Cloud adoption is accelerating as businesses renew and grow through faster innovation and tailored customer and employee experiences built specifically for their industry. Financial services institutions (FSIs) are applying cloud in three areas:

• Generate greater customer trust
• Increase employee collaboration and productivity in a hybrid environment
• Develop greater operational resilience to handle continual market and regulatory change.

Significantly, Microsoft has just announced that it will be launching its Cloud for Financial Services in November (building on its initial announcement in February).

It’s time to rethink what cloud can do for your industry.

Because of our unique relationship with Microsoft, we know that they have been developing their strategy and technology to provide FSIs with a platform which reduces the complexities of integration while protecting security and flexibility. By integrating existing and new capabilities across Microsoft 365, Microsoft Azure, Dynamics 365, and Microsoft Power Platform, Microsoft is focused on simplifying and accelerating digital change.

Microsoft has developed a common data model to help simplify integration between its products, services and partners. Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services has been designed to make integration easier, so banks can focus on higher value, customer-centric applications that differentiate them in the market (rather than operational processes that don’t). By delivering an integrated platform that can utilize a flexible data model, Microsoft is enabling FSIs to accelerate innovation and realize value faster, scale quickly and focus on building differentiated customer and employee experiences without worrying about the integration complexities typically associated with a diverse platform landscape.

The announcement of the Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services demonstrates this strategy coming to maturity. Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services will offer a highly differentiated and tailored approach relevant to FSIs, with the unique opportunity to bring the power of their platform to drive value to both customers and employees.

Business outcomes, personalized by Avanade
Our privileged access to Microsoft means we are working really closely together to solve our client’s problems and develop industry scenarios that we can convert into deployable POC-ready assets for specific client use cases. One example of how Avanade further extends the value of Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services includes our Banking Accelerator. We can deliver solutions for customer engagement (delivered around Dynamics 365), remote digital appointments (using Virtual Visits platforms built on Teams) and new customer conversations (with new AI-driven platforms). Microsoft’s industry cloud has been designed to be heavily configurable so it can meet the growing and distinctive needs of the financial services sector. The power of the Microsoft industry cloud, personalized by Avanade, provides FSIs with an unparalleled opportunity to continue to accelerate their digital transformation on their terms, ensuring they are positioned for success.

We see three major business outcomes from this joint approach:

• Accelerate value from innovation: Create compelling products and services through the power of an Open Banking ecosystem, including faster market entry and value realization.
• Create distinctive CX and EX: Connect with customers authentically across branch, mobile and online and improve employee collaboration and productivity in a hybrid working era.
• Grow a resilient and sustainable business: Respond better to market disruption, avoid the constraints of legacy systems and become more resilient to continual regulatory change.

We see this as a potential game changer in terms of accelerating digital transformation for a specific industry, supporting FSIs in their drive to become more agile, resilient and customer- and employee-centric. The vision and direction demonstrated here will form the basis of next generation banking.

That’s why it’s time to rethink your approach to cloud.

For more information on how banks can renew and grow, download our guide: ‘Where do you want to grow next?’