A white paper produced by the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) and Fujitsu has outlined opportunities for the financial services industry to improve its customer service by using techniques of cloud computing.

 

The paper, ‘Customer Centricity in the Cloud’, argues that with changing circumstances and expectations within the financial services industry, Cloud Computing services that are delivered on demand, on a scalable transactional basis, will offer a new way to provide differentiated services to targeted segments.

 

“Essentially thanks to high availability networks, it is feasible to provide services on a per-transaction basis, running over secure connections to applications run in high availability centres. These services can now be accessed through a secure web browser and can be managed by business users – removing the dependency on internal and external IT support. The ability for business managers to own and manage the technology also delivers greater agility for the business and an ability to respond to customer feedback in real time – so creating real time customer centricity.”

 

In preparing the paper, the authors surveyed 50 financial institutions regarding the reasons to consider Cloud services. Customer centricity figured as a driver, although the four major banks saw cost reductions as a stronger motivation.

 

The White Paper: Customer Centricity in the Cloud?, can be downloaded at http://www.aiia.com.au/