Lasernet Within Banking: The Key to Unified ERP and Core Banking Documents

Faced with ever-changing customer expectations, developing regulations and macroeconomic factors, organisations offering banking services are under pressure. There’s only one thing for it: they must adapt and innovate.

Core banking systems (CBS), specifically legacy software, are inflexible and inefficient. For many banks, meeting customer expectations and overcoming economic and regulatory hurdles quickly requires another solution: enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.

ERP meets core banking

Many banks have already adopted ERP systems alongside their core banking solutions. Core banking and ERP systems differ in their capabilities, but they both play a vital role in streamlining banks' operations, enabling compliance with regulations and enhancing customer experiences. While core banking systems manage deposit, loan and credit processing capabilities, general ledger systems and reporting tools, ERP systems generally help banks manage day-to-day activities, such as customer relationship management and handle output with suppliers, regulators and trade finance partners.

As customer expectations change and banks' service offerings grow, they are increasingly under pressure to offer efficient and consistently high-quality service. To meet their customers' specific needs, a growing number of banks are opting for a best-in-breed ERP strategy, taking a non-native approach that allows for the use of third-party applications.

The benefits of ERP systems for banks

Banks of all sizes use ERP software, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 (Customer Engagement and Business Central) and Oracle NetSuite, for the following reasons:

Efficiency improvements

With an ERP platform, all processes are centralised on a unified platform. This gives bank stakeholders quick and easy access to data across the entire organisation, including remote teams. But that’s not all—they also automate routine tasks, reducing reliance on time-consuming manual data entry. 

Robust data security

ERP software protects financial data with various security features, including but not limited to role-based access control, data encryption, firewalls, data backups and disaster recovery. These robust security measures prevent unauthorised access and detect unusual activities.

Regulatory compliance

ERP systems play a central role in simplifying regulatory compliance. Leading systems incorporate features that help companies build and, just as importantly, maintain policies and procedures to comply with the relevant regulations.

Multi-currency capabilities

ERPs support multiple currencies, making them a suitable choice for financial institutions with branches worldwide. This allows banks to handle transactions in various currencies seamlessly through real-time exchange rate updates and automated currency conversion.

Customer-centricity

Last but not least, ERP systems allow banks to be more customer-centric. One report found that 41% of midsize financial institutions are focusing on nurturing “customer-centric employees” to differentiate from market competitors. To attract and retain customers, banks are providing their employees with the digital tools necessary to increase customer engagement and satisfaction, including ERP software.

ERP systems are an increasingly important component of banks’ customer-centricity strategies, such as customer segmentation. By segmenting extensive customer bases using various criteria, including income level, transaction frequency, loan history and more, ERP software allows banks to better understand the needs of different customer groups, resulting in more personalisation opportunities.

The ERP bottleneck problem

Despite its many benefits, ERP software is falling short of expectations for some organisations due to bottlenecks. For example, one survey revealed that 92% of current ERP systems often require manual intervention to enable data sharing—a critical component of modern banking, particularly with the rise of open banking.

You might think the obvious answer to this problem is to make complex modifications to improve usability, but these kinds of projects are found to lead to overspending 65% of the time. With banks facing macroeconomic pressure, the appetite for costly coding projects is quickly diminishing.

Instead, banks need plug-in solutions that give bank employees, suppliers and customers the capabilities they need without the complexity, whether that’s streamlined document workflows, personalised customer communications or a better user experience. When all is said and done, banks must be able to deliver faster, more frictionless experiences to meet users’ needs.

Lasernet and Autoform DM: Enhancing banks’ backend systems

Banks’ ERP and core banking systems require solid document and output management capabilities. Core banking systems generate a colossal volume of documents daily, such as account statements and loan agreements, while ERP systems generate documents ranging from invoices and reports to barcodes and labels. As a result, banks need reliable and powerful output and document management software to maintain smooth operations.

