8 Ways the Microsoft Cloud Supports Financial Firms

The financial industry runs on data that needs the highest level of security and organization. For financial firms looking to strike this balance, Microsoft's cloud Azure can help you achieve just that. Azure has many features that help with your customer experience, security and compliance, and cybercrime abatement. We'll be looking at these three key areas, the unique challenges and opportunities within the financial industry, and the ways in which your business and employees stand to benefit from a cloud transformation.

Here's Are How Microsoft Azure Can Help Your Financial Firm Grow:

Customer Experience

Customer Onboarding - When you decide to introduce Microsoft Cloud into your business, you'll need to go through the onboarding process. Your business will get easy-access to apps and self-service tools to enhance the your team's experience of the cloud. Subscriptions such as Microsoft 365 Business Premium support the Office 365 application suite, remote access and identity protection tools, and help with device governance.
Unified Customer Profile - Your IT team will help you create a cloud profile in which you can view your business's financial situation. Create real time reporting dashboards to track company performance, revenue forecasts, employee engagement, projects and tickets, and ongoing operational and IT initiatives.
Collaboration Manager - This is another key capability of the cloud customer experience. This tool enables collaboration, automation, and communication to help minimize errors, enhance the customer experience, and speed up lending processes. By housing your customer information in a cohesive and secure location, you can decrease the time it takes to provide assistance, answers, etc. improving the overall quality of your service.
Banking Customer Engagement - Personalize customer interactions with financial information that is relevant to them can accelerate time to resolution. Whether you're supporting a custom business application, fielding support calls, or engaging with prospects, Azure offers a host of applications that support client interfacing. These include PowerBI, Teams, and the App Development portal.

Security and Compliance

Risk Assurance and Support - Azure supports risk, compliance, and audit teams in addressing issues with cybersecurity, privacy, and regulatory compliance. Microsoft currently supports over 90 compliance certifications, 50 of which provide country-specific support, and 35 of which deal with unique industry needs.
Regulatory Compliance - This capability allows you to monitor, assess, and improve the posture of your organization with regional, global, and industry-specific standards and regulations. By working in the Microsoft cloud, you financial firm can more readily integrate proactive security solutions including, but not limited to: improved screening and fraud detection across online, mobile, and customer support channels, Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASBs) to aggregate and identify cloud threats, real time monitoring for software-as-a-service and infrastructure-as-a-service, and SaaS protect for cloud application back-up and disaster recovery.

Combatting Financial Crime

Account Protection - Microsoft cloud helps protect your business from fraudulent digital account creation and accounts takeover from cybercriminals. Layered security tools such as multi-factor authentication, Azure Active Directory, and SOC-as-a-Service can help your security team quickly identify threats and respond accordingly.
Purchase Protection - Azure helps improve retention and revenue by providing specific protection plans for each business. Your security team can establish policies to classify and protect data based on its sensitivity using Azure Information Protection. You can also add classification information for persistent protection regardless of whether the data is shared internally or externally.

Microsoft Azure can help financial services can unlock new value by embedding digital collaboration into modern workflows. Create meaningful new ways to use your data and deliver tailored customer service securely. If you want to learn how Azure can help your business, contact us at iCorps to schedule a free consultation.