Sydney’s 6th Annual Technology & Innovation – the Future of Banking & Financial Services
3 Nov 2011 by warrencammack, No Comments »
This event is always extremely enjoyable, firstly because the quality of the speakers is generally good but also because I also come away with a handful of ideas that can be implemented immediately.
Unfortunately due to a busy calendar I was only able to attend a few of the sessions (full list here) but here’s the overview of those I saw:
Keynote – Roy Gori, Chief Executive Officer, Citibank Australia
I’ve seen Roy talk a number of times about his career and the business side of Citi but never about IT. It must be difficult being the keynote speaker and Roy talked about the evolving impact of technology on banks and their customers, always a broad subject.Roy walked through a great case study of Tesco (UK Supermarket) that entered the Korean market. Aiming to be a major player without dramatically increasing the number of stores they operated they took a different tact to the norm. Tesco adopted “Home Plus” as their name in South Korea and then began looking at how they could solve the customer problem of not wanting to waste time shopping after a busy day at work. They used a very innovative way of providing the customers with the ability to browse a store and make purchases without ever entering a supermarket (and no – it wasn’t just an e-Commerce site!) – take a look at the Youtube video of the concept. Home Plus is now the number one in South Korea for online and the number two for offline. The question Roy asked the audience was whether Sony, apple or google could do the same thing with the financial services industry?
Key takeouts:
- Citi have release an ipad banking application, nothing that really pushes the boundaries but a good interface nonetheless.
- Financial services technology has never been at the cutting edge.
- In Australia over $3bn has been spent on infrastructure in banks over last few years.
- Banking experience is changing rapidly and customers expect the same level of experience in their bank branch as they do at an apple store.
- Customers expect extreme personalization and old local area marketing campaigns are no longer as effective as they once were.
Delivering business benefits through agile – Jeff smith (CEO, business services), Suncorp
Jeff was the most energetic speaker I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to – it was non stop fact/sound-bite after another. He covered Agile but from a cultural rather than technical perspective. When he joined Suncorp four years ago Jeff was asked why they spent four months designing something to save two weeks of rework – this increased the pressure to implement different ways of delivering projects.
Key Takeouts/Soundbites
- Example of Steve Ballmer’s comment that nobody would ever buy a phone for $500, especially with it not having a keyboard so it would never be used for business (in reference to the iPhone which was released the same day as the Zune).
- Suncorp had the problem of running multiple projects on multiple products across the same code base, however the biggest constraint was that of thought.
- Talent is the greatest commodity and cannot be outsourced.
- Innovation and evolvement needs an ecosystem of feedback and collaboration. They use Yammer at Suncorp, Jeff follows four people and groups a quarter.
- We’re never going to know everything, we have to be quick to make decisions. Taking to long goes back to old decisions.
- Financial services are the Worst people for building innovations, we have too much money and too much time
- Apple based their stores on the four seasons hotel. Focus on companies that have the best customer service.
- Apple are just as proud about what they don’t do as what they do.
- Be great at one thing.
- Measure your velocity.
- What’s next for Suncorp? They already have 95% of their infrastructure virtualised.
Reading list recommended by Jeff:
- The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything
- Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
- The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed
