Business Excelleration Podcast

North American HR Executive Advisory Practice Leader Franco Girimonte and Senior Research Director Anthony DiRomualdo discuss key findings from The Hackett Group’s latest Digital World Class HR research.

Show Notes:

Welcome to The Hackett Group's Business Excelleration Podcast,
where week after week we hear from experts on how to avoid obstacles, manage detours and celebrate milestones on the journey to world-class performance. Today's episode is hosted by Franco Girimonte, North American HR Executive Advisory practice leader at The Hackett Group. He is joined by Tony DiRomualdo, senior research director. The discussion today is centered around the 2022 Digital World Class.

To begin, Tony defines Digital World Class as Hackett's representation of what they see as the top-performing HR organizations. It is based on a number of different measures, including their performance, enabling capabilities and other various practices driving performance. Not only are they outperforming typical HR organizations, but they are doing so in such a way to utilize digital technologies. Thirdly and especially important in the digital age is the experience of stakeholders dealing with HR organizations. Today, HR and businesses are having to cope with tremendous volatility, stress, and uncertainty across the board. What organizations need to be successful and sustainable in this kind of environment is having a high-performing and motivated workforce.

Then, Franco speaks to the key differences in terms of performance between Digital World Class organizations and baseline HR. In the technology area, Digital World Class organizations spend 90% more per employee per peer when it comes to investing in technology. They also show much higher levels of automation. This includes things like self-service, workflow, AI, synchronization and more. Compared to your typical HR, world-class organizations don't give up on technology if it doesn’t land at first. In terms of productivity, world-class organizations service 67% more employees. This demonstrates that they have the right individuals working on the right activities to make the operating model and technologies more efficient, resulting in higher productivity. They also have a 34% advantage over peers in terms of operational cost.

Direct access is the ability for employees, managers, and even candidates to access data and functionality from HR systems. Digital World Class has moved away from this concept by extending HR responsibilities to the employee and manager. Now, it is more about enhancing the work, productivity, and experience of employees, candidates, and managers. Thus, Digital World Class organizations have an 83% greater deployment of self-service access capabilities. That means more cost-effective access to vital HR services.

In today's market of the Great Resignation, retention is a major challenge for many organizations. This is where we see Digital World Class have some very distinct advantages. They do a better job of retaining employees because of their superior organization and use of technology. When it comes to retention, organizations need to be listening to their employees to figure out what's going on and why they are looking for another role. The best way to combat this is having a listening capability. Other areas include the use of exit data, monitoring employee's questions and using analytics to spot trends before they become a major issue. Using technology for recruiting and attracting new employees is also very helpful.

A complete list of show notes is available here for download.

The Hackett Group Solution Director Mark Eklund talks with Associate Principal and Consolidation Vertical Lead Brian Willson about the benefits of transitioning from Hyperion Financial Management to Oracle EPM FCC.

Show Notes:

Welcome to The Hackett Group’s Business Excelleration Podcast, where - week after week - we hear from experts on how to avoid obstacles, manage detours, and celebrate milestones on the journey to world-class performance. Today's episode is hosted by Mark Eklund, Solutions Director at The Hackett Group. He is joined today by Brian Willson Solution Architect and Lead in The Hackett Group’s Close and Consolidation practice. The discussion today is centered around the technology supporting the financial close and consolidation.

This is a topic near and dear to both Mark and Brian, who have worked with many clients by supporting the last mile of the close of their corporate earnings and releases. To begin, Brian outlines the timeline of the technology supporting consolidation. Back in the 80s, a Windows-based product called Micro Control was developed. This became the market leader in terms of the consolidation space all throughout the 90’s. In the early 2000s, the companies switched over to HFM, which is still widely utilized today. In the 2016-2017 timeframe, the decision was made to move to the cloud. Today, many clients are migrating from HFM to FCC.

