Digital & Automation

Process automation and analytics for transforming enterprise functions, leveraging low-code platforms for delivery that's 10 times quicker than traditional methods

Data & process automation for key business functions

Successful data and process automation in financial services firms can be the key to operational efficiency, accuracy and improved regulatory compliance. Automation can also enhance the speed and accuracy of decision-making, increase scalability, and support the development of new products and services.

Successful automation initiatives require strong leadership support, the right technology tools to enable the rapid automation of complex processes and skilled engineering teams to design, implement and manage effective systems designed for the business.

Our Appian BPM and and Alteryx Automation teams bring together both deep business transformation experience and technical capabilities to deliver outstanding business outcomes rapidly on the Appian and Alteryx platform.​

Learn more about Appian
Learn more about Alteryx

Are you operating a digital and automated business?

Our experts can help you gain a better understanding of how much potential you have to leverage technology to accelerate growth, efficiency and control in your business area. 

Want to know more? 

Start by completing our Digital Acceleration Scorecard to get your personalised data maturity score, custom report and a free goals review discussion.

 

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What are the common digital and automation challenges?

The finance function is required to service an ever increasing portfolio of changes and demands whilst needing to devote more time to partnering with business users to ensure decision making such as optimal pricing, optimal capital allocation, optimal hedging and more for driving maximum business value.

Manual activities taking all the oxygen in the room
  • The future of finance will be top down, from the skills and strategic aspirations to roadmaps and delivery frameworks
  • Playbook defined from our experience delivering Appian into finance functions.
  • Low risk and high value outcomes for the finance function
Operational accuracy & efficiency
  • Capture processes to ensure accuracy and repeatability
  • Transparency on execution facilitating effective and objective review
  • Continuous improvement with agile change implementation
  • Drive automation with objectively prioritised and costed process steps
  • Tightly controlled issue and risk management with automated execution
Business partnering
  • Provide insight in optimisation of pricing, returns, capital usage and liquidity
  • Real time predictions for business decision makers to make better decisions
  • Top-down optimal capital distribution based on calibrated modelling
  • Automated forecasting and predictive analytics
  • Support new products, features and regulations in increasingly faster cycle times
Cost pressures
  • Be the organisational standard-bearer for efficiency
  • Transparency on cost of the services provided to the business
  • Service catalogues allowing the business to choose the service focus
  • Eliminate shadow-finance functions duplicative, incorrect outputs
  • Reduce cost sensitivity to volume and complexity
Finance skillsets of the future
  • Business process reengineering – don't automate the current state
  • Problem solving – solving the root of issues rather than simply automating workarounds where possible
  • Critical thinking – get the 80% right for 20% of the cost
Deciding to use a consultancy
  • Boot strap capability for fast business outcomes, building momentum
  • Leverage industry experience and prior implementation experience to avoid the pitfalls made by others
  • Make sure the business outcome is delivered – not just the project
  • NextWave's team has come from the client side so know the challenges of walking in our clients' shoes
Using Appian for financial services
  • Secure – for holding client or secret internal data
  • Connectivity – keep your data in your databases, Appian can connect seamlessly without requiring a copy
  • Change velocity – keep track of evolving businesses without work-arounds
  • Cost - low cost cloud and time to value realisation helps with challenging margin environments
  • User friendly – low barrier to entry for users, allowing focus on the underlying work and not learning a complex system
Minimising project risks
  • If you don't get the architecture right upfront, it will require a refactor at some point
  • Requirements – make sure to focus on necessary requirements, not a wish list
  • Scope creep – it happens, keep it under control and keep to the frequent value delivery drops
  • Day 2 – leverage agile working to continuously deliver, rather than have all requirements loaded into first delivery
  • Solve the underlying problem – don't automate the existing state, understand and fix the underlying issues before building
  • Business outcomes – project delivery and business outcome are not the same
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Case Studies

Our clients have realised development improvements and transformed their timelines, speeding up their processes.

