Em todos os setores, os inovadores digitais estão aumentando os padrões de atendimento ao cliente a cada dia, oferecendo matrizes em constante expansão de serviços de ponta, serviços e recursos de ponta digitalmente. Exemplos proeminentes incluem
These new offerings and enhancements are driving customers’ expectations higher for all businesses, including banks and insurers—and these institutions are being forced to respond. The need for banks and insurers to improve their digital capabilities is becoming even more urgent with the emergence of new market entrants and services (such as Apple Pay) from the “fintech” and technology sectors, which are attacking banks’ and insurers’ core businesses and reshaping those industries.
To meet these challenges, banks and insurers are embarking on a comprehensive digitization journey, one that is different from O caminho que eles estavam há apenas três anos, quando seus esforços foram confinados em grande parte a iniciativas isoladas, como projetos de big data focados na divisão, o lançamento de aplicativos individuais e melhorias em seus canais on-line e móveis. Hoje, bancos e seguradoras estão mudando a maneira como interagem com os clientes, oferecendo aos clientes uma gama mais ampla de opções e um maior controle sobre a própria interação. Bancos e seguradoras também estão fornecendo aos clientes novas funcionalidades digitais e ativadas digitalmente, como
But banks and insurers are not focusing solely on improving the front end. Several institutions have also started to upgrade their back-end operations, which is often a much more complex challenge. A number of banks, for example, have begun to establish multidimensional master-data-management capabilities, strengthening their ability to leverage big data, meet regulatory requirements, and ensure consistent and timely reporting. Others are adopting agile ways of working, deploying
Algumas instituições financeiras estão aprimorando esses esforços, aumentando a padronização de sua infraestrutura, bem como o uso da implantação automatizada, medidas que podem suportar um ciclo de liberação de software mais rápida e melhor alavancar o desenvolvimento front-end. A GE Capital, por exemplo, desenvolveu seu inovador aplicativo de otimizador de frota, que visa otimizar as taxas de gastos e utilização para clientes do negócio de serviços de frota da empresa, dentro de 70 dias-do quadro branco à produção-com o que é uma entrega contínua e uma maior padronização. entregar mudanças de etapa na velocidade e eficiência. O piloto automático de Arago, por exemplo, pode completar 80% de todas as tarefas de gerenciamento de serviços de TI de forma autônoma. Além disso, essas instituições estão experimentando novas tecnologias voltadas para o cliente. O Deutsche Bank, por exemplo, adicionou à sua plataforma de investimento on -line um "Robo Advisor", que usa algoritmos para criar portfólios para investidores. Mas chegar lá colocará uma pressão significativa nos departamentos de TI e, especialmente, diretores de informação, que podem desempenhar um papel determinante para garantir que suas empresas estejam prontas e capazes de se tornar verdadeiramente empresas digitais. (Ver
Some banks and insurers are also experimenting with new and evolving digital technologies, such as robotics process automation and self-learning machines, which together have the potential to deliver step changes in speed and efficiency. Arago’s AutoPilot, for example, can complete 80% of all IT service management tasks autonomously. In addition, these institutions are experimenting with new, customer-facing technologies. Deutsche Bank, for example, has added to its online investment platform a “robo advisor,” which uses algorithms to create portfolios for investors.
Overhauling their digital capabilities promises to have a transformative effect on banks’ and insurers’ business. But getting there will put a significant strain on IT departments and, especially, chief information officers, who can play a determining role in ensuring that their companies are ready and able to become truly digital enterprises. (See
Reformando -o para a era digital
, BCG Focus, março de 2016, para uma visão mais profunda de oportunidades e desafios relacionados ao seu papel corporativo na transformação digital.) Infraestrutura.
Enabling Transformation
To successfully transform themselves into truly digital enterprises, banks and insurers must adopt or develop four critical elements or capabilities (see Exhibit 1):
- A simplified application landscape and infrastructure.
- Gerenciamento de dados mestre multidimensional.
- Fully automated delivery processes based on the principles of continuous delivery and DevOps.
- An agile workforce, and a new way of working, across IT and the business.
