Let's talk a bit about Internet banking. You've been particularly involved in OCBC's Velocity application for corporate banking. How has it changed the way banking is done and are you looking to improve it?
I think Internet banking to date has been what I call a 'pull' (factor) where clients come to the Web site for information. They interact with us when they log on to OCBC.com. Velocity for the corporate side has built tremendous volume and activity. We currently process billions of dollars of transactions per month. The plan now is to make it even more interactive, so we're looking at creating a 'push' (factor).

Today we're balancing two channels. The call center channel is important, and we're not going to give that up. As our business grows in Singapore, Malaysia and eventually Indonesia, the call center will continue to grow, but we've got to limit or control that growth because it's expensive. On the other hand, while the Internet is an expensive channel, it's less costly than a call center. So we've got to try and migrate activities from the call center into the Internet channel, leaving the call center to handle richer activities, such as selling or complex problem-solving.

If you leave the Internet as the way it is, is it enough? The answer is no, because you're still relying on the customer to come in and pull information. The question is how do we 'push' information to clients on the corporate banking side. Do we wait for the customer to dial in and check if the funds are in or their cheques are cleared, or wait for him to come to the Internet to see if there is an action that he needs to approve? Or do we use existing technology like e-mail or SMS to push alerts out to the clients? Is there a good, cheap, efficient way to push that kind of information to the customer? This, we think, is the next wave, and that's what we're working on.

What about the consumer banking side?
Same thing, but we're working on the corporate banking side first.

Why corporate banking, and not consumer banking, first?
We are staging this, and there are also other development work going on with the consumer Internet channel. For the corporate cash management system, the business revenue potential is high.

Is what OCBC doing in line with the industry, or are you setting the pace ahead of everyone else?
A lot of people are looking at this, too. But it's a matter of who executes better and faster. The idea is not revolutionary, but the execution will be the real challenge.

What else are you working on?
By the third quarter, I'll have IT working with the business units to establish the technology roadmaps. For example, in consumer banking, what is their technology roadmap for the medium-term? Even if the board or the CEO gives us, say, $100 million to spend, do we have enough people in IT to deploy everything? Do we have the bandwidth? Does the business have the bandwidth to change the processes that might? It's all about prioritization, but we need a clear roadmap on how we stage business deployment, systems replacement. And we want it to be well defined--the estimated costs--so that when we go into the four-quarter budget cycle, the businesses will already know what we need, what we can afford based on the 2006 revenue plan. So I'm also trying to ensure there's a structured approach to technology.

This again forces the technology people and the operations people to be linked up closely with the business. So they are not 'backroom'. They are the core engine. If the lights (our technology systems) go out at 9am, and 10am we're opening the branches, can the bank do without the sales people? I believe we can go through the day, if a few members of our sales force are down with the flu bug and don't show up for work. But if the lights go out with the teller systems and ATM systems, we would be severely impacted as an organization. So, for operations and technology, it's very much a core engine. We want to tie them more closely with the business.

What keeps you awake at night?
Two things: One is making sure the 'business as usual' is preserved--ensuring that when we open for business, we can throw the lights on. The other is to ensure we make the correct strategic IT investments, because technology is still very expensive.

What aspects are expensive? Haven't hardware prices come down, and software is supposed to be easier to implement?
Our technology bill is still very high. We're doing more: innovating, providing more services, we're improving our services, and investing in more systems than before. Some of these are strategic--and big investments. Today, we're at the crossroads on what is the next stage for our global data warehouse which will be a significant capital investment. So the technology partner we choose must be the right one because that's going to be a long term relationship.

To what extent has the consolidation of the IT industry made it more difficult for you to find the right technology partner?
There are fewer players now. But I still think that at the end of the day, even if we pick the right partner, do we have the right team? The sad part is that in the last 60 days, I've found the industry to be one that is geared towards product selling, rather than solutions providing.

But aren't the vendors all preaching solutions now?
Within OCBC, we have a technology strategy and architecture laid out. Have we shared this with the leading technology partners? I'm open into making sure that we do, maybe not for all our IT vendors but certainly with our three or four key partners who should know our IT strategy intimately. But I don't think we've done that. On the flip side, has anyone asked us? No, so it's ironic. The vendors say they are selling solutions, and yet there's no strong overwhelming curiosity on their end to understand and dissect the bank, to understand where we're at. What are our IT systems constraints? How are we migrating? How are we evolving? They've not asked us these questions. At the moment, we still deal with each other tactically, and they're flogging products, not solutions. So that's a challenge, but we've started with one technology partner, and that's working out quite well. We've shared our overseas expansion and business plans, and with proper follow up, we should have a pretty good roadmap developed together with our key technology partners.

 Previous 1 2 

	Back to CIO Vision Series

Post your message here