Technology groups can get bogged down in detail: Gerard Florian

When trying to solve a business problem many technology businesses find themselves getting focused on the detail driven by spreadsheets rather than focusing on the business problem, according to Gerard Florian, group executive – technology, ANZ.

“What matters most is that you got a common fact base. I can sit with my group CFO, and then down the line, other groups can sit and look at information together, agree it's right, and then make decisions,” he said.

Florian said usually what ends up happening is tech turns up with its numbers, finance has its spreadsheets and you spend your entire time debating whose numbers are right.

At ANZ, they wanted a more of a holistic view at their IT spending, so they implemented a digital methodology, Technology Business Management (TBM) to do so.

They took a look at their desktop solution, where people have two to three devices.

“With the business leaders, [you can see] this is exactly what's happening in your business and you can have a conversation around even number of devices. Do I need all of those for everybody?

“And how do you start to have that discussion and as I said with those insights, and it's not just a generic conversation across all companies, you can get a particular business leaders where there's more of an opportunity and explained to them,” he said.

Florian noted with the change in mindset and TBM, savings are made in the business.

“But if they would have changed their policy or rethink some of the habits, there are savings to be had and as a result of that, we're looking at 10 to 12 percent benefit purely from that exercise,” he said

Florian explained one of the biggest impacts of implementing TBM is that it builds it confidence for more projects the bank wants to carry through.

“We want to be able to show the true cost of running our larger systems get into home lending, markets trading or payments. We want the organisation to be able to understand the operational costs, but then also the incremental costs as we start to think about capacity,” he said.

Florian is co-chair of the TBM Council.