Uma paisagem e infraestrutura de aplicativos simplificados. Eles foram criados aplicativos por aplicativo ao longo do tempo e agora incluem várias plataformas, pilhas de infraestrutura, tecnologias e aplicativos personalizados ou cultivados em casa, geralmente com várias versões ou variações de cada uma. Como resultado, eles geralmente são incapazes de capacidade de resposta em tempo real. Eles também são difíceis e caros de manter, o que significa menos valor entregue por dólar gasto nele. Esse é um enorme responsabilidade em um mundo em que os clientes esperam que os serviços digitais estejam disponíveis 24/7. Além disso, a mistura de tecnologias e metodologias empregadas-por exemplo, componentes em lote e diálogo-torna muito difícil implementar o processamento de ponta a ponta em tempo real (um componente crítico dos serviços digitais, como a verificação e os pagamentos em tempo real). Seguindo o líder de empresas nascidas na Web, como Spotify e Netflix, elas estão substituindo interfaces complexas e ônibus centralizados por interfaces mais flexíveis e descentralizadas, como como The application landscapes and infrastructures of most banks and insurers are complex, fragmented, and full of legacy assets. They were built application by application over time and now include various platforms, infrastructure stacks, technologies, and customized or home-grown applications, often with several versions or variations of each. As a result, they are typically incapable of real-time responsiveness. They are also difficult and expensive to maintain, which ultimately means less value delivered per dollar spent on IT.
In addition, these environments are susceptible to broad reductions in service availability if one part of the chain breaks down. This is a huge liability in a world where customers expect digital services to be available 24/7. Further, the mix of technologies and methodologies employed—for example, batch and dialog components—makes it very difficult to implement real-time, end-to-end processing (a critical component of digital services such as real-time loan verification and payments).
To remedy this and ready themselves for digital transformation, banks and insurers are striving to simplify their application and infrastructure architectures and decouple their application landscapes. Following the lead of Web-born companies such as Spotify and Netflix, they are replacing complex interfaces and centralized service buses with more flexible, decentralized interfaces, such as
Financial institutions are also replacing their legacy applications with new technologies to enable straight-through processing. Our experience suggests that banks and insurers can gain outsized benefits by decommissioning not just some applications but entire platforms—for example, replacing mainframe hardware and software with a fully automated (and hence considerably cheaper) x86-based cloud server.
A success story here is Australia’s ING Direct, the country’s first fully cloud-enabled bank, which transformed itself with its Bank in a Box platform. By replacing its legacy infrastructure with “zero touch,” cloud-based hardware, ING Direct has gained several critical advantages, including greater automation and scalability of processes. This encapsulation of infrastructure is allowing the bank to focus on the development of digital services—a core competitive differentiator—rather than on infrastructure, which is essentially a commodity. The effort has been such a success in Australia that ING Direct is deploying it globally. The availability of new virtualization technologies, such as those produced by Docker, will make it easier for other financial services companies to go down this path.
Leading IT organizations at financial services companies are supporting these measures with significant efforts toward standardization and complexity reduction. We have observed that standardization works best when it is driven centrally and when it is mandatory for all parties. This approach translates into accelerated automation, leading to faster, more efficient development of digital services (as well as greater value per dollar of IT spending).
Collectively, actions such as these can create a simple, decoupled architecture that allows quick changes and reduces the need for testing. Infrastructure costs fall significantly because cheap, automated commodity hardware replaces costly legacy hardware, freeing up budget to develop digital services. And the use of APIs and microservices reduces dependencies among applications. This, in turn, improves service availability—a core differentiator in a digital business model. Such an architectural foundation is also a good starting point for unleashing the full power of agile methodologies and continuous delivery, which can enable rapid releases to production and accelerate the company’s digital transformation. (See Exhibit 2.)
Multidimensional Master Data Management. A consistent view of the company’s data—meaning that all data related to a particular service, customer, or other business-related object or process, as well as relevant data from third-party providers, is stored together in a consistent way—is a foundation for most digital applications. For example, integrated customer journeys (with the customer initiating a transaction or process in one channel and continuing or finishing it in another) require a high degree of data consistency to permit seamless switching among channels.
