Implement technology in a Finance firm: Everything you need to know

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People don’t like change, regardless of how positive it might be for them. That couldn’t be seen more clearly than in the workplace. Employees want to turn up and do their jobs without needing to adapt. That makes implementing new technology in your finance company relatively difficult.

It doesn’t need to be nearly as complicated as you could seem, however. Once you know how to implement technology in a finance company, it seems much more straightforward. With a few particular steps, you shouldn’t have a problem seeing the various benefits that fintech offers your firm.

Benefits of technology in Finance
Speaking of benefits, you could wonder what these are. There are more than a few, many of which you mightn’t have thought of, making upgrading or adding technology more than attractive. Some of the most notable of these include:
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• Better Customer Experience - Your customers will often prefer to do things digitally instead of needing to come to your premises. Naturally, technology lets them do so, which improves your customer service.
• Cost Reduction - Fintech lets you get various duties done much faster than you could think, which reduces the labour needed for them, reducing your overall labour costs. You can also use technology to determine areas of improvement, which could end up reducing your costs even further.
• Greater Efficiency - Technology lets your employees do their jobs better and to a higher standard, improving their overall efficiency. With the practical implications of this, you should see your employees doing more work with less effort. It’ll end up benefiting your business even further.

With the various benefits that technology offers finance, implementing into your financial firm may seem attractive. It’s easy to see why. With the potential problems that could come up, figuring out how to implement technology in a finance company can seem difficult.

Far from it. With a few particular steps, it’ll be easier than you think.

How to implement technology in a Finance company: 5 steps to take

1. Have an oversight team
Someone will need to oversee the implementation of any new technology. They’ll be responsible for planning out the entire process while making sure it goes smoothly. Putting together a team specifically for this is recommended, as it spreads the workload across several people.

With this approach, everything should go much smoother than you’d think, provided there’s consistent communication throughout. You could find that you don’t have an appropriate team to put together for this, but that doesn’t mean you’re out of options.

Instead, you could hire an outside consultancy, such as Liberty IT Consulting Group, for this. By doing so, you can take advantage of expertise and rest assured that the process goes as smoothly as possible. Though that involves an extra cost, the benefits will be worth it, especially in the long term.

2. Focus on what solves problems
With the potential benefits that technology offers financial firms, it’s tempting to get them so you can take advantage of these benefits. You shouldn’t dive straight in, however, as not all technology will be as beneficial to your company as others. Some will come much better recommended than others.

Focusing on any problems or issues your company has should be a priority. Where can your finance business get better? What, specifically, can be improved, and is there a technological solution that can address it? Answering these questions can better help you figure out which technology to use.

Once you do, you’ll see much greater benefits with your business. The impact of the software will be more obvious, especially long term. While that means spending time comparing options, the return on investment will be better worth it.

3. Work out the kinks
Once you’ve identified the technology you want to implement in your firm, you could be tempted to deploy it as quickly as possible. That mightn’t be an effective strategy. Instead, it could be better worth having a trial run with a limited number of employees to make sure it’s as effective for your business as you want.

Consider this a way to test the feasibility of the technology for your business. When you’re doing so, you can figure out how beneficial it will be. You can then use this to convince any potential nay-sayers that the technology is worth the cost of implementing it.

At the same time, you’ll end up figuring out if there are any kinks that need to be worked out before it’s deployed company-wide. Taking this approach makes sure there will be as few issues as possible once you’ve launched everything.

You can also use this to get feedback from your testers and find out what possible concerns employees may have, while letting you proactively address them. With a trial run, you can make sure the full deployment goes as smoothly as possible.

4. Upskill your staff
With any new tool you add to your company, you’ll need to make sure your employees can use it. While some of yours might already know how to do so, many of them mightn’t, so you’ll need to train them. You’ll need to go about this the right way to ensure everyone knows what they’re doing.

You’re not likely to see all of the benefits of the technology otherwise. You should aim for these training sessions to be as engaging as possible. When you’re planning this out, keep a few things in mind, namely:

• Your employees may have different learning styles from each other, so they may need to be taught differently.
• Asking for feedback lets you adjust training sessions to better suit your employees.
• Making the training personal lets employees understand how the technology applies to their job and why they need to use it.

Once you’ve fully trained your staff in the technology, you can rest assured they can hit the ground running once it’s been deployed. You’ll have much fewer delays and problems to deal with once it’s been launched.

5. Launch your tech
Now that all of the above have been taken care of, it’s time to launch your tech. That doesn’t mean you’re done now that you’ve deployed it in your company. Despite how much testing you may have done beforehand, it’s possible that things can still go wrong. You’ll need to make sure everything’s going as expected.

That means monitoring your business as the technology is deployed and making sure it’s having the effect you thought it would. It’s possible that things could be slightly different from what you intended. If problems do come up - even minor ones - you’ll need to take care of them as early as possible.

Making them a priority from the start and learning from them will make sure you don’t make the same mistake again in the future. As overwhelming as this may seem, the problems that do come up should be relatively minor and be easy to tackle, especially if you’ve planned everything out effectively.

Technologies driving the Finance industry
Technology is a broad area, even when it relates specifically to tools that can be used in a financial firm.  More than a few types of tools are used across the finance industry, with each of these offering more than a few pros and cons.

It can be more than worth implementing each of them, as they’ll offer practical implications for your company. Some of the more notable technologies driving the finance industry include:

• FinTech - A shortening of ‘financial technology’, this refers to any technology specifically focused on financial tasks and services. You can typically find companies offering various FinTech related services to help you run your company more effectively.
• BlockChain - Perhaps most closely associated with cryptocurrencies, the blockchain can be used for various financial tasks, with this boasting a potentially transformational effect on the entire finance industry. 
• Digital Platforms - Digital platforms offer more than a few practical benefits when in use, such as letting customers pay for products or services through an app or on your website. Many of these are cloud-based, so you wouldn’t need to worry about them going down and interrupting operations.
• Artificial Intelligence - Artificial intelligence has been going from strength to strength over the past decade or so. It’s becoming increasingly more used in the finance world, as it can be used for analysis, predictions, forecasts, and much more.

Combined with each of the above benefits, there’s no reason not to consider implementing technology in your finance firm. The various types of technology you can use offer their own pros and cons.

While they could take some time and effort to implement into your company, it’ll be more than worth the effort. 

How to implement technology in a Finance company: Wrapping up
If you don’t know how to implement technology in a finance company, you could think the process would be overwhelming. That doesn’t need to be the case, as it’s much easier than you’d expect, especially with the above steps. With the potential benefits on offer, there shouldn’t be anything getting in your way.