Bank technology Executives Are Challenged to Do More With Less

The primary challenge for bank technology executives will be to do more with less. Technology can enable banks to increase revenue while continuing to reduce their costs, and I recommend the following:

• Decrease the number of vendors. Banks need to standardize buying processes and significantly reduce their number of vendors to meet budgetary restraints.
• Reduce complexity. Standardize as much as possible; differentiate when necessary. Consolidate IT platforms, decrease the number of interface points and harmonize user interfaces.
• Adopt service-oriented architecture (SOA). Banks need to create a stepwise, long-term approach to SOA to enable production at lower cost, provide high flexibility to adapt to customer demands, and facilitate customer-specific offerings and pricing.
• Invest in pricing technology. Banks are switching from a cost-driven to a demand-driven model. Pricing will take into account more parameters, in faster cycles. Pricing technology will allow banks to optimize profit, volume or a combination of the two.