by Philip Farah, AVP Head Digital Transformation Services, Global Accounts at World Wide Technology (WWT) for Global Banking & Finance Review
The financial services industry is going through profound change, as organisations ready themselves to welcome the next wave of digital technologies. The pandemic has also placed additional pressure on financial services to implement new digital technologies that can meet the ever-changing customer expectations. CIOs are now expected to anticipate and prepare for what the 'next normal' will bring. It has traditionally taken IT teams up to 18 months to roll out a new product in financial services, which, in today's age, is far too slow. Upping this pace of change is a key challenge for the financial services industry.
Lean and agile processes, which are used by the biggest tech companies in the world, can help. Adopting and implementing these principles will help teams to become more efficient.
Leading by example
In an industry where the service offering is a key competitive differentiator, the emergence of nimble fintechs, using agile principles, has placed pressure on other financial institutions to match them. Fintechs have shown that Agile and DevOps can accelerate the rate of innovation and reduce time to market. It is up to the rest of the industry to react to this.
Companies now understand they need to adopt lean and agile principles as it will help speed up the process of replacing legacy technologies with digital innovations. But how do large financial institutions adopt the lean and agile principles that will enable them to evolve and compete? One way is through the cloud.
