Commercial and supplier relationship skills are likely
to become as important as technical expertise in the next few years
for many IT professionals in financial services, according to
industry experts.
With international banks increasingly adopting sophisticated
global sourcing models covering multiple suppliers, geographies and
processes, retained IT staff in banks will become managers of
supply and demand for outsourced technology contracts, rather than
working as pure IT specialists.
"Many retained IT staff working in financial services will need
to learn to become service integrators," said Robert Morgan, chief
executive of outsourcing consultancy Morgan Chambers.
"Those with an affinity for building relationships and
motivating others will be in greatest demand. The most successful
staff will most likely be open, gregarious and have a good
commercial or possibly legal background. Traditional IT skills will
not be enough."
Peter Vermeulen, research manager at analyst firm IDC, said the
growing complexity of the financial sector's business requirements
meant that the number of employees needed to manage service level
agreements was on the increase.
This is backed up by analyst firm Gartner, which found that the
proportion of spend that goes on retained staff in a multisourcing
context is typically between 5% and 7%, whereas in more traditional
outsourcing contracts with a single primary supplier 3% to 4% of
the budget goes on retained staff.
Vermeulen added that most application development and other
programming work was likely to move offshore as banks come to rely
more on suppliers for their programming and testing needs. But he
said some firms would retain an in-house application development
capability to take on more speculative or innovative work.
In recent months two leading European banks, ING and ABN Amro,
have announced major strategic transformations in the handling of
their IT, swapping in-house application development and maintenance
work for large-scale multisourcing arrangements, and others are
expected to follow suit.
Research from London Business School and consultancy Capco found
that 58% of large financial services businesses use a combination
of outsourcing and offshoring, sometimes for core or
business-specific processes.
The study also found that many banks manage multiple suppliers
to meet specific process needs, with nearly 25% of respondents
already using a multi-supplier, multi-location model for sourcing
their IT and business process needs.
See also:
Technical skills offer way in to finance
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