Relative to prior releases, one of FCC’s biggest draw points is its ease of implementation. Oracle spent much time behind the scenes aligning their solutions in the cloud to very specific business processes. Rather than having a product which is highly customized, they opted to focus on each business process to create a market leading product. It took them a few years to achieve parity with HFM. By 2019, the things you could do in HFM were all available in FCC. At the beginning, it catered to small to medium companies, but now we are seeing companies in the $10+ billion range move to FCC. We’ve seen the account to report have become templated for a lot of companies. The migrations from HFM to FCC typically take half the time of a pure HFM implementation.

Some clients today still feel hesitant about adopting cloud FCC. Brian entered consulting with an accounting background and reveals that accountants are typically quite conservative in nature. This is a large factor in the hesitance to make the switch as well as the messaging from the consulting side. The goal of this episode is to help people see the value in going from HFM to FCC. The cloud world has moved away from having one application to serve discreet business processes and transformed it into serving the users of each business process. This way, nothing is being compromised to fit all things for all users. Thus, companies aren’t losing anything in the transition but actually gaining.

Much of FCC’s value lies in its enhanced offerings compared to HFM. All of the standards of HFM are included in FCC along with even more useful features. These features include a task manager module, which offers a single source of the truth for the close process. Also offered is a supplemental data manager for things like footnotes and disclosures. This leaves collected data centralized in one place, bringing a new value unseen in HFM. Finally, FCC offers enterprise journals which bridge the gap between the consolidation process and close activities. This allows users to post journals from FCC back to the ERP.

FCC also brings improved cash flow. When building out the data model within FCC, Oracle saw an ability to automate cash flow. Their ingenious design created an additional dimension to house that information.

A complete list of show notes is available here for download.

The Hackett Group Senior Director, GBS Advisory Penny Weller talks with Principal and Global GBS Advisory Practice Leader Martijn Geerling about the impact of inflation on global business services and shared services operations.

Show Notes:

Welcome to The Hackett Group’s Business Excelleration Podcast, where - week after week - we hear from experts on how to avoid obstacles, manage detours, and celebrate milestones on the journey to world-class performance. Today's episode is hosted by Penny Weller, Senior Director of Global Business Services at The Hackett Group. Her guest is Martijn Geerling, Global Practice Leader for GBS Advisory at Hackett. The focus of today’s discussion is the impact of inflation on GBS operations. 

North America and Europe have risen markedly in the last year. This conflict, especially in the Ukraine area, is accelerating inflation with energy and food prices. While some of the inflation is transient, we actually found that it is on the rise and here to stay for longer than we initially thought. To begin, Martijn explains why inflation is important and why it matters from a GBS perspective. The main concern for GBS leaders, he reveals, is around labor costs. Consumer prices across most rich countries, like the U.S. and Europe, are up at least 8%. Aside from labor costs, other concerns for GBS leaders are turnover and outsourcing costs. Operationally, it has an impact on things like management and working capital. Cost of labor is one thing, but the cost of capital for organizations is also increasing.  

Then, they focus on the point of the impact of inflation on outsourcing contracts. This is something which is really top of mind for many organizations today. In the U.S., the great resignation is a major theme. Rates in offshore locations have gone up and many GBS organizations have experienced at least 8-10% inflation. In our annual GBS study, we see that rates in Western Europe average about 10%, while offshore locations report rates of 15-19%. This raises anxiety around the impact of the rising cost of labor and living on salaries. Some organizations are offering higher rates to attract people to their organization. In places like India, what we’ve seen is that working from home has changed the equation. If you recruit, labor goes up and there are those extra fees by hiring fees, training and more. 

Looking at the type of process GBS organizations are using (purchase-to-pay, order-to-cash, cash management), they are not necessarily new. There are a number of best practices which organizations need to focus on. This includes things like implementing supplier payment policy, payment clocks, payment term optimization and looking at pricing and analytics. This is where GBS organizations can support the enterprise. Right now, there should be a focus on reviewing technology spent and examining cost categories in GBS. This includes determining whether there is a budget for salary increases. Cost of hiring and training needs to be reset in alignment with new assumptions around inflation. Another area impacted is in outsourcing agreements. Some organizations, if they haven’t looked into this, may be in for an unpleasant surprise. 

