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Home > CIO HANDBOOK 2006

Acting Locally
For banks, which generally have a large geographical spread and a variety of customers, global deployment is not applicable
Goutam Das
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
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The claim that global deployment of IT will reduce cost, standardize practices, develop good systems, and place the enterprise in a controlled environment is theoretically acceptable, but not universally practical. Specially, while implementing IT in the Banking Industry where banks have a large geographical spread and a variety of customers who look for different values, the inapplicability of global deployment is more pronounced.

A global deployment of IT and the delivery of products/services through IT has an impact on two sections of people: the users of IT within the organization, and the clients who use the products and services delivered by the organization, through IT.

D Krishnamurthy
GM–IT, Bank of India
Global Deployment Problems
  • Local statutory requirements (in case of implementation in foreign branches) will vary in different locations and may require specific security standards etc which may make large, specific customizations  necessary. The IT maturity in those countries and also the infrastructure availability will make global implementation difficult

  • When there is a disaster it will affect all and, hence, the business continuity plan (BCP) for localized deployment can be simple. The magnitude of disaster management and the requirements of business continuity systems will not be necessary in the same scale for small areas

  • IT upgradations and maintenance have to be carried out on a large scale for the sake of uniformity and may also require standard hardware which may not be really necessary at all centers or may cost more

  • Non-development of localized products and local innovations, delays and side stepping of such requirements will affect business

  • Delays and escalation of cost for introducing small solutions for local requirements will occur because it has to be done globally for the sake of uniformity

  • It will force business strategy to align with IT strategy

  • Global System may force some customers to change their system for adaptability 

  • The availability of service and support becomes a critical issue if a global implementaion is done

  • Often it results in a situation that the group/business segment continues a parellel system or modifies the global solution to suit its requirements, thereby causing additional cost defeating the purpose of centralization

The training of staff that use such IT will be an expensive and long process where we find that it is not really necessary for all of them to get acclimatized to the new environment and the full functionality of the new software. Similarly, the clients have to get used to the new way of delivery of the same product because of a new global IT implementation, which has changed the way systems used to work earlier or even may not use all the products the new IT solution can offer. Such a global implementation may further require creation of awareness at the client level and lack of such effort to make this happen will result in non-acceptance by the clients of such new systems and cause dissatisfaction.

Hence, it will be prudent to identify the business groups amongst the clients and put them into different silos and map their requirements for the purpose of delivering appropriate technology to them.  The way of delivery of the product to these groups of segmented customers will make technology adoption by them easy and also useful to them, rather than pushing something to them just for the sake of global implementation, which they are unable to use/appreciate.

Similarly, for the groups of staff who use technology.

Therefore, it is my opinion that a global implementation of IT is to be selectively done, only after a careful study and only where it really suits the kind of business. 

As told to Goutam Das 
goutamd@cybermedia.co.in

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