Isidorio Fernandes
Sr. VP Technology
IIFL Wealth Management
Insight of My Company and its IT Policies
IIFL Wealth Management is one of the Leading Wealth Management companies in India providing high end wealth management solutions to ultra HNI clients. We have recently won some of the prestigious awards in the finance space.
Our IT Strategies are clearly defined so as to ensure that all user are benefited along with the organization. We have ensured our hardware infrastructure is the best so as to make users adapt to the work challenges.
Views on new technologies
Cloud and Virtualization are the best thing to happen in the IT industry. With cloud the manageability and time to market has improved. Virtualization has also helped in bringing down the footprints in Data centre operations.
Resources to Keep Updated with Latest Technologies
Its through the friends in the industry and Internet, I have been reading the latest happenings on the Web and subscriptions.
Team Size
We are around 10-12 people Technology Team managing infrastructure, applications and maintaining Quality and Testing.
Biggest Pain Point
Data Security, Technology Selection and Business Continuity are some of the pain point for us in the fast changing technology work.
Technology to Heal Pain Points
Yes , A good software application or vendor will support a business decision. However, selecting a software application or vendor before knowing the design of your business is very risky. Most companies do not know their design and most IT solutions are considered to be a business failure for that reason.
Impact on IT Innovation during Slowdown
Yes, it is one of the key area we are evaluating to understand our processes and also areas we can improvise and gear up in times of good business.
Challenges Faced
We have ensured role based access to our users on the servers and databases. However there are certain challenges in terms of monitoring usage and data theft which we need to adequately protect during our day to day operations.
Adoption of Cloud Policy
We currently use IAAS, however we are in the process of adopting Cloud strategy for some of our applications, though our parent organization has already gone ahead and implemented a few Cloud based applications successfully.
Role of Cloud
We are evaluating the various options available and in discussion with Service Providers.
Expenses on IT Systems
In the range of $ 8-10 Million.
Expanding IT Budget
Though we have our budgets in place, it depends on a case to case basis depending on the criticality of the project.
IT Leader – Manager First or Technologist First
In my opinion a person should be a Manager first with a very good understanding of Technology though may not be hands on and should have a clear view to know about the positive and negative trends before implementing any new strategy.
ROI on the Technology
We have to ensure important guidelines of ROI and KRAs on established deadlines are met along with the company’s well-being. Even a small time outage can cripple us for a long time in terms of revenues and client visibility.
Eye on Latest Technology
Content Management System, CRM, Data Warehousing.
Relationship Between CIOs and CEOs
In Modern parlance CIOs are considered the Pillars of the organization and has to drive the organization technologically and both CEO and CIO have to have vision to take the organization to the next level and drive ahead of Competition.
Advice/ Suggestion
Prove your leadership capabilities. Understand, and partner with the business.