 

View all case studies

Digital transformation for a fast-growing fintech

Digital & Automation | Fintech
Read

Delivering SEPA Solutions for a major commercial bank across 18 countries 

Digital & Automation | Banks
Read

LIBOR transition: Automating LIBOR transition reporting with Alteryx

Digital & Automation | Banks
Read

Automated regulatory reporting solution for an international banking corporation

Digital & Automation | Banks
Read

Global month end close for a tier-1 global bank 

Digital & Automation | Banks
Read

Process optimisation and automated accounting for a tier-1 global bank ​​

Digital & Automation | Banks
Read

Process optimisation and automated accounting for a Tier-1 Global Bank ​​

Digital & Automation | Banks
Read

IFRS17 Cost Allocation Engine — implementing a robust cost allocation approach for IFRS17 in Alteryx 

Digital & Automation | Insurers
Read

Insurance finance re-engineering: Addressing the operational risk of activities reliant upon Excel 

Digital & Automation | Insurers
Read

Bordereau processing: Automating bordereau reconciliations and approvals 

Digital & Automation | Insurers
Read

Tactical metrics for a leading insurer

Digital & Automation | Insurers
Read

Measuring, managing and optimising end-to-end operational processes

Digital & Automation | Insurers
Read

Automating bank-wide climate reporting disclosures

Digital & Automation and Sustainable Finance | Banks
Read

Appian module delivery with upskilling of client resources

Digital & Automation | Asset, Investment & Wealth Management
Read

Methodologies – The Nexus Strategy Playbook

NextWave’s unique delivery methodology – the Nexus playbook, contains the process steps and deliverables we use to develop and execute a strategy.

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Discover

Rapidly identify current state – business objectives/pain points & opportunities, stakeholders, organisation, processes, data, technology.

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Visualise

Definition of target state business footprint, capabilities and requirements, business targets & KPIs, solution concepts & roadmaps.

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Evaluate

Identify, evaluate & choose from business case & solution options, deployment approaches, service designs & implementation plans.

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Design

Business case & delivery plan detail – services, solution, technology, data, operating model detail architecture & design.

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Deliver

Service & product build – data, application and infrastructure integrations & testing. Deployment & operation.

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Leverage

Benefits realisation & KPI measurement. Backlog and next phase opportunity review & prioritisation. Lessons learnt. Communicate & leverage.

Learn more about the NextWave methodology

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Our digital focus areas

Organisations need to automate away the baggage of production, freeing up capacity to redirect efforts. We deploy a unique combination of Appian and Alteryx technology features to provide rapid business outcomes.

referral, multi level marketing, affiliate, marketing

Workflow

Managing the hand-off between people tasked with activities across the department, using either work-queue based or email prompts to individuals to trigger the work. Full timings and audit trail allow continuous process analysis and improvement. We have a team of engineers available to help you with every step of the process.

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Automation

Our technology solutions allow you to easily deploy connectors into end-user databases or built-in robotics functions. This captures the timings and effort spent, uncovers the top opportunities and reduces both operational risk and execution cycle times for improved ROI.

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Data repository

Lifting critical data out of legacy or Excel based solutions to a repository provides full auditability and lifecycle of the data attributes and simplifies integration with internal golden sources to avoid re-keying.

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Enhanced user experience

Rapid implementation of changes increases development productivity gains. Cloud enabled solutions provide a low-operating cost, rapid provisioning and high performance globally, ensuring a great user experience.
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Business partnering

Provide insight about the optimisation of pricing, returns, capital usage and liquidity as well as real-time predictions for business leaders to make better decisions.
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Finance of the future

The key pillars of change to deliver the finance functions of the future include control and oversight, professional skills, problem solving, communication skills, data science and leadership. 
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Our technology partners

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NextWave Digital & Automation Perspectives

AI In financial services: An introduction
Digital & Automation
David Aston
David Aston
This is the first in a series of articles helping to shed some light on the topic of Artificial Intelligence (commonly known as AI). This first article will focus on providing ...
David Aston
David Aston
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Automating first line support using natural language processing
Digital & Automation
Phil Kent
Phil Kent
NLP and Artificial Intelligence Perspectives / Automating first line support using natural language processing Improving the customer experience can do done quickly and at a low ...
Phil Kent
Phil Kent
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Finance skill sets of the future
Digital & Automation
David Aston
David Aston
Insight into how technology will change roles and responsibilities
David Aston
David Aston
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Interview with Tony Clark: Digital transformation in financial services
Transformation
Charles Rustin
Charles Rustin
What can senior financial services executives do now to take advantage of the current opportunities and mitigate the potential threats of digital transformation? Perspectives / ...
Charles Rustin
Charles Rustin
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Focus your strategy, set your plan and modernise your business

Our services

Our experts

Our team have decades of experience in top-tier global banks and have a proven track record of delivering successful strategy plans and executing business solutions for clients. Their deep understanding of large scale organisational transformation will provide your business with innovative solutions that drive business growth. 

Schedule a discussion
Phil
Phil Kent
Practice Lead (UK)
Helen
Helen Bull
Practice Lead (NL)
Sagar-P-150x150
Sagar Passi
Appian Consultant (UK)

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