As the episode draws to a close, Martijn shares his predictions for what GBS leaders can expect in terms of inflation in the near future. The inflation is not transient and will not be going away this year, or perhaps next. Some drivers are pandemic-related, supply chains are completely out of whack. What unfortunately isn’t going away is the impact of the next crisis, the global war in Ukraine. We are all aware of the price hikes of oil and gas. Martijn expects that the cost of food and fertilizer will begin to rise even more and have a significant impact on the cost of living. Inflation will be running high into 2023. With these kinds of things, forecasting is always about the assumptions. 

Senior Director Anthony DiRomualdo talks with Associate Principal Arbin Smith, Associate Principal Dorothee El-Khoury about results from our recent research examining best practices around corporate efforts to increase diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.

Show Notes:

Join us for this episode of The Hackett Group’s Business Excelleration Podcast, where we get to hear from experts on the top tips for avoiding obstacles, managing detours and celebrating milestones on the journey to world-class performance. Today’s episode is hosted by Tony DiRomualdo, senior research director with The Hackett Group’s HR Advisory program. His guests are associate principals Arbin Smith and Dorothee El-Khoury from The Hackett Group. This discussion focuses on what organizations can do to increase diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. Learn why continued commitment and diligence, along with active and intentional engagement, are all crucial here!

While this is a particularly amplified topic to address – as a culmination of many events over the recent years have come to a head – Tony seeks to draw out these experts’ thoughts on how significant progress can actually be made. While there have been many renewed actions of businesses and organizations on this front, Tony asserts that they’ve failed to move the needle in any significant manner. They chat about a number of key practices that actually have proven to make a difference for some companies, and they dive deeper into addressing three of these.

The first key practice Arbin and Dorothee take the time to discuss is the holistic approach that some take in rethinking a company’s strategies. Learn about how some organizations look at changes in order to make and improve the results of various processes – not just one. Today’s guests discuss what organizations should do better around talent management, as they remind the listeners that this is not just a transaction to occur once, but it is a continual process. Requiring all hands on deck, they urge people to look beyond the traditional pools of where they have gotten their talent in the past. Learn why successful companies are investing more into awareness, and how this helps people better see the point and need of the efforts they’re making. People need to understand where the movement comes from. Dorothee shares that focusing on careers and making examples for people will help to ultimately drive this different result.

Moving on to the second key practice, these experts discuss measuring and assessing progress toward desired key outcomes. This is a real differentiator. Both Arbin and Dorothee discuss this challenge of measurement and assessment around belonging, and why it is crucial that a company first admits that they even have a problem. Organizations need to honestly ask themselves the hard questions: Can we get diverse talent in the door and can they progress? Are there barriers along the way? Arbin tells listeners that you cannot manage what you can’t measure. Listen to why metrics should be a part of a company’s DNA – to look at every part of the organization and be honest with the findings. Looking at a broader spectrum of indicators and then actually acting upon them will make all the difference.

As the conversation draws to a close, they touch on the third key practice for today – holding leaders from top to bottom accountable for results. Listen to their thoughts on how to drive this accountability for results and how you can make it integral to a leader’s success. Through incentives and consistency, this can become a reflexive and second-nature behavior for any organization’s leaders.

A complete list of show notes is available here for download.

The Hackett Group Senior Director and Global IT Advisory Practice Leader Chris Key talks with Tech Transformation Practice Principal Michael Fuller, Senior Director Jay Ruffin, and Tech Practice Principal Scott Holland about key findings from The Hackett Group’s recent Cloud Migration Study, the largest-ever study of its type.

