Issue 4 Summer 008
If you only had one customer
what would you do? You would
have a plan for that customer,
for each interaction which
would take account of
previous interactions.
there is a CEO I work with who has a
RECOMMENDED READING
plaque on his desk, it says “in God we
Stephen recommends a book published by Harvard
trust, all others bring data... you do
Business School press “Competing on Analytics”
by Thomas H Davenport and Jeanne G Harris
not bring proposals to him if you can’t
for more insight into the shift in the importance of
back up the data
analytics and data as a differentiator.
There are a lot of studies that show that when you inform Risk is the other big driver. Historically we’ve made risk
decisions with real data rather than intuition, you make a decisions in line-of-business silos and increasingly, that’s
better decision. A change in culture is required to make unacceptable. We need to understand total exposure
decisions based on data and to measure the results and and optimise our risk decisions across the enterprise as
create a continuous improvement process. a whole.
There is a CEO that I work with who has a plaque on his BW» What are the implications of the increasing
desk and it says ‘In God we trust, all others bring data’. regulatory environment on decisioning services?
He’s sending a very strong message and he lives that
message every day. You do not bring a proposal to him SB» An increasing proportion of IT investment
for a business direction unless you have data to back it budgets are being used on regulatory and compliance
up and unless you have a plan to measure the results of reporting. Organisations that have really been smart in
your proposed direction. this regard have used this mandatory investment almost
as a Trojan horse to fund the advanced analytics in areas
BW» What are the challenges particularly faced like marketing and risk, where they could add value
by financial services? beyond the regulatory reporting. So the key is to provide
the regulatory and compliance analytics but organise
SB» I think competing on analytics is particularly the data for reuse in order to get the full value.
challenging in the financial sector because, as an industry,
we’ve grown with silos. Getting full value of information BW» What are the key questions an organisation
held across product-oriented silos requires integration. like Royal Bank of Scotland should be asking?
When I’m making marketing decisions, I need to
understand what my customer relationships are across
‘Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more
all of my different products and services. Integration of
precious, than to be able to decide’
data is a critical issue in the financial services industry
Source: Napoleon Bonaparte
and marketing is certainly one of the drivers.
0 | Perspectives on technology
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