The problem is that integrating state-of-the-art document and output management capabilities into ERP systems is highly complex and time-consuming. The good news is there’s a solution that bypasses the need for complex integrations and costly development projects.

Lasernet and Autoform DM are the ultimate solutions for banks looking for more sophisticated document and output management solutions. But before we reveal how they are supporting banks’ core banking and ERP systems, let’s outline the software’s main capabilities.

Lasernet

Lasernet is the ultimate document design, processing and distribution software that works with almost any type of data to generate, publish and deliver branded documents. The beauty of Lasernet is that it allows you to upgrade your ERP without upgrading. Simply take the output from any ERP and use modern graphical drag and drop to deliver documents to your customers or suppliers in the format that suits them. Creating new documents is quick and straightforward, and you can easily move documents created in Lasernet to a new ERP.

Watch our introduction to Lasernet video to learn how the platform has transformed document management processes for over 2,500 organisations worldwide, including banks.

Autoform DM

Autoform DM, on the other hand, is a powerful and versatile digital archive that is the heart of Formpipe’s output and document management solution. With easy scaling, high availability and a secure by-default design, Autoform DM provides banks with security and reliability. The software also allows for straightforward document archiving and retrieval, giving bank staff and customers the ability to rapidly access banking documents, forms, signatures, IDs and photos when they need them. Regardless of your business’s size, Autoform DM can be tailored to suit your specific needs. 

Watch our two-minute introduction to Autoform DM to learn more about how our digital archiving platform works. 

How do Lasernet and Autoform DM work together?

Lasernet and Autoform DM work together seamlessly. Lasernet takes the output from any ERP and delivers documents to your customers or suppliers in multiple formats. Autoform DM then indexes every generated document and stores it as a PDF or PDF/A file, giving you fast but secure access to the information you need when you need it.

Lasernet and Autoform DM in action: Dynamics 365 Business Central

A growing number of banks use the popular ERP software Dynamics 365 Business Central due to its integration capabilities, which allow data to be extracted from core systems and synchronised with the CRM. But that’s not all—its out-of-the-box functionality and seamless integration with other Microsoft products like Outlook and Teams make it a suitable choice for financial institutions.

Lasernet integrates seamlessly into Dynamics 365 Business Central, giving you the power to create, manage and distribute perfectly branded and formatted documentation on any channel. Use the drag-and-drop interface to design exceptional documents, with zero coding required. Add custom logos and incorporate marketing messages to make banking documents more than just written communication, but powerful brand awareness tools. Once you’re happy with your design, send documents to customers instantly through their preferred channels. Once sent, use Autoform DM to automatically index and store original version-controlled copies. It’s that easy.

Learn more about how Lasernet’s Business Central Connector empowers organisations to generate and customise documents more efficiently than ever before.

The hyper-personalisation imperative

We’ve established that banks of all sizes rely on powerful ERP systems like Dynamics 365 and Oracle NetSuite to boost efficiency, manage regulatory compliance and increase data security. However, we must also recognise the hyper-personalisation opportunities that come with ERP and core banking software. With only 23% of consumers rating their bank’s personalised services highly, banks must do much more to tailor their platforms to their customers’ unique needs. 

Thankfully, banks have a wealth of hyper-personalised data on their customers ready to be used to improve their banking experiences. For this reason, Lasernet is the sector’s ideal hyper-personalisation companion. Think of the software as the conduit between banking data and the customer, allowing banks to create highly personalised communications based on customer preferences. Integrated into banks’ core banking and ERP systems, Lasernet feeds the hyper-personalised data into a document or a communication design’s variable field, creating highly personalised, dynamic communications. The result? Increased customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention, up-selling and cross-selling opportunities, and, ultimately, more data-driven decision-making.

Formpipe’s document and output management and software are key to unifying banks’ ERP and core banking systems, not only leading to efficiency and security improvements but also hyper-personalisation opportunities. Get in touch today or book a demo below to discover how Lasernet and Autoform DM can transform banks’ backend processes for the better.