The trend will force organizations to bring heightened attention to delivering exceptional end-user experiences on one side and building new support services and processes on the other to enable smooth remote working (see Table 1 for ‘What has COVID-19 changed?’). This is because users can no longer visit ‘tech bars’ (areas dedicated to IT support teams) or expect support teams to come to their desks to resolve issues. The problem is compounded by organizations’ having relaxed their norms around personal devices while, simultaneously, they have become cautious about their IT spends.

From SLAs to eXLAs

Organizations must work around their traditional notions of what comprises end-user experience to meet rising expectations. The old-fashioned concept of SLAs will need to be replaced by Experience Level Agreements (eXLAs) because users want everything faster. Organizations too are waking up to SLAs being misleading, resulting in undocumented productivity loss. For example, a user may log a ticket for a technical problem for which the SLA could be 20 minutes. A 100 such tickets every day for a mid-sized organization would work out to over ~500-man days lost every year. Meanwhile, the support dashboard would show “all green” because SLAs are being met. Invisible to management, users would have experienced the frustration of long waits and loss of productivity (see Figure 2 for what users do when faced with slow support).

The way to change this is to connect user experience and productivity. This can be done by leveraging automation and self-help and self-healing processes. Consumers—and we all are consumers—have become accustomed to managing tasks like “change password” and “install application” independently. Over the last decade, we have been doing this on our mobile phones with routine ease. But organizations are not geared to provide the same experience. The first thing you hear in an organization at the slightest hint of trouble is, “Have you logged a ticket?” The ticket is the center of service and experience. Not the user.

But when experience and productivity are connected using automation and self-help, there is a dramatic improvement in user experience (see Figure 3 for the change in user satisfaction between hands and feet support and self-help/automation).

The trick is to move the user to the core of the support process. This is where structuring the “new normal” begins (see Figure 4 for the structure).

In the new normal, interactions with users must move a notch up. They must become multi-lingual and intelligent. This can be achieved by using AI-enabled chatbots that don’t just refer to an FAQ but execute solutions for the user. This can also be supported by intelligent IVR that goes beyond the “Press-1-for-password-reset-and-2-for-agent-support.” IVRs can be made intelligent to identify the user by name with voice bots using natural language processing (NLP). These interactive bots should ensure that users need not refer to several apps, say from Workday and PeopleSoft or the intranet and a website but they should be contained to deliver app outcomes from within these bots. The user must not struggle to navigate to sources of information. Instead, the system should become a single window for all information, binding all information as a single source of truth. Finally, the system needs a strong wrapper of governance to take care of how data is managed and shared.

Levers to create the new normal

Most mid-sized organizations would have automated up to 10% of their support processes. The target should be to have self-service systems, automation and bots to manage in excess of 70% of these processes, freeing up time for agents at the service desk to attend to complex troubleshooting. The path to achieving this is by using six levers of transformation spanning self-service, intelligent automation, etc. (see details in Table 2).

How does the organization know that its efforts and investments in delivering user experience and support for remote employees and distributed workforce are effective? Currently, the processes to measure the impact of interventions are long-winded and complex. These processes need to be simplified, without which organizations will continue to get responses from two polar ends of the experience spectrum: those who are extremely unhappy and those who are extremely happy. This creates misleading perceptions. Instead, eXLA should be measured besides SLA covering channels such as chatbots, live agents, email, and instant messenger. To ensure that effectiveness can be measured the use of “Digital Experience” platforms becomes a must and compiling data from end user devices on performance and intelligence becomes important. In addition to this user sentiments should be captured in form of the response from users which can be collected using simple methods like gestures – thumbs up/down, likes / dislikes and smileys. Regular SLA metrics are always an important element to complete the 360 degree view. These can be translated into scores, providing more accurate insights into user experience.��

What does the new user experience look like?

An example of a typical session using an intelligent AI-driven bot helps understand how new support systems need to work. Assume that a user logs into the system to seek assistance with installing an application. Instead of dashing off an email to the service desk (or calling a service desk and waiting endlessly in a queue), the user interacts with a text-based chatbot that has identified the user by name. The bot presents a list of the top common queries to the user. In this instance, the user selects, “Install app” and the bot immediately lists the applications authorized for the role and which are not currently installed on the user’s system. The user selects the right application and the bot completes the installation. At the end of the processes, the user clicks on thumbs up/ down, like/dislike button to provide feedback.

