New Digital Banking Solution from SAP Simplifies IT and Fosters Co-Innovation for the Bank of Tomorrow

Wazzup Pilipinas!

SAP SE recently announced the latest release of SAP® Omnichannel Banking, a digital banking solution that went live on December 23, 2016. The offering simplifies the process of managing mobile and online applications for retail, small business and commercial banking customers on a single platform built on open standards. With more than 500 available microservices, the new digital banking solution helps banks build responsive mobile, tablet and desktop apps with a unique, digital customer experience.

SAP Omnichannel Banking complements the solutions for customer engagement and commerce in the SAP Hybris® portfolio to form a comprehensive offering for banks to manage all aspects of customer interaction. Planned application programming interface (API) integration between these components will provide customers a seamless experience across multiple touchpoints. Together, SAP Omnichannel Banking and the SAP Hybris solution portfolio will enable banks to deploy intelligent digital sales and service processes, creating personalized customer interaction across all channels and helping banks get a 360-degree view of their customers.

The modular architecture of SAP Omnichannel Banking enables banks to roll out new products and services in an incremental fashion, without disrupting existing functionality. The solution can be deployed on premise or in the cloud and also addresses the need for faster time to market as well as an increasing frequency of updates. By providing an extensive library of customization accelerators and a single call-out for over 200 configuration services, the solution can substantially reduce the effort involved in developing bank-specific extensions. In addition, SAP Omnichannel Banking provides state-of-the-art tooling in the form of Eclipse plug-ins, a widely used integrated development environment (IDE) for developing microservices. This vastly increases development productivity and allows a growing ecosystem of established partners and FinTechs to further enrich SAP’s offering.

“For banks, maintaining multiple platforms requires multiple work streams, separate maintenance schedules and a slow, complex approach to updates,” said Falk Rieker, global head of the banking business unit at SAP. “With SAP Omnichannel Banking and SAP Hybris solutions, we are providing a holistic offering to manage all types of digital customer engagement – mobile and online, and across multiple lines of business. This is nothing short of a game changer, one that empowers banks to differentiate from each other and allows them to provide a tailored, digital customer experience.”  

The latest release of SAP Omnichannel Banking provides:

• Comprehensive business logic and robust self-service features that power out-of-the-box applications for retail and commercial banking 
• Components to centralize critical, operational tasks by providing frameworks for security, entitlements, approvals, alerting, channel management, scheduling, distributed caching, notifications, validations, customer insight aggregation, digital process framework, user administration, and channel and device management
• Open architecture that supports third-party business services and partner integration with the goal of creating collaborative scenarios and accelerating innovation
• Fully responsive SAPUI5, removing all restrictions on the technology used for UI development
• Optional integration with SAP’s core banking solution 

A recent IDC study commissioned by SAP found that banks want to collaborate with FinTech startups; however, the complexity of the IT architectures within banks makes that collaboration cumbersome. The API framework built into SAP Omnichannel Banking streamlines this process. Banks now are flexible enough to take an active role in the ecosystem, partner with FinTech companies and engage with established partners and industry leaders.

For more information, visit the SAP News Center or follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews. To learn more about SAP Omnichannel Banking, visit www.sap.com/solution/industry/banking.html.

Confidently Beautiful with a Blog

Wazzup Pilipinas!

Regardless of the unsaid but obvious "discrimination" and "disrespect" towards bloggers, we are very much proud that we are helping out others with our content that were originally just intended to serve as our outlet to express our thoughts, opinions, etc, and serve as our medium to share our story and experiences.

Even though some are taking us for granted by offering demeaning and less satisfying deals or arrangement, our priorities overcome the need to demand what we rightfully deserve if treated fairly based on our significant worth.

We have also evolved to be more appreciated but still the intimacy and personal touch remains since we are not tied up with a particular entity that will hold responsible for our demeanor or misdemeanor.

The future is all about online, and many of the traditional media outfits have embraced already their fate thus the effort towards digital content has grown enormous and rapid in the past years. You will surely be left out of the game if you are without an online presence.

Do you believe that we should stop differentiating or separately mentioning "bloggers" from "media" (i.e. traditional media - print, TV and radio)?

