With more than half a billion iPhones in circulation and in excess of 1.5 billion apps downloaded from the Apple App Store, there is no denying the interest in this touchscreen interface-based technology. Its popularity has grown drastically over the past two years, with enhanced user experience being a key driver.

Most tier one banks are currently considering use of tablets, with iPads gaining the most traction – research from Good Technology found that 37 per cent of all iPads in enterprise are used by financial services companies.

Given the current economic climate, there is a greater need for banks to grow revenues and provide better customer service. iPads, and other similar tablets, have the potential to transform banks’ working practices to become more collaborative and dynamic. Typically tablet users have greater access to information with better graphics and analytics to support decision making that can be built into a business process workflow.

The ability to expand the screen with your fingertips makes data easier to review, digest and analyse more quickly. At the same time, that information can be instantly corroborated with external data points. As more retail banks embrace mobile banking as a service to customers, tablets offer an enhanced experience with graphical interfaces and easily accessible information.

As the price of tablets fall, in certain markets such as Asia, Africa and the Middle East, tier one banks have the opportunity to expand their mobile banking offerings from mobile devices to tablets. In many cases consumers can enjoy a more personalised customer experience to help improve relationship management, and help banks form a closer bond with the customer.

Tablets can help support complex critical applications for banks. Support can be simplified because the precise details of an event can be emailed through to an iPhone and, in the case of an iPad, there’s the potential to provide additional information to help analyse and fix an issue more efficiently.

Tablet usage in commercial environment is driven by the desire to make analytical information more easily available, in real-time, to help decision-making and provide greater support. Retail banks use the iPad in this way, enabling staff to provide a better customer experience – from the ability to show credit card and mortgage analytics to accessing account balances quickly.

In investment banking, tablets can add value in areas from foreign exchange trading, risk management to pricing analysis. The iPad has a full set of features and rich functionalities, from data down to the models and trading, that’s viewable anywhere at any time.

Many banks are already embracing the concept of the ‘app store’ to provide enterprise-wide access to corporate solutions. Fuelled by the success of Apple, several are downloading their own in-house applications, securely encrypted according to the banks’ regulations.

Another global financial services firm unveiled an application allowing its clients to access the bank’s research on mobile phones. Another firm followed with its own equity and fixed-income research application, and a leading asset management and securities services company developed a custody application to provide reports and instruction authorisation to institutional clients via the iPad. Software applications can be approved, posted and potentially even monetised on a corporate-wide directory.

The introduction of tablets into a corporate banking environment poses a challenge because it creates another device to control and monitor. However, given that many banks have already embraced the iPhone, this needn’t be a major issue. Security of the iPad applications themselves, based on our experiences so far, does not throw up any major challenges.

The cost of introducing tablets to the workplace is also not especially prohibitive. The main challenge lies in the effort required to support the introduction of these devices into the banking environment - controlling the infrastructure, guaranteeing security and ensuring the working environment is ready.

The perceived benefit from the increased sales and productivity that can result from improved relationship management, or the creation of an enhanced user experience, has to be strong enough to absorb these challenges.

The iPad offers a potentially disruptive technology, offering a personalised, richer and more meaningful user experience than before. This is the ‘future of work’ in practice. Banks shouldn’t introduce iPads for the sake of technology alone, but only if it suits their business objectives.

The question to ask is ‘what do customers really want?’ Ultimately, they want to make fast decisions in an informed way, in a manner and at a time that suits them.