A non-IT use case helps appreciate this further. Assume you are the user and you want a list of holidays. The chatbot lists holidays applicable to you using your role/ location/place of work. The bot understands that you may want to apply for leave and therefore presents you with a “My leave balance” prompt. You click on the prompt and the bot looks up your leave balance, displays it, and helps you complete a leave application. At the backend, the bot looks up a variety of systems from the intranet for the list of holidays to Workday to complete HR processes. You need not switch applications and hunt around for links.��

When the bot encounters a query it cannot respond to, the session is handed off to a live agent. The agent gets a copy of the entire interaction history with the bot and can understand the context of the query. The query can then be resolved using several channels from SMS to social media.��

At the back end, the interaction is captured on a dashboard as a new problem for which the knowledge base has to be created/improved so the bot can handle it independently the next time, without having to escalate it to a live agent.��

Organizations must up their game with remote/distributed work becoming a reality. End-user experience will play a major role in determining if your remote working initiatives succeed or not. If they put the user at the center of the process, success will be assured.

References:

Author:

Sujoy Chatterjee
VP, Infra Managed Services,
91����

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Analysts predicted that by now, . While at one side this strategy presents several obvious benefits, on other side it increases complexities that can result in unproductive resources, poor cost management, regulatory risks & security concerns. Choosing the right multi-cloud management tool can take away these headaches, without compromising business goals, by adopting efficient and outcome-based model.

Hyperscalers recognize this need and provide their native tools. While such tools are useful, many may add more costs to achieve more granular control over infra services. Not surprisingly, enterprises are looking for solutions that provide comprehensive coverage of their needs and helps in multi and hybrid cloud management & governance. They are continuously hunting for such tools to manage IT Estate from a single interface:

• Live monitoring of resources across providers and on-prem
• Manage accounts and configurations across cloud environments
• Setup quotas, thresholds, and workflow approvals
• Provide comprehensive governance controls
• Generate recommendations for cost optimization, handle overall spend and chargebacks Visibility into resource
• usage, security and compliance and recommendations

There is a great need for such tools that can cut across cloud environments. This is clear from the fact that . The solution is a reliable integrated Cloud Management Platform (CMP) with the power to ensure that the enterprise leverages the full potential of its cloud investments and delivers projected ROI.

91���� provides a fully packaged CMP that not only meets the complex requirements of managing multi and hybrid cloud but is also customized to meet specific domain and business needs. Our automated solution comprises of CloudBolt and Azure Arc which can offer:

• Simplified & Consistent management
• Cost optimization & Recommendations
• Centralized orchestration, provisioning, reporting and automation
• Simplified security audits and compliance checks
• Accelerate workload delivery through self-service IT

The outcome is reduced costs, improved resilience, flexibility, and security, with right control along with well architected deployment and accelerate multi-cloud adoption. The best part about our solution is our approach to provide simple, seamless, and easy deployment across the board

Author:

Deepak Kumar
Cloud Practice Head ��

Abhishek Asija
Cloud Architect

Jay Prakash Shukla
Sr. Cloud Architect ��

The post Seamless management of Multi Cloud environment appeared first on 91����.

Most businesses spend millions of dollars in monitoring their applications. Entire armies of agents spend endless hours, 24X7, going over troubleshooting checklists, pinging URLs, logging issues and updating monitoring reports and doing infra level activity .

However, here is what typically happens: A user of, say, Salesforce, cannot access their account resulting in the user logging a ticket which can take hours to resolve. The resolution may require an L2 or an L3 engineer to intervene. Or CPU usage of a server may be high, slowing down applications. By the time the problem is flagged and an engineer kills a few processes on the server, hours of productive time can be lost. The solution lies in automating the process and using pro-active application monitoring, basic root cause analysis, auto remediation, and reporting.

91���� created a solution, called Watch Dog, for a multi-national beverage client to pro-actively monitor over 100 URLs to ensure application uptime was maintained and user experience did not deteriorate.

Watch Dog has several outstanding features:

• It can be utilized to keep an eye on tickets created by end-users and act on them. The bot picks up the service request from the ticketing tool and starts performing actions based on defined keywords. It can, for example, assign infrastructure to a new user, provision compute power at a data center through machine-readable definition files or resolve outages. Auto remediation of tickets results in saving MTTR and improves infrastructure and application up time.
• It can perform advanced activities such as disk clean up and software package push.
• It can re-start processes and do basic checks, identify root cause of the problem and, as mentioned earlier, trigger auto remediation processes

What has happened is Magical : The application monitoring and performance management system went from reactive to proactive within 6 week (time taken to implement the solution) The bots have been integrated with Power BI. This allows the business to generate daily, weekly and monthly reports. In addition, the business leadership has access to an intelligent and interactive dashboard for real time updates and visualizations. End result: This is a technology driven process that is not people-dependent; it is attrition and shrinkage proof; it eliminates the need for complex knowledge transfer when people change; the business can run tighter with more frequent 24X7 checks on its applications.

