Article | 4.2.2021
Robots will participate in the digital transformation of banking sector in Vietnam
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Bringing robots into business processes working side by side with people is the solution that many banks use in order to thrive in the race of digital transformation.
Recently the race for digital transformation in different sectors, especially finance and banking, is becoming more active. Adding to that, customers increasingly want faster service and want to carefully monitor each step of the implementation of their request. Therefore, banks want to put new technologies such as artificial intelligence and software robots to use in order to increase transaction productivity and to reduce errors.
According to Mr. Le Anh Dung, Deputy Director of Payment Department, State Bank of Vietnam: “95% of credit institutions already have, are developing or planning to build a digital transformation strategy, 38% have approved approve digital transformation strategy or integrate it into IT business development strategy”.
In the next 3-5 years, 82.5% of banks expect revenue growth of at least 10%; 58.1% of banks expect more than 60% of customers to use digital channels and 44.4% of banks expect customer growth rate to reach over 50%. To maintain competitiveness, banks are now actively speeding up the digital transformation process, adopting more new technologies to stay ahead of their competitors.
Robots will soon become bank employees' assistants
One of the solutions that banks choose in digital transformation is the application of RPA (Robotic Process Automation) to automate repetitive processes. Applying RPA solutions can help organizations reduce personnel costs and reduce recruitment and training costs while increasing productivity.
For example, in looking up customer credit history (CIC), it used to take about 1 hour to do it manually. A bank in Vietnam has used robots to assist their employees and now the total time for each customer credit history look-up is only 10 minutes.
Looking at the overall development trend of financial institutions, RPA is considered as a powerful tool for the implementation of automation. To apply this technology effectively, Mr. Tran Minh Duc, Business Development Director of Sisua Digital, shared 4 experiences for successful RPA application:
- “What should be automated?” According to Mr. Minh Duc, the initial questions that leaders should ask are: “Where to start RPA, which processes should be automates first?” When facing each organizational development project, leaders should take advice on how to implement RPA on their digital transformation strategy. Without consultation, organizations might apply robotics to an unnecessary process, making the application ineffective and unprofitable.
- Fast implementation: with the right approach and understanding from the management, RPA can be deployed quickly and at low cost. Note that the initial first or second RPA projects will need more time and effort, as personnel need to learn how to get acquainted with robots, the automation process, and how to coordinate working with robots in the environment. However, when the coordination experience turns into a work routine, the time to implement RPA for other processes shortens.
- Employee support: a study from the University of Florida (USA) shows that repetitive, manual jobs make employees lose their intellectual mobility and inherent creativity. Applying RPA in the process will liberate employees from boring manual jobs; and they don’t have to work overtime. So the robot is really a partner for the employees, working with them to solve arising problems. And more importantly, in order to develop an RPA project into a successful organization, professionals need to communicate continuously with business people because robot is not a software for humans to interact with, but robots will change human interaction with existing software of the system.
- Processes need to be standardized: according to Sisua’s representative, there are now many processes in Vietnam that are done through experience. Therefore, each individual has a different understanding of how to perform the superfluous actions. Through the process of consulting and setting up solutions, RPA experts can improve the professionalism of personnel in the organization before applying. From there, it has brought about significant efficiency in automating and standardizing these processes.
RPA investment should be analyzed by its productivity potential
Before making an investment decision for every project, the organization’s management needs to consider the end-to-end performance as well as the prospects for the development strategy. RPA meets this cycle by allowing banks to more easily see the effectiveness of their investments by increasing productivity without increasing amount of employees.
At first, customers often think that there are processes A, B, C that need to be automated. But our RPA experts will assess which of our customers’ processes should really be automated. With Sisua’s process consulting method, experts will make a list of potential processes, and prioritize the processes with the biggest impact, and implement RPA on those processes. First, an analysis assessing whether this procedure is easy to automate should be made, and whether it is significantly effective and if it will create the desired productivity results.
Minh Duc Tran, Business Development Manager at Sisua Digital