IT WORK IN BANKS CONSTITUTES AN INCREASINGLY CENTRAL CONCEPT AND SUCCESS FACTOR

Whilst a great majority of bank services are being provided with the support of IT, increased regulatory requirements, markedly changed customer behaviour along with the demand for automation to save costs place additional demands on the performance capabilities of IT architectures and processes.

These challenges are only successfully met when IT work is viewed comprehensively and positioned in collusion with all parties involved. This approach is increasingly coming to the fore for bank authorities, leading to stricter requirements both for IT operations and its strategic advancement.

CONFLICT BETWEEN REQUIREMENTS, ECONOMIC VIABILITY AND REGULATORY STRUCTURES

Banking IT needs to optimise the core service requirements created by the conflicting needs of high degree expertise, economic viability and manageability/regulatory structures.

Illustration: Key requirements for IT

The imminent challenges can be used to drive positive IT development when all IT control parameters (IT demand, architecture, costs, resources and risks) and their interdependencies are considered as a whole and managed purposefully.

IT POSITIONING

With respect to positioning IT this means that aside from their core activities (IT operations and advancement), it should also have a control function to ensure a comprehensive view as well as an integration function to protect the overall interests of the bank.

Combined with the business objectives of the bank, it’s important to shape and implement the IT position through organisational structures and processes, and to make these binding and measurable by means of an IT strategy.

MONITORING FURTHER DEVELOPMENT IN IT

For years we have successfully supported our customers in positioning and advancing their IT along with developing their IT strategies. In this respect our primary objective is not only to ensure compliance with legal provisions but to also use the IT strategy as a guide for their employees for how IT can be successfully used as a component part in the achievement of business objectives.

Our Group, EUROGROUP CONSULTING, offers solutions in the following branches:

1. IT Architecture
2. IT/ORG Restructuring
3. IT/ORG-Assessment
4. IT/ORG-Compliance
5. ORG/IT 4.0 for Regional banks and Sparkassen (Savings Banks)

MOBILIZATION EFFECTED SUCCESSFUL STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION IN A LARGE AUSTRIAN REGIONAL BANK

Following a series of mergers and the resulting organizational and technology projects, our customer initially lost its overview of the majority of its employees and subsequently also success in business. The institute needed a new strategy and a sustainable shared identity.

INCLUDE MANAGEMENT AND EMPLOYEES IN STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT

According to our mobilization mission statement we know that successful restructuring is only achieved when management and employees become ambassadors of change, which in turn necessitates active and credible involvement in strategy development.

To achieve this, each of the three teams set up develops one of the three main strategy modules:

Illustration EGC strategy model: Homogeneity is required among the fields

Our understanding of strategy is based on the business philosophy, that is, the question of competitive differentiation and institute identity. An organization should be able to answer of why you would need to establish your ‘own’ institute if it did not already exist?

The ‘direction’ module includes all ideas constituting strategic objective, so business area strategies, planning and performance measurement.

The ‘power’ module answers all the questions relating to the requirements for successful implementation of strategic decisions such as capacities, know-how and structures/processes.

THE COMPETITION FOR THE BEST IDEA

The overlap of content in the three topics caused the teams to compete for the best idea for the strategy of the bank (mobilization) EUROGROUP CONSULTING consultants support team work and developing creative proposals. This broad-based and stable process has enabled us to develop a new business strategy with a clear objective.

The associated identification of the organization in conjunction with the redirection of the business strategy formed the basis for successful economic development.

In addition to the support in preparing and refining the business strategy, EUROGROUP CONSULTING also provides other solutions related to strategy.

SALES MOBILIZATION: SEVERAL BANKS USE A EUROGROUP CONSULTING MODEL TO SIGNIFICANTLY IMPROVE SALES RESULTS

Due to a change in the business environment, all sales organizations in banks and insurance companies face the challenge of significantly improving how existing potential returns in sales are handled and exploited than before, without losing sight of the customer focus through pure product sales.

It has long been known that this route is only possible by changing the behaviour of the sales employees. Attempts to achieve this via changed control incentives and impetus have not been successful so far.

RESULTS ARE GOOD, THE FUN RETURNS

The sales mobilization concept has provided an entirely new approach which animates sales teams (e.g. branch teams) to mobilize their powers to outdo other teams by means of a competition model (league model).

What appears to be a rather simple model at first glance leads to a fundamental shift in the leadership work in sales, as the main stimulus no longer originates from the hierarchy (vertical control impetus) but from competition between the teams (horizontal control impetus). This not only yields significantly better sales results but brings back a certain fun factor in local sales activities.

TOP INSTITUTES GET EVEN BETTER

EUROGROUP CONSULTING has meanwhile introduced sales mobilization in a number of banks of different sizes and without exception there have been marked and lasting increases in the level of performance and enjoyment.