Show Notes

Welcome to The Hackett Group’s Business Excelleration Podcast, where — week after week —  we hear from experts on how to avoid obstacles, manage detours, and celebrate milestones on the journey to world-class performance. Today's episode is hosted by Chris Key, Global Advisory Practice Leader at the Hackett Group. His guests are Mike Fuller, Principal in the Tech Transformation Practice, Jay Ruffin, Senior Director, and Principal Scott Holland. The focus of today’s discussion is the results of the largest ever cloud migration study conducted to date.

This study was conducted in October-December of 2021 and represented a wide demographic of global companies ranging from $500 million to over $30 billion. The goal was to identify real business value generated by the migration of infrastructure and application to the Cloud. Of the 1,000+ companies that participated, data was collected from 4,000 applications pre and post Cloud. They considered cost, availability, scalability and operations. About 82% of the companies were multi-cloud.

The biggest difference between the top and average performers was their approach to technology. Top performers saw technology as part of their DNA and course strategy, while the averages were just looking for a way to reduce cost. Scott believes it important to recognize that the value of cloud migration goes way beyond cost and scalability. The Cloud promotes availability, agility and ease of operation. In terms of top performers, they were more likely to migrate IT infrastructure and security and migrated much sooner than everybody else.

There are four primary ways which organizations are migrating workloads to the cloud. Companies that do the work up front see much more benefit as compared to companies who go to the lift and shift path. At the end of the day, cloud is the basis of digital operations. The most common goal among all performers was reducing cost. Among top performers, however, the most common goal was to utilize the cloud to enhance their current services and products. Top performers are migrating 52% more apps than others. The cloud is becoming the norm and those who don’t migrate will likely be left behind.

Referring back to our key issues study, Jay defined the Cloud as a foundation for many of these goals. For example, it allows for faster time to value, cost efficiency, engagement from anywhere, and much more. Top performers were able to reduce their infrastructure spend by 37% compared to average performers’ 12%. This significance all comes back to how they manage their portfolios overall. Shifting to security and the influx in data breaches and ransomware attacks, Mike speaks to the board’s watchful eye of these issues. After cloud migration, organizations on average saw a 44% reduction in cyberattacks, while top performers' improvements were even larger.

A complete list of show notes is available here for download.

The Hackett Group Managing Director, Advisory, Europe Martijn Geerling talks with Sourcing Transformation Practice Leader, Europe Jill Stabler and GBS Transformation Practice Leader, Europe Hermann Waschefort about factors companies should consider when deciding whether to outsource or internally develop shared services or global business services operations.

Show Notes: 

Welcome to the Hackett Group’s Business Excelleration Podcast, where - week after week - we hear from experts on how to avoid obstacles, manage detours, and celebrate milestones on the journey to world-class performance. Today's episode is hosted by Martijn Geerling, Managing Director and Advisory Practice Leader Europe at Hackett. His guests today are Jill Stabler, Sourcing Practice Leader Transformation Europe, and Hermann Waschefort, Practice Leader for Global Business Services at Hackett Global Transformation Services Europe.   

As the conversation kicks off, Jill identifies the questions which business function leaders should ask when deciding to insource or outsource. During this process, questions of speed, scale, sustainability and increasing business value vs operational excellence are of equal importance.  Considering every company has their own unique starting point, Hermann elaborates on how these core variables can play out in different starting points. It’s very important to ensure there is a sense of clarity regarding your capabilities and performance and to be honest with yourself and the organization. Then, you can look at your options and determine the outcomes you want to achieve. 

Traditionally, outsourcing was driven by labor arbitrage. Jill shares what has changed in the last few years from that traditional model to new, novel digital technologies. Buyers should look beyond labor arbitrage most importantly. Technology evolution has issued major changes towards transformational partnerships compared to earlier commodity type deals. Today’s value proportion is a combination of that traditional arbitrage and technology. 

