Marketplace Providers

Software Group

Digital Field Application – Digitization at its best, in the field and in the branch

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Step up Your Field Game. Activate Efficient and Profitable Digital Field Services.

New technologies are paving the way to huge efficiency gains for financial service providers (FSPs). Software Group’s Digital Field Application (DFA) digitizes historically costly, lengthy field operations, bringing dramatic improvements to field officer productivity, loan turnover time, and customer convenience. With DFA, field teams can serve more customers at a reduced cost, even in areas with no connectivity.

Overview

Boost Loan Officer Productivity

Decisions in the field become faster and smarter thanks to the instant availability of information via officers’ mobile devices. Field teams are enabled to make real-time enquiries, initiate the full loan processing workflow or perform any financial operation needed, including transactions. Smart decision aids, such as loan calculators, geo routes, and credit bureau lookups in the field, help officers drastically improve their own performance. Unqualified leads can be identified right away, while overall average loan officer caseload increases. DFA allows secure offline operations with robust access policies for each individual officer. Paperless and digitally empowered to make the right decisions fast, field teams can achieve previously unseen productivity and performance goals.

Cut Loan Turnaround Time (TAT)

Before, loan processing happened through a long paper-based back-and-forth process between the field officer, the end client, and the branch. DFA eliminates not only the manual processing burden, but also the costs of error, fraud and lost time. Thanks to digitization, the loan approval process starts right after digital data capture in the field. Where credit scorecards are available, an instant decision can be taken, with the client receiving the funds minutes after application. Alternatively, where manual processes are followed, the credit committees can review applications right away efficiently with all data available at hand, using automatic validations and comparisons embedded in the workflow. Streamlining end-to-end digital loan processing brings significant improvements to average TAT. What’s more, collecting historical data on clients could be beneficial for the development of internal credit scorecards in the long run.

Enhance Customer Experience

For end customers, the benefits of DFA are equally compelling. Field officers are at their doorstep, offering high-quality, convenient and timely financial services. Now even customers with no formal IDs could apply for loans thanks to digital biometric Know Your Customer (KYC) authentication options. Paper document copies are no longer required, and neither are the costly repeat visits to the institution’s branch for any missing information. The personal cost savings and lower barriers to access to credit make FSPs’ services more accessible, affordable and desirable. Faster loan disbursement also leads to better client retention and reduced churn.

Step Up Outreach

The operational costs of running branches are high, especially in remote, scarcely populated regions. DFA complements existing FSP infrastructure via a seamless integration and synchronization with the FSP’s banking system. Field officers are technologically enabled to quickly and cost-effectively scale their reach to underserved and untapped markets, even in areas with no connectivity. The newly gained efficiencies from digitization allow FSPs to significantly increase the number of people served and operations performed in the field, which ultimately helps them secure a bigger market share.

Save Operational Costs

Digitizing data capture helps FSPs avoid paper, eliminate manual data entry, and reduce back-and-forth visits between the field and the office. Data entry staff at the branch could be reallocated to other value-adding activities. Thanks to DFA, the quality and accuracy of client data is improved, while any associated data analysis and document management processes are optimized. Intelligently embedded automations and data validations reduce potential account delinquency, the risk of frauds and loan defaults, all of which save costs. The realized efficiencies across the board also reduce the average client acquisition cost.

Increase Field Revenue

Software Group’s DFA solution provides an opportunity to launch new products and services. Depending on an FSP’s strategy, DFA can also support financial transactions including group collection sheets, savings mobilization, loan repayment collection, social performance surveys, and more. For FSPs offering agricultural lending, the solution could be integrated with specialized agricultural score cards that help assess and potentially automate the credit process for smallholder farmers. As a result of process efficiencies and shorter turnaround times, more customers can be reached, and a bigger deposit and loan portfolio can be secured. Ultimately, FSPs enjoy higher overall returns from their field service channel.

Features

Featuring an intuitive and reliable mobile application for field users, and a comprehensive web-based portal for the back office, the DFA solution by Software Group is one of the first, most advanced DFA platforms in the financial services market.

