Presently, top banks are competing to meet client needs by offering cutting-edge digital solutions that put the customer at the center of banking operations.

Naturally, technology exists, but in order to provide the most innovative solutions, businesses across all sectors are "under pressure to create invention factories," assembling diverse teams to provide the best solutions for their customers, according to Bill Waid, Chief Product & Technology Officer at FICO.

Bill compares the necessity for "innovation factories" in the financial services industry today to the invention institutions of the 19th century, citing the Thomas Edison Center and the Edison Innovation Foundation as two excellent models for contemporary businesses to follow. These organizations produced new ideas quickly.

When Edison's laboratory got going in March 1876, he claims that it produced hundreds of new inventions at an astounding rate, including the electric copying machine (1876), phonograph (1877), electric lamp (1879), motion pictures (1888), and filament light bulb (1879).

Finserv: Large-scale innovation production
However, what connection does the emerging technology that is gaining traction in 21st-century financial services have to Edison's 19th-century inventions?

The platform that Edison's Menlo Park plant ran on holds the secret. "The reason Menlo Park succeeded was that it assembled an incredible group of world-class scientists, engineers, physicists, mechanics, machinists, and draftsmen from both Europe and the United States," Bill goes on.

"They were a cooperative group that shared knowledge, examined concepts, questioned presumptions, and demanded better solutions."

According to Bill, financial services companies today require a collaborative innovation culture in order to take advantage of the newest technology and provide quicker, more customer-focused services.

This attitude can support fintechs in developing information-based solutions of the future that will better benefit financial institutions.

Bill adds, "If businesses feel like they're under pressure, they're not alone." According to a recent McKinsey & Company report titled "The State of Business Building," corporate executives predicted that by 2026, half of their income will originate from undeveloped goods, services, or ventures.

"The gold rush of digital transformation has begun. UK banks are investing in new technology and innovation in response to the growing demand from customers for digital solutions.

"The UK is setting the standard in the fintech industry, as seen by the £5.1 billion (US$6.4 billion) in capital invested in 2023—more than all of Europe put together. The fight is coming, whether banks and other financial institutions are prepared or not, therefore there is no time to waste.

To innovate, FIs require the appropriate platform.
For FIs to gain a competitive edge in the current era, speed and time to market are essential. An enterprise decisioning platform may be used to help innovation teams coordinate their efforts toward digital transformation in order to achieve this.

Bill goes on, "A platform is similar to Edison's invention factory in many ways."

But everything is connected to the same cloud rather than sharing a single roof. Platform deployment doesn't have to be a costly, time-consuming process. When done correctly, it only unifies and makes old resources that are already in place more interoperable.

"This encourages enterprise-wide cooperation and synergy between current personnel, procedures, and technologies."

PERKS OF PLATFORMS FOR ENTERPRISE DECISION MAKING

• Collaboration: To ensure interoperability across all departments and apps, a platform unites all information inside the company.

• Innovation: Businesses may constantly experiment with new methods to reuse and repackage their customer decision assets in various combinations by using a platform as a base.

• Acceleration: In the digital business world, speed is an invincible competitive advantage.

Bill writes, "There is a fourth benefit of an enterprise platform that wasn't accessible in Edison's time: simulation. Through simulation, businesses in information-intensive industries may swiftly simulate plans and choices before they are put into action, based on real-world data.

"Depending on complexity, variations may be quickly evaluated until the best results are found, usually in a matter of hours or days. This makes it possible for all parties involved to understand what lies ahead, come to a decision, and create a plan of action from the standpoint of business ROI.