Enterprise collaboration software (or ECS) is fast becoming an essential tool for financial services teams.
As customers become more familiar with digital tools to oversee their banking activity, manage investment portfolios and self-serve to troubleshoot their own issues, financial institutions and departments must innovate now to keep up with customer demand. That means it’s more crucial now than ever before that finance teams find more streamlined ways of working to stay relevant and thrive in an increasingly digital sector.
The importance of online collaboration for finance teams
In the digital age, banks and other financial institutions face the challenges of innovating and evolving to address an increasingly digital-native customer base. Whether it’s evolving their business models, reviewing their internal processes, or offering a completely new suite of digital propositions, banks must do away with legacy systems and archaic practices now, in order to survive in today’s highly competitive market.
Customers now expect almost instant resolution of issues, communication on their chosen channel, and generally, a more personalised level of service, all whilst using their chosen device.
That means it’s more important now than ever that the financial industries embrace the platform economy, adopting cloud-based systems and innovative products and processes to better meet the needs of their digital-savvy customers.
What are the advantages of cloud collaboration in the finance sector?
Implementing cloud software can have a huge impact on the efficacy and productivity of financial services teams. With powerful automations that streamline workflows and repetitive tasks, financial institutions could optimise their workforce efficiency with the help of the right cloud collaboration tools.
Here are a few of the key benefits of adopting cloud collaboration tools for your financial institution:
Improving customer experience
Customer expectations are evolving at an alarming rate. With consumers expective speedy service for loan approvals, mortgage servicing, new insurance policies, or account handling, whatever your industry, financial institutions must stay ahead of the curve to meet and exceed customer demands or risk losing out to the competition.
Using legacy systems won’t cut it anymore. Adopting agile technologies that are designed for faster, easier communication, enterprise businesses find they can significantly improve their speed of service. With collaborative tools that enable frontline teams to access knowledge from other departments as well as crucial customer history and context in real-time, users are armed with the tools they need to service customers and give the best possible advice in an instant.
Breaking down internal silos
With a well-chosen, unified collaboration solution, businesses can start to chip away at internal silos, break down barriers and different departments can support each other more easily. Where previously, different business departments often sat in separate parts of the office and rarely spoke to one another, cloud technology improves the visibility and accessibility between cross-departmental teams.
Collaborating with different departments like never before means businesses can encourage a culture of education and knowledge sharing to drive a more enriched, comprehensive customer experience across the board.
Driving better efficiency and productivity
Most cloud collaboration tools can do more than just facilitate better online communications. With the right solutions in place, enterprises can significantly streamline their workflows and improve their teams’ productivity. Where email used to be the communication channel of choice for financial services teams, businesses now have access to a host of tools that enable instantaneous collaboration and provide more visible, accessible context to help teams better serve their customers.
This ease of communication also helps teams to fine-tune their workflows, and with many solutions that have in-built or custom integrations, businesses can tailor their centralised collaboration platform to help automate their repetitive tasks and streamline processes.
How to pick the best collaborative tools for finance teams
Before choosing a collaborative tool for your team, it’s important to first ascertain what key problems you want the tool to address.
Will the collaboration software simply allow team members to work and communicate remotely? Are you implementing a new enterprise collaboration strategy you need to underpin?
Think about which teams will need access to the software and what their individual pain points are. Try to find a solution that meets your broader business objectives, while also making day-to-day operations easier for the individual user.
What are the best collaboration tools for the finance sector
In an increasingly digital world, enterprise teams must make the most of the tools available to them to help manage projects, drive progress, and communicate more efficiently. Here are a few of the popular solutions for finance sector teams.
Asana
Asana has become a popular collaboration and project management software for enterprise users. Built to help teams organise and track their workloads, Asana is ideal for large or small business teams looking to combine all the moving parts of a project and work on actions together. With a user-friendly, slick design, the software allows teams to create projects, assign tasks to specific colleagues, set deadlines and use the chat feature to elaborate on specific tasks.