Most banks and insurers, however, still struggle to get consistent, high-quality sets of data that are free of redundancies. They employ several different database management systems and data models. Legacy applications are often connected to their own databases, translating into a high level of redundancy in physical and logical data storage across the organization. Typically, such systems can store, process, and analyze only structured data—meaning that these institutions can only leverage approximately 20% to 30% of the data potentially available to them. (This is because their legacy systems typically cannot store unstructured data, which includes such things as pictures, movies, tweets, and Facebook posts.) And the high cost of proprietary storage systems drives up data-related costs materially.
Some banks and insurers, however, have substantially elevated their capabilities on this front. They are working to revamp their data management practices and provide a digital-ready data infrastructure. They aim to replace inconsistent data pools with shared-data clusters to ensure data integrity and data access by all systems, enabling seamless customer journeys and end-to-end processing. Note that these efforts do not entail replacing all existing data stores; rather, they require the use of technical and conceptual layers to eliminate or manage redundancies and ensure consistency.
Vários bancos e seguradoras líderes também estão considerando o uso de
Fully Automated Delivery Processes Based on the Principles of Continuous Delivery and DevOps. Banks and insurance companies often release software according to fixed, unyielding schedules. Testing is often still performed manually or in semiautomated fashion and primarily occurs at the end of projects or “sprints,” after hundreds to tens of thousands of lines of code have been written. There are long cycle times for deployment and lengthy lead times for infrastructure provisioning.
These institutions can take their development practices to the next level by using continuous-delivery software engineering and DevOps to fully automate their delivery processes. But this requires a change in the demarcation line between development and operations and infrastructure: developers and operations staff must work together in joint teams, and teams access standardized infrastructure based on an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) model.
To be sure, most banks and insurers will not be releasing software to production on a daily basis. But a daily error-free build in the development environment can lead to a zero-defect mentality among staff and eliminate the need for huge testing cycles at the end of projects or sprints. It also increases the quality of the software produced and therefore the stability of digital-service provisioning. This can reduce errors by as much as 50%, freeing up funds that can be used for digital transformation. Another advantage of such an environment is that developers can self-deploy using self-service portals (rather than having to engage the infrastructure department), which can increase speed to market for new services by up to 20%. The resulting rapid-release cycles also enable fast deployment of new functionalities, which can further differentiate the institution from competitors.
Multiple companies can attest to the benefits of this approach. Union Bank, for example, has realized an 80% reduction in testing costs and slashed the time necessary for setting up development environments from 42 to 3 days. Nationwide Insurance has reduced critical defects by 80% and increased system availability by 70%.
An Agile Workforce, and a New Way of Working, Across IT and the Business. Our observations indicate that the software development process in many banks and insurance companies is far from optimal. Development teams remain intact only for the duration of their respective projects and work in isolation from the business. Developers focus on completing projects and take no responsibility for the full life cycle of the applications they create; instead, they pass their work along to operations, which takes care of maintenance and fixing bugs. Team members are often geographically dispersed, making it difficult to react to changing market requirements.
Agile methodologies can help overcome these problems. Success, however, depends on how they are deployed. Agile teams perform best when they are multifunctional—meaning they include business staff, developers, product management personnel, data analytics staff, and user-interface and user-experience design personnel, among others—and when their members are co-located. They also tend to do well when they focus on features rather than components. This model gives each team a long-term mandate, fostering end-to-end accountability as well as the accumulation of deep, specific knowledge by developers, which can increase their productivity significantly. It also allows teams to operate with a relatively high degree of autonomy when it comes to handling incidents and structuring the development process. (See Exhibit 3.) This close interaction between the business and IT, combined with each team’s ownership of the digital service it is working on, boosts efficiency and ensures that only the features that the business and client really need are developed.
A maioria dos bancos e seguradoras hoje está experimentando pelo menos o Agile. Muitos lançaram pilotos que o implantam ou possuem equipes de desenvolvimento (focadas em aplicativos móveis, por exemplo) que o estão usando. E alguns desses esforços foram bastante bem -sucedidos. Mas muitas instituições estão lutando para aumentar o ágil em toda a organização de maneira benéfica. Aqui, bancos e seguradoras podem aprender muito com vários "disruptores digitais", empresas que encontraram uma maneira de implantar o Agile em escala. O Ing Bank, por exemplo, adotou com êxito a abordagem de base ágil do Spotify, que usa "esquadrões"-equipes de vida entre os componentes cruzadas e de vida cruzada, dedicadas a recursos específicos do cliente e que permanecem juntos por anos, não apenas pela duração de um projeto. (Para saber mais sobre como os bancos estão escalando ágil, veja O poder das pessoas na transformação bancária digital= , BCG Focus, novembro de 2015.)
