Complex finance processes with critical deadlines

Standard Chartered Bank operates more than 600 branches in 53 markets, with more than 80,000 employees servicing millions of customers. Supporting this massive global operation is the bank’s Global Finance Operations team, consisting of around 1,600 members led by Shikha Bountra Jetley, Global Head of Finance Operations at Standard Chartered Bank.

“Finance Operations is responsible for the Group’s core global finance processes, covering group planning and analysis, stress testing, accounting and reporting, liquidity and capital, data management, and product control”, explains Shikha. “This inevitably entails a variety of critical requests and workflows that need to be executed in a timely and accurate manner to meet regulatory, statutory, and audit requirements, and maintain stakeholder engagement”.

Tens of thousands of requests are typically managed each month, but prior to implementing ServiceNow, there were some difficulties in tracking tasks and queries. There was an urgent need to streamline core processes, develop custom apps and further improve transparency and traceability so teams could collaborate effectively and avoid potential delays.

“Given the volume of processes and activities, it was hard for management teams to know what stage a process, request, or activity was at, and why something could be delayed”, says Joshua Samuel, Head, Service Management FinOps, at Standard Chartered Global Business Services. “These were important drivers to finding automated workflow solutions”.

Enhancing end-user experience with the ServiceNow AI Platform

Ensuring greater visibility of request statuses was critical, requiring the development of dashboards to provide an easily comprehensible view.

“One of the most important processes the Finance Operations team manages is Group Planning”, says Vikas Kohli, Head of Innovations, Analytics and Enablement at Standard Chartered Global Business Services. “Corporate planning is an annual exercise covering financial and management plans for the next five years. It involves multiple workflows”.

These processes were previously managed using multiple spreadsheets and emails. It was laborious and time-consuming, and work could be duplicated unnecessarily. By deploying ServiceNow IT Service Management Professional (ITSM Pro) and ServiceNow App Engine, the bank’s Finance Operations team has vastly improved service delivery for key global processes. Entire workflows are now automated, delivering results at the click of few buttons. Custom applications manage workflow automations, dashboards, a request module and a dedicated self-service portal.

A key component of the new portal on the ServiceNow AI Platform is the knowledge base, which provides access to thousands of articles. Instead of responding to numerous repetitive queries each month, all announcements and key events are now published through the portal, freeing up personnel to work on higher-value tasks, reducing stress and vastly improving employee morale. The volume of queries handled has been cut by up to 80% as a result.

“We get lots of positive feedback on how the portal has improved visibility into corporate planning. Workflows, article searches, request modules and recertification modules have been the most important features”, says Baskaran Kripakaran, Global Process Manager, Group Planning, at Standard Chartered Global Business Services. “We’re now looking forward to yet more flexibility and exploiting more of the low-code/no-code capabilities. It’s truly transformational”.

Better routing improves operational efficiency

As a large bank with customers worldwide, Standard Chartered needs to interact with both payment vendors and regulators. Handling incoming messages promptly and reliably is critical.

The ServiceNow AI Platform features inbound email integration capability with automated routing logic and highly configurable workflow mechanisms, enabling interactions with vendors and regulators to be tracked and responded to quickly and accurately. Accountability and responsibility are now clearly defined with task owners.

“When emails are received, they are directed to the right person automatically so they can be addressed quickly”, says Joshua. “Rather than relying on generic mailboxes and manual checks, we can be confident that inbound messages are properly routed and promptly actioned”.

Multiple aspects deliver broader benefits

Centralised workflow automation has delivered far greater visibility for the Finance Operations team. This makes it easy to check on requests such as purchase order approvals, payments or reimbursements, helping both internal stakeholders and external vendors.

Critical paths and playbooks highlight deadlines and let various teams know if an SLA is at risk. This allows team leaders to see the statuses of flagged tasks, have clarity about upcoming tasks and reassign tasks to balance workloads.

The playbooks are used for multiple processes and are reusable for various cycles. Joshua adds: “All follow-ups, reminders, SLAs and escalations are set up for each team appropriately. Human intervention is now minimal, as tasks are well organised with status tracking capability for management interventions”.

Simpler and faster stress-testing processes

Another area to benefit from the ServiceNow AI Platform is governance and controls within stress testing. The central bank’s highly complex regulations apply across businesses and locations, with concurrent exercises to meet investment risk and capital adequacy of assets. The processes involve multiple manual touchpoints, repetitive processes and stringent audit trails and metrics. However, with ServiceNow, processes are simpler and faster.

Paving the way for the future

As with any significant change, there was initial trepidation from various teams. However, Joshua and the implementation team invested time and effort into guiding them along the transition, showcasing various prototypes and proofs of concept. The ServiceNow sales team also provided strong support.

“As soon as management teams started seeing the results, there was a steep change in acceptance”, explains Joshua. “Teams started coming up with their own brilliant ideas for workflows, many of which have since been automated. These automations empower teams to independently operate, govern, and control the changes required within the process”.

Shikha adds: “The workflow automations process has just unfolded, and the initial results are encouraging. The Financial Operations management team is now confident about further investments”.

So far, the bank has saved over 16,800 annual hours in manual effort through the custom applications and interactive modules built with ServiceNow ITSM Pro and App Engine. The senior management team has also benefited from significantly easier and quicker attestations, recertifications, approvals, reviews and escalations.