oracle’s solutions stand out among other cloud service providers.
• 25:41 – Oracle’s industry-centric approach.
• 27:47 – Closing thoughts