Trello
Trello’s Kanban board software is a popular choice for teams wanting a simple, visual project management system. The web-based interface makes task management easy and accessible, with overarching projects set up as boards, and cards added by the user for individual tasks or steps. Users can easily visualise the individual stages of a workflow, assign tasks, amend deadlines, and prioritise more effectively as part of the bigger picture of each project.
RingCentral
Our easy-to-use, unified platform allows teams to serve their customers from anywhere. Meeting customers on their terms, teams can manage conversations across WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Twitter to discuss their account and troubleshoot issues. Bringing consistent communications across the board, RingCentral provides a virtual working hub for those based out of the HQ, individual branches, or home working, with messaging, video conferencing, and voice calls all in one workspace. Teams can integrate their core banking apps to get customer-related context in an instant, and customised call-routing means customers will reach the right agent every time.
What’s more, our comprehensive cloud platform comes with enterprise-grade security already baked in. That means you protect your customer and corporate data against security or compliance breaches and provide the highest level of data protection.
Basecamp
Popular for its cost-effective, simple task management capabilities, Basecamp is a user-friendly solution built for teams wanting to collaborate on projects or line managers looking for an easy way to delegate and give virtual briefs on tasks. Allowing managers or coordinators to oversee workloads and project progress at a glance, the platform is also popular for its customisable views, chart-view progress reporting, and custom templates.
Slack
Slack is widely used by enterprise businesses, small teams, and startups alike. A great choice for those looking for an instant messaging and file sharing solution, Slack allows remote teams to set different channels for specific teams or topics, helping you to keep your business communications efficient and productive.
Why is RingCentral the best tool for financial services?
Built with dynamic teams in mind, with features that serve different types of users and an easy-to-use interface for all, RingCentral is an ideal platform for financial services teams. Here are just a few of the credentials that make our platform a popular choice for enterprise businesses and small teams alike.
1. Easy-to-use
With easily accessible apps that support mobile devices and desktop use, RingCentral allows users to set specific chat threads according to team, topic, or project, so users can chat, share files, assign and manage tasks, and work together on the fly.
2. Integrated
The best collaboration tools are those that can bring together all your crucial operational functions. With hundreds of off-the-shelf integrations as well as an open API platform that allows you to custom-build your own, RingCentral allows businesses to personalise their centralised work hub for the needs of each team.
4. Secure & Scalable Collaboration
With seven layers of security built into our robust platform, RingCentral is designed to keep your business conversations protected. With robust security measures at every stage of our architecture, teams have the peace of mind that sensitive conversations and customer communications are always safeguarded.
5. Supports Collaboration & Productivity
Bringing all your communications channels and integrating with your key operational tools means that using RingCentral eliminates the need to switch between multiple different tools and platforms. Our comprehensive, unified platform is designed to facilitate better efficiency using a single, holistic, virtual workspace.
6. All-in-one workspace for finance teams
Bringing the key tools you need together in one single virtual work hub, using RingCentral means your teams can connect, collaborate and drive progress from anywhere in the world.
- Message teams
Whether you’re supporting a new member of your team, collaborating on an investment plan, or reviewing numbers together with colleagues, being able to quickly fire messages with your team, and your customers means you build better efficiency into your everyday routine.
- Meet in one-click
With unlimited video calls, teams can meet face-to-face and build valuable connections with colleagues and customers. Whether you’re giving a demo, delivering training, or quickly troubleshooting an issue, video meetings bring a human element to your everyday collaborations.
- Store and share files
Whether you’re sharing contracts for customer onboarding, collaborating on a monthly report, or editing and giving feedback on client-facing collateral, storing, sharing, and working together on files in real-time has never been easier.
- Serve customers from anywhere
With an easy-to-use mobile app, as well as integration with channels such as WhatsApp, Twitter, and Facebook Messenger, you can engage and connect with customers via their chosen channel, from wherever you are in the world.
