S.Sekar, CIO and Assistant General Manager at Karur Vysya Bank shares some insights and experiences on how IT can sharpen competitive edge for a bank

What's the role of technology in your industry?

Technology is the business enabler in the Industry today. It gives a leading edge to us to face the competition, to cut down the operational cost and to improve our customer convenience.

Is IT a hygiene factor or a differentiator in the banking industry today?

Technology is certainly a differentiator in the banking industry today.

How significant would be IT in your recent approach to BCG for restructuring, for turning at par with private and foreign banks in tech-savvy quotient, and for bank's ambitious business expansion roadmap?

Having said that IT is a differentiator amongst competition and also a business enabler, it is highly significant in terms of increasing the productivity, providing quality service to the customers and above all extending 24x7 service to them.

Our approach will be adding more and more customer convenience through alternate delivery channels in addition to exploring the improvement in the productivity in the branches with necessary technology solutions.

Any application of IT in the impressive 0.22 pc of NPA area?

Yes. The entire NPA management, monitoring and control are completely system driven. Necessary technology and systems are in place to effectively monitor the assets closely to avoid any asset slipping to NPA.

Has IT turned more strategic in the last few years? Is there a change in the equation between business and IT departments?

Earlier, it was the prime responsibility of IT department to innovate IT products and services. Having experienced the power of IT, the business departments have started demanding new innovative initiatives on us. This has strategically turned the equation as IT became a business enabler now. Business departments are taking part in the IT initiatives implementation very actively in my organization.

How easy or tough is it to spread IT across a company's depth and breadth, specially in India (geographically)?

Yes. It is really a tough job even today. Any initiative unless it reaches the end users (branches) or the customers directly, the benefit cannot be realized. Hence, it is very important to train all the business users on the new initiative. We conduct regular work shops to train the users at their places and to clarify their doubts. We spend nearly 30 per cent of our efforts to train the users. We also use the technology to provide on-line learning systems in this regard.

What have been your challenges as the man at the helm of IT?

Challenges include rapid technology obsolescence, information security threats, data quality, bringing down the operational costs, searching for innovative initiatives so as to be first in the Industry and change management.

And best lessons?

First would be not to implement any initiative without taking the users into confidence, listen to the complaints and ideas irrespective of cadre, open to continuous learning on the new concepts etc. Also, disaster does not happen suddenly and it will always start smaller and explode rapidly. Hence, always be vigilant and aware on the technology loop holes. Plus, technology cannot work in isolation and it has to meet the requirements of the business users.

Do you think there is enough Best-Practice sharing happening in the industry?

Not sufficiently happening.