When in-person workplaces shut down in March 2020, cloud computing kept businesses moving. Without the ability to manage tasks, documents, data, and other essential services remotely and in the cloud, businesses could not have supported millions of workers from their home offices and living spaces while also maintaining global supply chains and critical business motions.
Microsoft reported that two years of digitization progress was achieved in two months with “more than 200 million Microsoft Teams meeting participants in a single day, generating more than 4.1 billion meeting minutes.”
Wealth management firms that moved quickly to digitize operations found opportunities to reach new clients and interact with them in more personalized and streamlined ways. Those who had traditionally resisted embracing cloud technologies or lagged in funding them found themselves scrambling to adapt to changing health guidelines and local government restrictions.
Cloud Growth Trends
Even as many teams plan to return to the office in 2021, the demand for cloud solutions will increase. According to research from Forrester, the global public cloud infrastructure market will grow 35% to $120 billion in 2021. Cloud solutions will no longer be nice-to-have features, but an essential part of doing business in all markets.
Forrester also predicts that 30% of firms will continue to accelerate their cloud services spending in 2021. This additional spending will be particularly useful for firms looking to edge out their less nimble competition.
But, the move to the cloud isn’t a one-and-done task; it’s a journey. The pandemic has accelerated this journey and fast-tracked a few years of growth in a matter of months. While the pandemic spurred quick action to move some essential operations, it will be up to business and industry leaders to continue this business model transformation and keep pace with the market’s competition and expectations.
McKinsey estimates that: “more than 20 percent of the global workforce (most of them in high-skilled jobs in sectors such as finance, insurance, and IT) could work the majority of its time away from the office—and be just as effective.” Reopening in-person offices and conducting client meetings will not go away completely. However, many analysts believe business travel may not return to 2019 levels until 2024, meaning virtual meetings may be the norm.
Digitizing the Customer Experience
Marketing and customer service will go hand-in-hand for firms in the future, and those improved customer experiences will be cloud-driven.
Allowing clients to lead the conversation about how and when they’d like to engage with their advisors has vast potential to improve how customers feel about their wealth advisors and what they can accomplish with digital tools. According to Oracle, brands that integrate customer experience in their digital transformation experience “10.3 times annual increase in customer satisfaction rates.”
One of the key ways to build a cohesive, customer-centric experience is to lean into integrated and cohesive data systems. These systems allow firms to understand a client’s journey and interactions across many platforms and not get bogged down by piecemeal, siloed solutions that don’t share critical data in real-time.
Avoid Becoming a Laggard
Organizations unwilling to invest in the digital infrastructure and tools in favor of a more paper-driven approach found themselves unprepared to deal with the upheaval of 2020.
In our whitepaper, “Wealth Management’s Digital Future: The Experts Weigh in,” Docupace CTO Ron Wallis says, “I believe 2020 will be viewed to be the single most transformative year for the digitization of the financial services industry. We’re seeing, and will continue to see, a very accelerated adoption of digital processing, especially among firms that were previously considered late adopters.”
Firms that do not embrace digitization will be outstripped by competitors that offer the benefits and experiences clients expect. Younger investors want their relationship with their advisors to be integrated and as simple as interactions on their phones.
And for those firms that insist on sticking with the old ways? According to Wallis, “Laggards that don’t embrace a completely immersive and collaborative experience for the client will drive consolidation in the industry. They’ll get bought up or squeezed out by the leaders that do fully embrace these technologies.”
While some technologies and methods may become obsolete due to wealth management’s migration to the cloud, the opportunities for a wider and richer market are available for firms that move quickly to embrace it.
