Beyond Reports and Spreadsheets
Business analytics today involves far more than reports and spreadsheets. But despite significant investments in business intelligence (BI) software, many midsize banks continue to operate with a limited set of analytic capabilities, focused largely on querying and reporting. These are useful processes but they’re tactically oriented, focused on what happened in the past and lacking a clear connection to the overall strategy and the objectives of the banking institution. This information remains necessary, but today it is no longer sufficient; midsize banks increasingly need to understand what’s happening right now and to be able to forecast what will happen in both the near future and the long term. They also need to provide information directly to customers through online banking.
Unfortunately, they’re unlikely to be able to do so by relying on the scattered set of spreadsheets that according to our Business Analytics in Banking and Financial Services benchmark research are used universally or regularly in 89 percent of banks. They need instead the next generation of business analytics, which can provide them with those capabilities efficiently and cost-effectively.