Institutionalising a process by which good ideas and technology meet to create profit-generating products and services is the central task of Citi Global Transaction Service's innovation programme, led by the bank's chief innovation officer, Gary Greenwald.
Ideas are the lifeblood of the information economy and large institutions are increasingly devoting more time and resources to fostering potentially transformative and profit-boosting innovations. The world of technology has always been keen on this process, with Google, that poster child of the internet, the most well-known advocate of formal 'innovation time'. This process, however, is becoming increasingly prevalent among banking institutions, for whom technology creation is also a critical function.
At Citi Global Transaction Services (GTS), for example, Gary Greenwald is tasked with the enviable, if curious, role of chief innovation officer. This is a job title, he remarks, that is not yet common among his peers across the industry. But what does it really mean?
"Many of the products and services that Citi GTS brings to market are not just enabled by technology - they are technology," he explains. Institutionalising a process by which good ideas and technology meet, to create something valuable and ultimately profit-generating, is the central task of the bank's innovation programme, he continues. "Institutions like Citi have no shortage of good ideas: the challenge is creating a structure and a set of processes around that innovation, so that it becomes a standard part of doing business." The bank is in the process of creating a standardised governance process by which this assessment takes place, he adds. "We have to assess who gets value out of it, what does it offer from a competitive or financial return point of view and how costly and complex is it to execute?"
Amid the kaleidoscope of technologies available, how does Mr Greenwald identify which technologies will best serve the ends of innovation? "I divide the technology world into two," he explains. "There are technologies that are more relevant in a pure-play enterprise IT discussion: while these are very important for the banks, they are not, at least on the surface, something I'd be able to transform into a client-facing proposition." Then there are technologies that directly face and engage the business lines.
He continues: "The last thing you want, with these technologies, is to only have them understood and discussed by the technology organisation: you want the business people talking about them and to bring clients into that discussion."
The ones to watch
Examples of technologies that not only fit this category, but which Mr Greenwald and his team are currently developing, include mobile, analytics and Web 2.0 technology. Mobile technology has long promised to revolutionise the way in which all manner of services are delivered, but in some markets, such as the UK, it has yet to deliver. According to Mr Greenwald, however, mobile should be conceptualised as the internet was 10 years ago: "Like the internet, mobile is a technology in search of various business models and pain points: you can't talk about mobile per se," he says. "In a business like banking, a mobile device, both as a channel, and as a physical piece of hardware, can be a very powerful enabler of any number of banking processes. Mobile done well will be as profoundly transformative as the internet."
The rise of analytics software by which vast quantities of data is given meaning at a business level is another growing area of interest: "I think that so far we've only scratched the surface in terms of how we can make that data valuable to us internally and to our clients. We have done a lot of work around receivables, liquidity and payments. But the vision is to move more and more away from reports and to provide analytics dashboards, rather than the data itself."
Rise of Web 2.0
What Mr Greenwald describes as the "2.0 zero divide" is another source of inspiration. This divide - whereby the light, downloadable, easy-to-use Web 2.0 tools found in the consumer world have yet to popularise the often clunky corporate environment - is now being bridged. Increasingly, such tools will become incorporated into the corporate IT environment, says Mr Greenwald, promising to transform the workplace as well as the way in which businesses relate to their own clients. "This has to happen: the efficiencies and value propositions are there," he adds.
Career history
Gary Greenwald
2009 - Named chief innovation officer of Citi Global Transaction Services.
1983 - Joined Citibank in New York as an analyst in consumer banking. Subsequently worked in numerous consumer banking, institutional banking and corporate staff positions.
1981 - Bachelor of Science degree in economics from Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