It’s difficult to determine superiority between in and outsourcing as both can offer great value under certain circumstances. Hermann identifies four key elements to understand to make the right decision: risk, capability, aspirations, and desire for transformation speed. Jill agrees with Hermann on this one and summarized the number one most important question as being able to look at yourself where you are today vs. where you want to be. 

When discussing the outsourced services model, Jill tends to spend a lot of time with clients focusing on how they bring to life transformation and ambitions both contractually and through relationships. Stepping away from the outsource conventional model, a new kind of service partnership is emerging among clients. BPOs and IPOs are beginning to propose what she refers to as assisted transformation models. The ownership of the service remains captive, but the scenario is focused on defining transformation initiatives, success criteria, commercial effectiveness and experience outcomes and creating the right commercial model together with an outsourcing partner. 

Then, Hermann elaborates on risks. Both operational and financial risk needs to be considered. During discussions with clients, he usually inquires about IT and proprietary models. As we emphasized earlier, it is important to analyze all options before making big decisions and critical to understand key strategic needs. In closing, Jill emphasizes the need to make sure you’ve honestly assessed your starting point and consider your options through that lens. In the end, what you really need to do to make a success of either model, or a combination of both, is to manage that capability. 

Senior Research Director Shawn Fitzgerald talks with Global GBS and Finance Advisory Practice Leader Jim O’Connor and Finance, EPM, and BI Advisory Practice Leader Gilles Bonelli about the many areas where corporate finance leaders can help their companies address inflationary pressures.

Show Notes: 

Welcome to the Hackett Group’s Business Excelleration Podcast, where - week after week - we hear from experts on how to avoid obstacles, manage detours, and celebrate milestones on the journey to world-class performance. Today's episode is hosted by The Hackett Group’s Senior Research Director Shawn Fitzgerald, and it focuses on the company's recently-released finance guide and playbook for managing and mitigating inflation.  Kicking off his role in moderating the conversation, Shawn introduces the two guests for the episode: Jim O'Connor, Global GBS and Finance Advisory Leader, and Gilles Bonelli, who leads Hackett's finance, enterprise performance management, and business intelligence advisory practice in Europe.  

Moving into the central topic of navigating inflation, Shawn asks Jim and Gilles how concerned finance leaders should be about understanding, managing, and mitigating inflation - especially in light of recent increases in inflation levels.  Inflation is absolutely a big deal for companies (and their employees!), Jim says, and it impacts different companies and industries in different ways.  Companies need to take a careful look at the issue of inflation, and Gilles adds that the CFO - whose role has expanded to include a broader mandate - must consider the roles of financing, business partnering, and the need for the financing sector to have a coaching role in the business.

Jim and Gilles are well positioned in their respective roles in North America and Europe to comment on regional differences in the types of actions finance leaders should take.  The two acknowledge that there are differences in how inflation impacts different regions, but also emphasize that there are common questions leaders need to be asking.  These questions, which concern company breaking point, inventory, exposure to interest rates, and more, indicate that there are common levers for all finance leaders to use as they face realities of inflation.  Further, Hackett's finance playbook highlights six common areas in which finance leaders have to provide guidance as their companies, including revenue, intelligent cost management, procurement, talent retention and turnover, wages and compensation, and hedging and financial management.  Part of the way finance can do this is by educating and supporting leaders throughout the business.

Diving into the topic of business partnering, the group first considers the importance of "eliminating the vague."  Getting into more detail, they think through concrete ways in which finance can partner with other sectors of a business by offering guidance in the six ways included in the Finance Playbook.  Finance should work on developing and implementing cost mitigation strategies, forecast breaking points, and revisit practices around talent acquisition, procurement, and product design.  As the episode wraps up, Shawn asks for the three top things for a finance leader to do now to get a better handle on inflation.  Jim advises focusing on cost, revenue, and retention.  Gilles takes a slightly different angle, explaining how finance can impact the interrelated themes that have come up throughout the episode by driving coordination and re-evaluation of targets enterprise-wide.