Sales mobilization guarantees a noticeable and measurable step towards a clear intensification of exploiting market potential for institutes hoping for an initial impulse in their sales operations as well as institutes wishing to further improve their high level of performance.

PACKAGE SOLUTION

Furthermore, sales mobilization is successfully applied to improve the requirements of digital marketing processes (concluding online agreements, ePostfach services, etc.) or to successfully deal with the classic problem areas of marketing such as the youth market (bathtub effect).

The concept is a package with all preparation, pilot testing as well as monitoring the rollout and all aspects of professional support (control information), evaluation tools and organization concepts all in one.

We also support sales with another area of expertise:

• Omnichannel strategy

Industrialization approaches have been promoted for more than three decades in the financial services industry and have reached varying degrees of maturity in individual companies. Driven by great success in the automotive and manufacturing industry, high profitability, better quality or lower operative risks beckoned.

The crises in recent years from the collapse of the New Economy through to the Lehman bankruptcy and the debt crisis have created a tsunami of regulatory requirements. The digital revolution and the ongoing low interest era quickly presented new drivers which have presented completely new challenges, testing the adaptability of the financial services industry to this day.

‘CLASSIC’ INDUSTRIALIZATION APPROACHES ARE NOT SUSTAINABLE

In the past various industrialization approaches such as process optimization or lean management initiatives were introduced in the financial services industry, mostly on a selective basis, which achieved quite respectable results. Very often however the improvements achieved fell flat and could not be turned into a sustainable development.

Although in other industries yield forecasts and cost pressures are of a completely different order (return on capital: Automotive industry 3-5% vs. financial services industry up to 25%), the financial services industry quickly returned to familiar patterns despite large setbacks.

This ‘golden era’ is now over. The future therefore requires the same consequence and discipline in improving profitability as e.g. the automotive industry demonstrated after their great crisis.

THE EGC INDUSTRIALIZATION FRAMEWORK

New challenges in the financial services industry with regard to cost effectiveness, time-to-market, product innovation and regulatory compliance are unlikely to be achieved with tactical measures any longer.

EUROGROUP CONSULTING in cooperation with its nextcontinent Partner P3 has therefore developed an industrialization framework that simultaneously provides and implements a comprehensive and sustainable concept for industrialization initiatives for financial service providers whilst integrating current endeavours.

Reference model: Industrialization framework

EUROGROUP CONSULTING further offers fully developed industrialization solutions from the industrialization framework modules, providing guidelines for entering the new age of industrialization:

1. Integrated Service Architecture
2. Profitability of the Product Portfolio
3. Systematic Optimization
4. Quick Check Digitisation
5. RPA

The EGC industrialization approach can be applied either individually or as a whole, depending on customer requirements.

SUCCESS FACTORS OF STRATEGIC SPECIALIST AND IT MANAGEMENT OF MAJOR PROJECTS

In the course of continuously increasing regulatory requirements and changing customer needs many banks are coming under significant pressure to change. They culminate in increasing project portfolios with large transformation projects. Large transformation projects in bank IT are however still accompanied by the risk of missing their basic objectives. This applies despite the implementation of numerous standard measures now in place, such as risk management and monitoring by internal audit reviews and auditors.

EUROGROUP CONSULTING has monitored the implementation of such projects and also conducted reviews of major projects in the German bank IT area. EUROGROUP CONSULTING has derived from this its own approach to support program management.

ORGANIZATION AND EFFECT

The basic philosophy of our approach is to view both indispensable and sufficient factors combined for project management to be successful.

Illustration: ‘Organization’ and ‘effect’ as complementary elements in project management

We believe ‘Organization’ is not the essentials, whereas ‘effect’ is the decisive element of successful project management:

•  ‘Organization’ is often viewed without sufficient ‘effect’.
•  A lack of ‘effect’ is however often apparent from a lack of ‘organization’.

Methods derived from this basic philosophy have been applied to develop efficient project structuring, project reviews to create added value as well as project portfolio management. These include:

• Specialist and IT Project Audits
• Project Portfolio Management
• Project Coaching

The retail banking market is experiencing massive changes: Payments are gaining increasing strategic importance as users move from banks to providers addressing their real needs and providing payment solutions using the open banking account interface.

CURRENT TOP PAYMENT TRENDS

CHALLENGES FOR BANKS AND FINANCIAL SERVICE PROVIDERS

OUR SERVICES

1. Payment Reality Check: Our Rubik’s Cube of Payment checks your payment reality with a customer view, P&L view and process view.
2. Strategic Fit: We help you develop and execute a business strategy focussed on customer relevance and customer value according to our eco-system approach.
3. Intelligent Sourcing: We analyse your end-to-end value chain with a focus on business, IT and operations, and help you make the right decisions when it comes to Make, Buy or Partner.

Starting with our Payment Reality Check, we analyse the maturity and efficiency of your existing payment positioning.

With our deep market knowledge and experience we help you improve your position in the fast-changing payment-landscape and give you access to our international partner network.