Learn more about business communication solutions for financial services→
7. Plans and pricing that meet financial teams needs
Implementing a holistic, unified platform means financial services teams can consolidate their communications fees; bringing together cloud phone functionality, messaging, and video communications all in one. What’s more, businesses looking for a new solution without committing to one platform straight away can take advantage of our free version of the platform, allowing them to try the platform to ensure it meets their business needs before making the investment.
Alternatively, our pricing plans are designed to meet the needs and budget of corporate teams small or large.
| Essentials | Standard | Premium | Ultimate |
| ₤7.99 /user/month |
₤14.99
/user/month |
₤19.99
/user/month |
₤24.99 /user/month * |
Explore RingCentral Solutions
Whether you’re looking for a communications tool for customer-facing interactions, or you want to facilitate better internal connections via video conferencing, RingCentral offers the core functionality you need to deliver an exceptional customer experience and streamline internal processes.
- Video Conferencing
Video communications allow you to build better customer experiences into your day-to-day operations and enable team members to get valuable facetime with colleagues for a better sense of unity across the board. With features such as high-quality video and audio as well as screen sharing, whiteboarding, and call recording, you’ll have everything you need to build stronger customer relations and conduct more impactful collaborations internally.
Find out more about video conferencing→
- Cloud Phone Systems
Our cloud phone systems allow businesses to implement better mobility and agility for their teams. Offering a solution that enables teams to scale up or down according to growth or seasonal demand, RingCentral’s seamless connectivity allows business users to make and receive calls using business numbers regardless of which device they’re using.
Find out more about the cloud phone systems→
Our comprehensive solution also offers a range of functionalities for contact centre divisions. With features including call recording, monitoring, omnichannel routing, workforce management, and much more, contact centre agents can hone their efficiency, analyse call data and draw impactful insights to improve the customer experience at every touchpoint.
Find out more about the contact centre→
The integrations that finance teams need
Being able to bring all your essential tools together in one single, easy-to-use workplace platform helps you to avoid toggling between different apps; streamlining work, and driving better efficiency.
Here are just a few of the RingCentral integrations your finance team might want to make use of to tailor their virtual environment:
Theta Lake
For the financial sector or any vertical handling an increase in video communications, keeping up with compliance and legal concerns around the capture of voice and visual content can be challenging. Theta Lake provides cloud-based compliance for RingCentral Video, including the capture, archiving, eDiscovery, and supervision of video communications. Intelligent AI technology and deep learning are used to detect and raise compliance risks within your video communications or shared content.
Smarsh
RingCentral integration with Smarsh enables companies to manage their RingCentral app message, SMS, fax, and voicemail data while remaining compliant and productive in the cloud. RingCentral for Smarsh enables users to efficiently archive their RingCentral app messages or SMS content data to Smarsh for RingCentral Archiver. Particularly useful for those with compliance, open record requests, and other requirements, RingCentral for Smarsh allows businesses to leverage efficient archiving while meeting recordkeeping and regulatory requirements.
Salesforce
With a RingCentral for Salesforce integration, businesses can enhance their CRM and Service Management experience. The handy integration allows teams to automate workflows, increase call efficiency and improve the customer experience at every touchpoint. Salesforce integration works in both Sales Cloud and Service Cloud so you can make and receive calls using RingCentral directly from your Salesforce account. What’s more, you can even schedule RingCentral Video meetings, assign call dispositions, log calls, take notes, and much more without having to toggle between applications.
Box
A Box app integration with RingCentral is a handy tool for file storage and sharing, whether you want to quickly send paperwork to a customer, or upload slides for a team presentation. When you integrate RingCentral with Box, your teams benefit from being able to simply pull any document, multimedia file, or other stored files from Box straight into your team messaging thread of choice without having to switch between platforms.
Originally published Sep 23, 2021, updated Sep 29, 2021
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