Since bloggers are online media per se, and equally "influential" and could even have a wider reach, everyone should be collectively called as "media" instead to stop the "discrimination"

Though there are also the "online" media like Rappler, Choose Philippines, etc.(that are backed up or funded by "bigger" people), or the online counterparts of the traditional media outfits (that are equally highly financed), blogs are the more personal and intimate, and most of the time unedited, unfiltered and unrestricted. (Does it really matter if there's so many grammatical, or even spelling, errors...or the photos were poorly taken using a smartphone camera?) or mind the the numerous plagiarizing or "copy-paste" of articles and photos, otherwise known as "Sotto-fied" - named after the infamous comedian turned Senator of the country due to his popularity with the "madlang people." Filipinos are just fond of voting for anybody who makes them laugh.

If in politics, it doesn't matter if you had political backgrounds, or an actor's award, what matters is the people's grown trust in a specific "brand" by how they were promoted using any medium. May it be through the television, radio, magazine, newspaper,...or online via the Internet (free Wi-Fi at malls or coffee shops), all that's important for the "fans" is visibility or familiarity.

There's what you call subconscious mind-conditioning of which you are seemingly "brainwashed" - made to believe a reality which does not really exists but are forced to accept it as a reality by overfeeding us with the thought of it being true. Confused? You should be! It's happening right now as you read this article.

In the end, it's all about "reaching a larger and appropriate target market(s)" to sell products or services effectively (stressing on "effectively).

Even the "news" or "public service" is considered a product that aims to gain a considerable amount of followers.

If one has the budget or financing to launch a massive online campaign for the benefit of a "brand," that could very well make become successful if you just patiently invest incorporated with time and creativity, and a fabulous endorser to take it up a notch.

Nowadays, it's so easy to scam anybody so be warned that the "numbers" should not always be the basis of making your decisions. Sometimes, you have to rely on that "gut" feeling to know if what you see is too good to be true, or underrated.

To finally break it at a language you could easily understand, "media" today could now be even anybody posting on social media pages like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram since the "words" or "testimonies" of the actual people are the "real" information or feedback we should all be considering when looking for our next restaurant, hotel, TV show, or anything else we want some sincere recommendations.

Even if I was not a blogger, I would always speak highly of "reviews" or commentaries that are coming from those not connected to the large media outfits whose "sponsorship, ads, or commercials" makes them biased.

Sold Out: Cebu Pacific's "Piso Fare"

Wazzup Pilipinas!

It's the start of the travel season again, especially eager to experience again the many colorful festivals or fiestas at each province like for January there's Sinulog in Cebu, Biniray in Romblon, Ati-Atihan in Aklan, Apribaba in Sorsogon, Dinagyang in Iloilo or the rest of the festivals and celebrations for the rest of the year.

As expected, Cebu Pacific's Piso Fare promos are back, and we could't decide where we wanna go first! Stressful, yet adrenaline-pumping experience.

However, we envy those who have successfully booked their fights during Cebu Pacific's Piso Fare period. We were still trying to look for flights last night but apparently we were too late to decide. The Cebu Pacific site was crashing because of the Piso Fare sale. Many received the error message "Sorry for the slowdown! There's a lot of visitors accessing the site right now."

The final announcement of "Sold Out" was the terrible news. Expected but still gravely saddened of our fate.

"Your quick work on our PISO sale offer is testament to how everyJuan loves to fly, and at a bargain! All PISO seats sold, thanks for the "heart"!"

It is always good to have travel plans ready. No panic. Relax when booking. We should know better to plan ahead. I was semi-conscious aware of the Piso fare last night but the next moment I woke, they were all gone! How many seats did they sell anyway?

"Check back again soon!" could be another message you'll receive. It's just their way of saying "Better luck next time!"

If you are not aware, you don't exactly pay only 1 peso for the flight. If you add taxes and the other miscellaneous expenses, a Php 900 roundtrip would have been a nice deal already.

However, Cebu Pacific should create a separate website for their Piso Fare promo so as not to disrupt other customers who want an urgent flight and not availing of the sale! When the site crashes, even the regular passengers are affected.

"Dear self, you have enough trips for the year and you have bills to pay. STOP. IMPULSE. BUYING. PISO. FARE. TICKETS."