The Hackett Group Senior Procurement Advisor Nicolas Walden talked with Associate Principal Jonathan Fehring about the impact of inflation on procurement, and how procurement leaders can address it.

Show Notes: 

Welcome to the Hackett Group’s Business Excelleration Podcast, where – week after week – we hear from experts on how to avoid obstacles, manage detours, and celebrate milestones on the journey to world-class performance. Today’s episode is hosted by Nic Walden, Senior Advisor at the Hackett Group. His guest is Jonathan Fehring, Associate Principal in Hackett’s Principal Advisory Practice.

Up until last year, inflation was not really a huge topic in procurement. The longevity and false predictions of the experts should be somewhat alarming as we see record inflation in almost every category. The response of the government was a major jumpstart to the inflation we are now seeing. This period is one of significant volatility, uncertainty, high demand, supply constraints, lockdowns and reopening, tight labor markets and more. In the U.S., the government directly financially supported those who were laid off. Whereas in Europe, the government incentivized companies not to lay people off. Many Europeans naturally slip back into their same positions while Americans were forced to reconsider the jobs they undertook moving forward. This is where we see the spiraling increase in wages and products. Inflation is not only impacting goods, but also services, labor, and property values.

From a policy perspective, the U.S. stopped accepting Russian oil which has significantly driven up prices. While America is not as dependent on Russian resources as European countries, the impact is still being felt day today including increased food prices. These impacts are more than likely here to stay for the long haul as Russia has refused payments in any currency other than rubles and European storage tanks are basically empty. One of the biggest drivers will have to be reducing demand and consumption of energy. There are too many things converging at this point to think that these sensations are transitory. Companies are raising prices and people are continuing to spend the money and Jonathan predicts these prices could remain until 2024. We are encouraged to look at the numbers and follow the data as it develops. It all starts at supply and demand and imbalances in the markets. Then, Nic shares a data point from Hackett’s client polls. In April, the expectation in terms of how high and how long of prices seem to be continuing to shift to the right.

Jonathan speaks to how we can manage in this time of inflation. Many clients are becoming less optimistic in their ability to hit price reduction goals. It is essential to make sure that incentive structures are aligned in mitigating inflation. Outside of that, it is a huge focus area and companies should be doing more intentional sourcing whenever possible. One third of companies reported that they are passing on pricing details directly to the consumer. Eventually, pre-existing contracts will have to be re-negotiated. This is where we will begin to see even more companies passing on prices. In seller’s markets, strategies and tactics must change as we recognize that prices are going up. As companies are approached by suppliers, they are encouraged to look at the data themselves and understand the structure of costs.

As we talk about delivering cost savings, maybe we should change the discussion from just talking about cost and actually thinking about how we change the mix. This includes how we look at requirements, specification and how some companies responded to semiconductors challenges. There may also be an opportunity in how we can better manage demand in certain areas. In closing, Jonathan reiterates that there is not a one single bullet approach to addressing these changes.

The Hackett Group Director Jay Ruffin Senior talks with Oracle Cloud CTO Yonas Yohannes and Oracle Vice President, Cloud Engineering Venu Mantha about how banks are accelerating their movement towards cloud-based digital solutions as a key element of their overall digital transformation efforts. Part 2.

Show Notes

Welcome to the Hackett Group’s Business Excelleration Podcast, where - week after week - we hear from experts on how to avoid obstacles, manage detours, and celebrate milestones on the journey to world-class performance. This episode of the podcast is hosted by Hackett Group Director Jay Ruffin and features guests Yonas Yohannes, Oracle Cloud CTO, and Venu Mantha, Oracle's Vice President of Cloud Engineering.  The Hackett Group and Oracle have partnered to create a series on emerging needs for the financial services industry, especially focusing on cloud platform and financial services solutions.  Today's episode is the second in the series; following on the last episode, it focuses on how banks are accelerating their movement toward cloud-based digital solutions as a key element of their overall digital transformation efforts.

