Forge ITSM workflows with top-notch help desk software for the banking industry

Banking and financial institutions manage a sizeable portfolio of digital applications to meet customers' expectations of "always-on" services. From credit cards and ATMs to payment gateways and online banking, IT underpins virtually every banking service delivered to customers. Furthermore, the financial services industry holds vast troves of personal and financial data on servers located both on-premises and in the cloud.

When time is money, banks and financial institutions cannot afford costly service outages. Repeated unscheduled downtime or security incidents may also attract penalties from regulators that could run into billions of dollars. Without a proactive incident and problem management approach, financial businesses may reach a standstill as IT has turned into the linchpin for day-to-day business activities.

Banks and financial institutions manage a large number of disparate IP/MLS networks that connect far-flung bank branches and core data centers. They need to ensure the peak performance of these critical technology assets to deliver an exceptional customer experience. Financial institutions, such as insurance companies, also need to comply with information security and risk management standards such as IT General Controls Review, HIPAA, ISO 27002, SOX, FDICIA, and the Service Organization Controls (SOC 1, SOC 2, and SOC 3).

The first step in that direction is bringing end-to-end visibility into their IT infrastructure. From standalone workstations and network switches to data centers, organizations need to discover and map critical security dependencies using a CMDB.

IT teams in financial enterprises also need to stay on top of application and network monitoring, device management, etc. ITOM solutions help IT teams achieve compliance and control over these processes. If such ITOM solutions are not centrally orchestrated from a service management platform, IT teams run the risk of creating silos that hamper large-scale IT initiatives, such as major changes and releases.

CXOs now have it figured that delivering remarkable employee experiences drives their customer experience a notch higher. Financial enterprises need to strategize and streamline service interactions and support touchpoints for employees right from the moment they are recruited. It is also critical that IT and enterprise teams in banks offer only those services that a particular employee is entitled to based on their designation, department, location, and other criteria. This way, financial organizations can comply with governance and information security standards.

The primary touchpoint for employees to request services or log incidents is the enterprise service desk. Enterprise support teams need to deliver a consumer-grade experience to employees while empowering them with adequate self-service and knowledge management capabilities. In the absence of such a user-friendly interface, employees lack clarity about the services they are entitled to, leaving IT service desks cluttered with trivial tickets that impact operational efficiency.

Even as banks and financial institutions reviewed their SOPs and returned to physical workplaces, they have recognized that creating additional flexibility for remote work will benefit them going forward. Major players such as Citibank have adopted a hybrid work model while also identifying key employee roles that need to work from office premises.

To ensure that employees work productively and banking/financial services function without a hitch, IT departments need to deliver the right tools, enforce remote access policies, and enable a secure work environment. Apart from provisioning assets and undertaking maintenance operations, IT and enterprise departments of financial enterprises also need to manage a plethora of services such as employee onboarding and offboarding, insurance renewals, facilities management, and payroll services.

Without a centralized service management platform, IT and enterprise teams may find themselves running a host of disparate processes, leading to fragmented service delivery and unhappy employees.

Service desks need to balance operational agility on one hand and employee experience on the other. Against this backdrop, internal ticketing systems or legacy ITSM technologies don't cut it for service management teams.