Zenmonics: A Digital Banking Renaissance

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Riaz Syed , CEO, ZenmonicsTracey Dunlap, Chief Experience Officer
After a decade of the global banking crisis, 2020 could be the tipping point in the evolution of the industry. During this period of transition, customer service and engagement has been anchored by legacy systems that often hinder banks from achieving true end-to-end digitalization. A great deal of emphasis is being placed on digitizing core business processes and reassessing organizational structures to develop new solutions that take advantage of data, advanced analytics, cloud technologies, and improved delivery platforms. By embracing a complete digital transformation, banks will not only help adapt to the latest innovations but also monetize their business models, increase budget transparency, and uncover potential cost-cutting opportunities.

In an era of increasingly personalized financial services, the advent of Open Banking APIs is fostering collaboration and leading to expanded banking ecosystems that could include more than just financial services. Also, the increasing numbers of regulatory bodies globally that require financial institutions to enable customers to share their data securely with third parties. By understanding and leveraging innovative strides, organizations will catalyze the growth of open banking systems that would allow financial institutions to build on their existing customer relationships and become leaders in the market. Vertical integration in banking is on its way out, and financial institutions need to be prepared to prioritize their strengths and outsource their weaknesses to keep generating a return on equity for their shareholders.

That being said, core-banking platforms are a hot topic, and there is a myriad of such platforms available in the market. For banks aiming to extend into adjacent lines of business, or launch a distinct new offering, these platforms will significantly help simplify their operations. However, in recent years, the word “platform” has been stretched to the point where its meaning has become redundant, particularly in banking. Often solution providers sell banks clunky packages of cobbled-together systems under the guise of “omnichannel” solutions. “Are you implementing a platform? Or is it a point solution system that’s been blended with other products and is marketed as a platform?” asks Chief Experience Officer of Zenmonics, Tracey Dunlap. Zenmonics offers intuitive, omnichannel software that empowers banks to create seamless experiences for customers and associates alike. Established in 2007, the company’s flagship product—channelUNITED streamlines current digital, sales and service, origination, and teller platforms into a single, holistic solution.

A Single Omni-Channel Platform for all Banking Applications

Faced with unrelenting competition from agile FinTech firms and tech giants such as Google, Amazon, Uber, and Apple, traditional banks are focused on enhancing customer service by investing in technology.

Zenmonics not only attempts to best understand the demands of bankers but also the needs of consumers using those products and services


“The introduction of the Payment Services Directive (PSD2) provides the opportunity for these companies to explore synergies as never before. Fintech companies are innovating and disrupting the market to solve customer problems,” explains Tracey. “On the other hand, banks have traditionally thought about legacy technology as pillars because of deeply ingrained bank-centric operating models. It is time to overhaul, not only the technology but also the thinking that goes into it,” further explains Tracey.

As a leading provider of banking channel software, Zenmonics helps banks stay engaged with their customers consistently through its channelUNITED banking platform and reduce employee uncertainty and customer frustration for better banking relationships. “At Zenmonics, we like to say that banking does not need to get better; it needs to be different. And, the only way that we’re going to make that difference is to move away from traditional silos and look towards the adoption of a platform,” states Tracey. The company’s channelUNITED platform was purpose-built as a single technology stack and developed upon an open banking API architecture, allowing it to be Fintech-friendly and cloud-enabled. As an open standard, core-independent, and true omnichannel solution, the platform spans across all self-service and assisted channels to meet the digital transformation requirements of a bank, including online and mobile consumers, sales, servicing, teller, account origination and kiosk regimes. Thus, reducing miscommunication between banks and their customers and enhances the experience for both the customer and banker, in both self-service and assisted channels. “The platform helps us bring multiple channels together and break down silos to build stronger relationships,” says Tracey. Further, the platform can be deployed on-premise or in a cloud environment, either on a private cloud or an external cloud provider.

Helping Banks Break Barriers and Deliver an enhanced Customer Experience

Usually, banks are entrenched in legacy infrastructures that are costly to maintain; it impacts the customer experience, ultimately damaging their IT budgets. The channelUNITED platform substantiates a bank’s focus to offer seamless customer experience by mitigating all information gaps that are present in back-end operations and across all the service and assisted interaction points of a banking system. Through an elegant account opening process and continuing into the online banking offering, banks can leverage the platform to start a transaction in one medium and finish it in another, as it enables synchronized engagement between customers and bankers.

With all interaction points on a single platform, bankers are able to view and understand the precise data that is displayed to the customers, helping them initiate productive customer engagement. On the account opening side for the interaction, the platform enables one to simultaneously open multiple product types, carry out transactions, and pick up the process at a branch exactly where they left off while using the bank’s digital element, reducing the friction and redundancy in everyday banking interaction. In addition, Zenmonics follows a flexible deployment model; the platform can be deployed incrementally across consumer, banker, kiosk, and account opening channels to streamline a financial institution’s immediate and future needs. The platform also helps in compliance validation through pre-filled and automated fields integrated with third-party solutions for customer verification.

Another constituent of the channelUNITED platform is the kiosk solution. It helps the platform maintain pace with the ever-dynamic demands of bank employees and customers. The kiosk solution allows the banks to engage their customers with just-in-time assistance and discovery across the self-service and assisted interaction points. Both the customers and bankers will be able to leverage the same sets of data to move quickly and confidently through everyday complex banking tasks. channelUNITED is the only market solution that offers both a kiosk and integrated banker tablet application to provide sales, servicing, and origination across consumer devices and all branch networks.

"A lot of our innovation time is spent on continuing to bring toolkits and low code development strategies to make our platform more agile"

Keeping Pace with the Future of Banking

As the decade comes to an end, the banking space is witnessing a huge paradigm shift influenced by emerging technologies and regulations that follow; a significant part of the change is the focus on re-modeling back-end operations. With open banking (PSD2) forcing overseas banks to open-up sensitive financial data could mean big changes for the financial space. The company views “open banking” as the next big innovation and envisions to develop additional channelUNITED solutions to foster fintech in banking and address inefficient banking processes. In the future, Zenmonics plans to continue its focus around suitable investments, innovation, and testing operations; the firm plans to integrate newer features such as chatbots, voice-activated account opening, RPA, and more into the platform. The company is very keen on leveraging big data to form an in-depth understanding of the various consumer behavior patterns and build prosperous relationships by offering an enhanced experience, based on the data at hand. Furthermore, it will help bankers understand and manage customer risk and fraud effectively. “Zenmonics not only attempts to best understand the demands of bankers but also the needs of consumers using those products and services,” concludes Tracey.

- Clara Mathew
    December 19, 2019

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