The areas in business environment where solutions do not yet exist or not up to the mark, and which if existed, would've made job easier
YES BANK has evolved to address these IT issues with the use of cloud platforms to access technology at the appropriate pace and intensity that is essential for the Bank. This also helps in minimizing up- front capital investments and gives the flexibility required to tap new technologies, as they become available without being tied to legacy investments. Also, the bank is deploying vendor agnostic solutions with no lockin arrangement and design flexibility, to move away from a dependent model to hybrid, and then to a self sufficient model.
Technology trends impacting enterprise business environment
Some of the key technology advancements that are of great interest to YES BANK are:
Analytics: Advanced business intelligence and analytics are the keys to better information at lower cost. BI can enable advanced analytical abilities which will help banks in creating personalized customer experience, service differentiation and customer acquisition. “Insights 2 Engage” is YES BANK’s in- house initiative to develop a holistic single interface for managing the complete spectrum of customer engagement including:
• Customer demography and physiographic details
• Products, relationships and complete cross holding with bank
• Channels and service analytics including transaction/ channel preference
• Servicing and communications history
• Opportunities, alerts, promotions, key insights and tasks for the customer
Cloud: YES BANK has always believed and is among early adopters of cloud based services in banking with the first mover implementation in payments, online account opening and remittance services.
Social Media: Banks are active users of social media to communicate new product/ service launch, to branch closures. Banks are also using social media in understanding customer needs.
Mobile: Mobility has become the need of the hour due to its convenience of being available anytime, anywhere. It is the fastest- growing platform for banking interactions and transactions, and could also be used for customer on- boarding, lead capture, cross selling, etc.
My roles and responsibilities as a CIO/My advice to fellow CIOs
The CIO’s role has evolved significantly over the last few years. New research has found that the role of the CIO will change fundamentally over the next few years towards consultancy and mediation. The CIO has become an enabler and not a blocker. Accordingly, personally, I feel that the role includes building strategic partnerships with some of the best IT majors, develop innovative system features in order to improve process efficiencies and create sector- specific solutions.
At YES BANK, we have moved technology function to a "serviceoriented architecture," where solutions are procured as a service from multiple vendors.
YES BANK heavily outsources its technology requirements. This has paid off in many ways. For one, it allows the bank to shift management focus away from routine tasks to "business transformation" projects, to driving growth. It has also resulted in lower investments in technology infrastructure and can also operate with smaller IT teams, giving it flexibility and agility.
"We heavily outsource technology requirements. This has paid off in many ways."