A implementação do Agile não apenas melhora a eficiência da equipe de desenvolvimento, mas também ajuda a atrair talentos de TI de alto desempenho. A pesquisa do BCG mostra que um ambiente ágil promove as qualidades que são altamente valorizadas pelo talento de primeira linha de hoje-em particular, uma apreciação pelo trabalho de alguém e um bom relacionamento com os colegas. Atrair o talento certo pode ser um diferenciador crítico para bancos e seguradoras no ambiente digital em rápida evolução de hoje. (Ver "
Making the Right Moves
For banks and insurers, digital transformation can be an exciting journey as well as an extremely rewarding one commercially. (See “ Construindo uma função de TI bancária de ponta , "Artigo do BCG, dezembro de 2015.) Acreditamos que as etapas a seguir são críticas para um forte sucesso de início e final:
- Projete uma arquitetura de alvo áspera - aplicações, infraestrutura e dados e operações de TI: a base de operação e a base de TI: a base de TI: a arquitetura de TI: a arquitetura inteira e a base de TI e a arquitetura de TI e a base de TI e a arquitetura de TI e a base de TI e o esforço de IT é uma iniciativa de TI: a organização de TI e a arquitetura inteira da TI e a base de TI e a base de TI e a arquitetura de TI e a base de TI e a base de TI e a base de TI e a empresa de TI e a base de TI e o esforço é uma iniciativa de parte de cima. deve ser detalhado sucessivamente nos meses seguintes. Way. The design effort should be a joint initiative that involves the entire IT organization: architects, application domains, operations, and infrastructure. The target architecture should be successively detailed in the months ahead.
- Be agile in planning but apply rigorous program management to ensure progress. Move toward the target architecture, even if the path is not fully visible. A wave-based approach (allotting, for example, six months per wave) can help the company deal successfully with uncertainty. It can also help it to quickly embark on the transformation and adjust to requirements that change along the way.
- Faça a automação do processo de entrega uma prioridade superior. Como regra ao migrar para uma nova paisagem -alvo, foco Strive for fast automation of core systems and the application and infrastructure delivery process. As a rule when migrating to a new target landscape, focus
primeiro na migração e segundo na automação. 6 6 Uma exceção pode ser quando os componentes herdados permanecerão no local por vários anos. Nesses casos, pode ser benéfico também automatizar essas partes do cenário do aplicativo. - Escala ágil. Observamos que nas empresas líderes, a maioria dos pilotos e iniciativas ágeis começa antes de serem expandidas em todo o negócio. Os pilotos são o ponto de partida para a construção de uma organização ágil em escala que está alinhada com a visão e os objetivos da empresa. e infundi -lo com talento digital. Contrate treinadores e desenvolvedores ágeis de fintechs, empresas de tecnologia e fornecedores de software ou oferecem destacamentos ao seu pessoal. Crie um ambiente físico apropriado (como a equipe de colocação) e uma cultura de TI de acordo com a das “verdadeiras” empresas de tecnologia - uma que atrairá e ajudará a manter os melhores talentos. Start with pilots and quickly roll agile out to the whole organization. We have observed that at leading companies, most pilots and agile initiatives start in IT before they are expanded throughout the business. Pilots are the starting point for building an at-scale agile organization that is aligned with the vision and aims of the company.
- Build DevOps teams. Best-practice companies break down the silos that separate development and operations by forming joint DevOps teams and applying the principles of continuous delivery, which encourage teams to be fast and flexible.
- Train your team and infuse it with digital talent. Promote an engineering culture and the development of deep technical expertise—for example, by staging events such as hackathons and discussion panels comprising the CIO and developers. Hire agile coaches and developers from fintechs, technology firms, and software vendors or offer secondments to your people. Create an appropriate physical environment (such as by colocating staff) and an IT culture in line with that of “true” technology companies—one that will attract and help retain top talent.