In this article we will review not only the basic issues of technology management such as cost, delivery and quality, but also some of the more peripheral issues such as the convergance and geopolitical influences, attention to which can make the difference between good technology management and excellent technology management. Most people's cosy view of technology is that a department somewhere is responsible for technology and that somehow there's a plan and technology will somehow fit and be a natural evolution of some technology we already have.
This is only partly true. Yes, there are departments full of technology professionals, but there's no plan. Managing technology today is mostly about managing change. To manage change effectively we have to consider the basics of resource, cost and benefit, but also some of the more exotic issues that can impact the process.
Financial services has historically been, and is still to a large extent, an extremely conservative profession. Financial Services is not typically ‘early adopters' of technology. The market in which we work involves people's money and they want to know that we look after it in a sober and controlled fashion. Although this philosophy continues to exist, the time difference between an early adoptive technology and a mature technology is becoming much shorter. The effect is that banks can now appear, if they're not careful, as if they are early adopters, and that can have impacts on their customer's perceptions. Early adopters, by definition, are used to taking more risks; they accept a certain level of pain in order to get at the supposed gain - which could be a more efficient process or just as likely a competitive advantage through having a particular image.
Mature market participants don't have the same characteristics. So banks with ‘early adopter' styles tend to have younger customer bases within the retail segment. There is also a similar correlation to market segment. Retail financial services are more aligned to early adopter methodologies while wholesale financial services are more aligned to mature market methodologies and technology. This has major impacts on the types of technology that each is prepared to deploy and hence on the management of deployment. The role of the technology strategist within the firm is therefore to: understand the business environment, identify new technologies, understand new technologies, identify how the business can benefit, engage change management and engage process management.
Now the other side of this coin is to look at the levels of technology involved. This will vary depending on the size of the firm. For small retailoriented financial services firms, the available resources and expertise will be quite different from those of a large wholesale bank. However in both, managers will need to take account of the following:
1. Systems,
2. Servers and
3. Applications.
So, we've now begun to see that managing technology is not just about running a software implementation project. Strategically, we have only just begun. Before we can get to actual implementation we have to understand the style of the organisation both in terms of its customer base, their expectations and the people who work in it. The philosophy and market style of the organisation will determine whether they are early adopters or mature users.
That decided, the decision moves on to the resources available. Early adopter or disruptive technologies are generally more expensive. It is also true in the current environment that, particularly in the applications field, technology is more viral in nature. The result is that when planning resources, technology strategists will need to take account of almost logarithmic potential growth, compare with FaceBook. Keeping up with these kinds of growth trends is by no means easy and is often forgotten. For every FaceBook, there were at least ten similar concepts that failed.
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