As the conversation gets underway, Jay asks his guests how they expect banks will continue to meet customer expectations in a changing market.  The COVID-19 pandemic caused an acceleration in digital transformation in the banking space, with customers rapidly adopting and expecting technological services.  Traditional banks have been faced with the need to speed up their own shifts to digital platforms and offerings, and have found themselves in competition not only with other banks, but with big tech and financial tech.  They must both adapt to address a changing customer profile and mount a two-pronged attack against the pressures of big tech and fin-tech.  This attack involves forming alliances with fin-tech to together work against big tech.

Banks must also attend to matters of threat mitigation and efficiency, and this entails a new mindset.  Part of this overall mindset requires the need to think differently about how to interact with customers.  Customers are the primary asset of a bank, and banks need to be considering the entire life cycle of the customer and adopt a customer-centric model.  The new bank mindset must also be marked by agility, risk management, flexibility, and innovation.  Agile banks are best able to meet evolving demands and are marked by the kind of holistic thinking that is necessary to developing solutions for a changing market and consumer base. 

Moving forward, Yonas and Venu comment on how cloud providers are adapting alongside banks.  Cloud providers like Oracle are specifically working on fit-for-purpose solutions for banks, following several general steps in doing so.  They are helping banks with the challenging process of first simplifying legacy technology and then migrating aggressively in order to take advantage of the new digital environment.  Oracle is offering what Yonas calls automation plus, and the company has developed a robust two-part strategy of helping banking partners.  The conversation concludes with thoughts on current statistics reflecting the banking space.

 The Hackett Group Director Jay Ruffin Senior talks with Oracle Cloud CTO Yonas Yohannes and Hackett Consultant Matt Williams about how the pandemic has accelerated the movement of banks towards cloud-based digital solutions as a key element of their overall digital transformation efforts.

Show Notes:

Welcome to the Hackett Group’s Business Excelleration Podcast, where - week after week - we hear from experts on how to avoid obstacles, manage detours, and celebrate milestones on the journey to world-class performance. This episode of the podcast is hosted Hackett Group Director Jay Ruffin and features guests Yonas Yohannes, Oracle Cloud CTO, and Matt Williams, a Senior Consultant with the Hackett Group.  The Hackett Group and Oracle have recently partnered to create a series of information on emerging needs for the financial services industry, especially focusing on cloud platform and financial services solutions. Today's episode is the first in a five-part series diving into these topics!  

To kick off the conversation, Yonas comments on the current situation of the financial services industry with a particular eye to effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.  The pandemic advanced and expanded the digital transformation process already underway, pushing banks and other financial service organizations to adapt faster in order to meet customer expectations.  Banks, in particular, also face challenges pertaining to talent acquisition and understanding the "new customer."  This "new customer" is a large contributor to growing quality of experience, as the evolving customer base is not only demographically different (including millennials) but expects a strong, technologically current experience and a relational rather than transactional approach to client engagement.

One way to gauge how well a given subset of the financial services industry is doing in the digital transformation process is to look at its use of the cloud.  A high workload migration level is a positive sign, and a helpful aim for financial services organizations to pursue.  Companies in the industry can leverage technology in the same way financial tech companies do in order to achieve goals, and Yonas explains what this means for banks, in particular.  Banks have to deal with legacy technology and the "friction" it brings and can look to both learn from past merger processes and partner with a fit-for purpose cloud platform (designed for a specific industry).

Yonas sees the banking industry slowly progressing in its digital transformation and credits this momentum to such platform partnerships and to banking solutions.  As innovation in financial services continues, organizations will have to be intentional about enhancing cyber security.  Banks with cloud platform partners will find strong cyber security allies in their cloud partners but must remember that customer security is ultimately the bank's responsibility and needs to be incorporated into bank policies and procedures.  As the conversation wraps up, Yonas offers thoughts on what level of integration is necessary to get the full value out of a fit-for-purpose cloud platform and comments on how he thinks a CIO can prepare now for the future.