A five-point plan
UBS
A five-point plan
Dargan doesn ’ t need to digitise banking . As he points out , banking has been digital for decades .
“ If you distil banking down to its essence , banking is nothing other than the digital transportation of data . But we ’ re in the process now , I think , of waking up to how we need to re-digitalize banking . I think there ’ s an increasing realisation that everything will be underpinned by technology .
“ UBS actually has a very strong infrastructure ; its stability is very strong . The piece that we wanted to focus on was how we reconnect the organisation with the business in a much stronger way . How do we focus on what people do , the type of people we have , how we interact with our vendors , and the underlying outcomefocused culture we wanted to develop .”
To tackle that challenge , Dargan has circled the technology team around five operational pillars of digital transformation at UBS , coffee corner by coffee corner .
First has been defining the core vision – the ultimate objective of UBS ’ technology journey : “ Not just for the
Mike Dargan
Global Head of Technology , UBS
technology organisation itself , but what does technology mean at UBS ? How do we keep UBS competitive as the world increasingly digitises ?”
Second is harmonising the ‘ how ’. Dargan has placed a premium on the development of clear , business-aligned technical roadmaps . The aim is to end a pattern so ubiquitous in large organisations of siloed operations where applications and services tend to be developed in a vacuum , their outputs inconsistent and poorly integrated . “ What do we do , how do people develop technology , architecture ? So we have an efficiency strategy of standardised road maps for each area .”
The third pillar has seen the remapping of the technology organisation structure itself , from top to bottom , which in turn relates to a fourth pillar dedicated to defining and simplifying as far as possible the operational processes , KPIs and financials against which the organisation ’ s performance is judged .
64 January 2018