Automating Workflows in Financial Services Cloud:

A Guide for Efficiency

Workflow automation implements logic-based rules to automate tasks that can streamline any business process, such as sales, human resources, services, marketing, etc. Automated workflows make employees' and customers' lives hassle-free, delivering quality time for employees and improved customer experience. Being a highly fast-paced industry, the finance sector can make great use of the automation options available in the Salesforce Financial Services Cloud. This blog will discuss a few automation processes that can be implemented in the Salesforce Financial Services Cloud.

1. Action Plans

Action plans can capture repeatable tasks, automate the task sequences, and assign them automatically to processes or users to ensure nothing gets missed. Action plans are implemented through the Action plan template. Features of the templates are:

Capture the repeatable tasks involved in a specific type of engagement.
Set it up once and update it as the understanding refines over time.
Different tasks can be assigned to different users if needed.

Action plans help to enhance:

Productivity
Collaboration
Standardisation
Accountability

2. Approval processes

Approval processes let users specify a sequence of steps that are required to approve a record, including:

Whom to request approval from at each stage
What actions are allowed at each stage
Notification

The various steps in the approval process are:

Initial submission (e.g., email alert/field update)
Approval step logic (e.g., greater loan amount needs more approvers)
Approval/ Rejection actions (e.g., field update/mail/trigger a flow, etc.)

Approval processes can enhance:

Accountability
Transparency
Reduce processing time
Consistency in decision-making processes

3. Flows

Flows allow the building of complex business solutions in a declarative manner. If you need to generate an automated business process or a guided experience that does not come into the complexity threshold of apex code, then Flow is the right tool. Flows can be classified into five major categories:

Screen flow

Custom UI to guide the end user through logical data entry patterns.
This can be launched through lightning record pages, quick actions, and more.

Record-triggered flows

Launched by creating, updating, or deleting the specific record.

Scheduled triggered flow

Launched at a specified time and frequency.

Platform event-triggered flows

Triggered when a platform event message is received .

Auto-launched flows C

Cannot be triggered by themselves
Needs to be invoked using apex classes or other triggered flows.

Flow orchestration is a functionality that builds sophisticated business processes by combining and coordinating a series of flows. The benefits are:

Combine the automated processes into a single workflow
More flexibility to create approval processes
Greater ability to assign work to any use

An example of flow orchestration is an online credit card application. The online application form can be powered by a screen flow. But the information is simply collected and must wait for an agent to review the application. The approval process that happens after submission is an entirely separate process that involves additional risk analysis, Know Your Customer (KYC) compliance checks, and more.

4. Business Rules Engine

Business rules engine is a suite of services, components, and objects that apply advanced logic and automate complex decision making. The engine contains three core tools:

Expression sets

A series of rules you create with expression set elements.
Each element in a set forms a logical step that runs sequentially.
Evaluate conditions
Perform mathematical operations
Look up decision tables and matrices
Can add to workflows created with Flow, Omnistudio, etc

Decision matrices

Lookup tables that contain user-defined input and output columns
Takes in inputs and then looks up the appropriate outputs
Helpful determine a particular value based on one or more inputs

Decision tables

Return multiple output sets
Decision tables can reduce the number of conditional steps

Business engine can help the financial industry by handling fee reversal eligibility, claim evaluation, quoting and premium calculations, etc.

5. Apex Triggers

Apex trigger is a piece of code in Salesforce that is used to invoke various apex code actions. Apex triggers are designed to automate specific tasks. Some features of Apex triggers are:

Perform custom actions before or after events to records in Salesforce.
Support bulk data processing tasks
Support SOQL, DML, or call Apex methods
Can make use of relationship objects

Apex triggers can be used in the following contexts:

Logic is complex
Bulk upsert conditions
To manipulate related records

6. Einstein for FSC

Einstein is a collection of AI-powered tools based on machine learning and natural language processing to analyse data, automate tasks, and provide insights. AI can enhance the efficiency of FSC processes to a great extent.Some useful cases of AI in FSC are:

To find patterns
Automate redundant jobs
Make smarter decisions.

Some useful Einstein add-ons / Products/tools for FSC are:

Einstein Analytics for Financial Services
Einstein summary
Prompt builders

Conclusion

Automating workflows in FSC plays a major role in ensuring customer satisfaction, enhancing efficiency, compliance, and more. Automation helps to eliminate manual tasks and errors, which helps to focus more on value-based customer interactions. As the financial industry continues to evolve further, Salesforce FSC and its automation features can make a valuable contribution towards digital transformation experiences.