Onboard Customers and Open Accounts in a Few Taps

  • Registering customers in the field can now happen within minutes. With DFA’s built-in Know Your Customer (KYC) data capture, geolocation, and digital document and image management functionalities, field agents are empowered to quickly onboard new clients directly on a their mobile devices. Groups and hierarchical clusters of clients can be defined and non-customers could be tagged as guarantors, spouse, etc. Opening new accounts and linking accounts to customer profiles is handled seamlessly across the institution’s CBS, the field, and the back office.

Digitize Loans and Make Smarter Credit Decisions

  • Regardless if managing individual, business or group loans, field loan officers can perform any step of the loan process by following efficient, predefined workflows. Loan application, disbursement, and repayment happens entirely digitally on a mobile device with any required digital and biometric customer signatures, or Bluetooth-printed document copies, based on local regulations. Intelligent decision aids, such as Loan Calculators, Cash Flow Analysis, secured collaterals, credit history and more, help field teams quickly determine loan details and customer eligibility anytime, anywhere, even in offline environments.

Process Transactions On the Go to Add More Value

  • In addition to loan-related transactions, field agents can collect savings right at customers’ doorstep. Cash deposits and withdrawals can be initiated remotely, adhering to pre-defined limits set for the user. Enquiries and statements are issued automatically on the spot via a Bluetooth printer or SMS notifications. DFA also supports Electronic Funds Transfer between accounts and bank to mWallet transfers. To add even more value for end customers and increase field service revenue, FSPs can integrate any 3rd-party systems to process bill payments, disburse vouchers, and more.

Be Productive Even Offline. Synchronize with CBS in Real-time

  • When connected, DFA’s field mobile app synchronizes automatically in real time with FSP core and third-party systems. In areas with no connectivity, field agents can securely store and access individual customer case data on their mobile device and use it to provide quality services in the field. A crucial advantage of DFA is the option for offline transaction posting. Once back online, any new information is uploaded to the back end component of the solution while pending transactions are reconciled and settled.

Work Securely with Biometric or Other KYC Authentications

  • GPS location could be a beneficial tool when planning field trips to remotely located customers. It is not only used to capture the location of clients, but also to track field officers, assign daily routes and times for client visits, and enforce geo fences within which a field agent is allowed to operate. Improving the productivity of a field team is much easier when FSPs have full transparency over completed site visits, time and mileage performance.

An advanced management portal with a sophisticated integration layer which ensures all data is seamlessly integrated with any Core Banking (CBS) or third-party system, empowering FSPs with unlimited flexibility in pursuing their digital channel strategies.

Simplify User, Identity, and Inventory Management

  • Assigning clear user roles and secure access policies and permissions facilitates staff management. In addition to organizational structure setup, DFA supports innovative user authentication methods to quickly identify field app and back office portal users via biometrics, etc. Device management with NFC tag support is also available.

Streamline Tasks and Workflows for Field Service Processes

  • A user-friendly configurator gives FSPs the flexibility to set up electronic loan files, defining what data should be captured, which KYC level criteria and scoring should be applied when assessing customer eligibility, and more. A loan application, for example, could pass different levels of approval depending on its amount – a credit committee may need to personally approve bigger loans, while smaller sums could be disbursed through automations, based on computerized decision trees and algorithms, creating compelling efficiencies.

Accelerate Field Team Performance with Robust Monitoring Tools

  • In the back office, powerful reports enable FSPs to track and proactively monitor DFA users as well as overall field service profitability by different indicators, such as location, transaction types, and more. Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and Service Level Agreements (SLA) can be assigned to staff members, raising up individual officer accountability and motivating them to reach their goals even faster.

DFA’s open architecture empowers scalability to meet the demands for strategic integration with any Core Banking System, legacy system, third-party traditional and non-traditional providers. The modular design of the DFA solution enables FSPs to flexibly manage a range of transactions and data capture functionality in line with their short-term or long-term expansion strategies.

Depending on its scale, an average DFA implementation would take anything between 1 week and a few months – an industry-leading standard. We pride ourselves with 100% project delivery rate, and more than 450 successful integration and delivery channels projects over the years in more than 65 countries.

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