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Asia-PacificDecember 4 2006

Jacqueline Guichelaar

Jacqueline Guichelaar, general manager, technology operations, National Australia Group, tells Dan Barnes of the importance of marrying technology and business decision making.
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The integration of IT strategy into the overall business strategy has delivered positive results says Jacqueline Guichelaar, general manager, technology operations, National Australia Group (NAG), but banks must ensure they have the right people in position if they are to stay on top of this continuously changing environment.

“Choice has become the priority for IT heads over control,” says Ms Guichelaar. “There’s a level we, as an industry, have reached where the decision to outsource or not is no longer the be-all and end-all of a strategy. Sourcing options can now be considered throughout planning as and when they are needed.

“They are no longer considered and applied to a situation simply on the basis of cost reduction, although that is still one common motivation, but rather by how they can further the bank’s aims,” she adds.

For Ms Guichelaar this unity between the business and the technology areas is being put into effect as part of an overall change programme within NAG.

“We’ve successfully gone through a stabilise/rebuild phase over the past couple of years and we’re now moving into the ‘truly competitive’ phase,” she says. The success of the first phase allowed the bank to gauge its existing technology and so get a realistic picture of its impact on the bank, comments Ms Guichelaar. “To me it’s more about linking the business process chain through to technology.”

Business efficiency

She stresses the need to understand how technology and products fit together if a bank is to have any meaningful grasp of how to change. “Our first priority is around enabling business efficiency. That is asking: how do we improve our workflow, our processes that touch clients? The second is around building our infrastructure to enable business efficiency as a broad priority, something you will find at most banks. The third priority is addressing the transformation of how we work, of how we can lead with technology rather than follow.”

She notes this may prove most challenging as “although there are pockets in some banks where this is happening, I’ve yet to see a bank where they actively leverage and empower the technology area to lead the bank. There are real advantages in doing this as technology departments have a very different skill set to that found in other areas of the bank”. The fourth priority she notes is the development of the right leadership and culture.

She believes that as operations and IT have come to the fore in banks’ decision making, the third priority is now attainable, providing the culture change allows IT to be move away from traditional attitudes.

“When you don’t think about technology provision as infrastructure but rather as analogous to a car’s engine, you have to start to think about the engine’s suitability for where the bank is trying to get to,” she says.

“You can no longer take the attitude that you are delivering a box and you just need to get it up and running. You can no longer buy the latest technology and think that is automatically the best choice.”

Technology savvy

This attitudinal shift is being assisted by the new generations of financial services professionals who have developed their skills with a much greater exposure to, and understanding of, technology.

“I believe one driver of technological change is actually people becoming more astute about business than they have been before. In addition, it requires trust between all business units. That makes them more able to question how and why things are being used,” she explains, although she acknowledges the struggle between market players to make the most of this potential.

“Globally the industry recognises that getting the right skills and talent is getting tougher. Understanding your business, your people and leading change with conviction are the fundamental ingredients to success.”

CAREER HISTORY

June 2006: National Australia Bank Group, general manager, technology operations

November 2003: Deutsche Bank, chief technology officer; (joined January 2003 as chief operations officer)

November 2002: CSC Computer Sciences Corporation, transformation programme director and business executive; major programme director (July 2002); joined as account executive June 2000

June 1998: Project executive & engagement manager, IBM Global Services. Service delivery manager (April 1997);technical operations support manager. Joined March 1994

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