91���� designed Watch Dog to go beyond automated and intelligent application monitoring and performance management. The bots can simulate users actions or paths on a site, application, software and even hardware then monitor their performance (functionality,��, and��). The bots can test applications 24X7 or test new applications before going live. This is a handy capability which can be combined with ��to provide visibility on application health during off peak hours when transaction volumes are low.

Application health is of primary important today, as business become technology dependent. Pro-active and automated application monitoring has become a basic business need. Using automation, businesses can get a handle on root cause analysis and trend lines enabling faster resolution and improving user satisfaction.

The 91���� solution meets all the criteria for a modern, automated, application management system. It is also highly scalable. This is a major advantage as businesses keep adding new applications all the time. All that needs to be done is add URLs to the master list and an automation tool takes over. There is no third-party software to purchase, install and maintain. Or agent hiring, training and retention, to worry about. The solution can also be integrated with logs and analytics tools (like Splunk) to execute a variety of processes when required.

While the engagement with the beverage client was onsite, technology exists to deliver and roll out the solution in a remote, zero-touch model. Application monitoring and maintenance has never been as simple, inexpensive, fail-proof or easy to acquire.

Reference Links:

Author:

Hitesh Joshi,
Lead Consultant, Automation
91����

Saurabh Srivastava,
Senior Project Manager, Infra
91����

Himanshu Gauba
GM & Head, Automation
91����

The post Let AI Manage your Infrastructure appeared first on 91����.

Not only are there massive challenges — such as understanding user content from the free-form text — but chatbots also present an interesting question for designers: what do you do when there is the very little interface? For designers working on chatbots, the text itself is the only canvas they have. But used wisely, it is the most powerful tool in the modern design kit. Chatbots are a hot topic and many are hoping to develop bots to have natural conversations indistinguishable from human ones, and many claims to be using Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Deep Learning techniques to make this possible. But with all the hype around AI, it is sometimes difficult to tell fact from fiction. Chatbots don’t need to impersonate humans. First, to boost outcomes and deliver better end-user experiences, they must quickly deliver responses that speak directly to human needs. Second, they must keep learning, so that the learning can be applied towards creating more meaningful responses.

Effective chatbots will showcase the perfect end-user understanding of needs and complement them with quick access buttons and images that depict the options available. By incorporating these visual aids, chatbots can reduce the time and effort spent on interacting, resulting in a quality end-user experience.

A number of companies are already using chatbots for customer support because it is an effective way for brands to:

• Improve customer service
• Increase customer engagement
• Monitor customer data and gain insights
• Generate better leads
• Save costs

We have seen the following happening based on our implementations:

• 55% of users preferred��chatbots as a primary channel when contacting
• The most common use of chatbots is to get quick answers in an emergency (37% of chatbot users)
• Furthermore, 34% of chatbot users reported that they use chatbots as a means to get connected to a human agent

Organizations have good reasons not to have live support available in the volumes that customers may need: it is too expensive. And although they recognize the value-add of a good conversation in terms of customer relationship benefits like improved retention rates and an increase in the share of wallet, they face the challenge of staying competitively priced. In addition, they probably have a hard time finding qualified employees to take on-demand.

Chatbots are fast

Customers expect fast and efficient support. Customers that do end up getting some kind of response have to wait an average of ten hours, while they reckon that should be around four. Responding to customers in a timely fashion can be a major challenge for organizations that don’t have experienced teams working round the clock to solve customer issues as they arrive and is a major investment even for larger organizations. This is one of the reasons it makes sense to bring in chatbots. Unlike their human counterparts, customer support chatbots don’t need eight hours of sleep a night and can give consumers the answers they need with little to no wait time.

Chatbots are proactive

With traditional customer support, organizations sit back and wait for the customer, meaning that customer interactions are mostly passive and centered around issues and problems encountered. As you will have noticed, chatbots take a more proactive approach by being quick to leap in as soon as a customer arrives on a homepage, asking what they are looking for and if they can be of any help. Advances in NLP means that talking to a bot is no longer the slightly surreal and potentially frustrating experience it used to be. Conversing with chatbots nowadays is very much like talking to a human agent — only faster. Bots can kick-start the conversation, pointing customers in the right direction, guiding them through the payment process and following-up post-sales by letting them know about useful tutorials to help them out and asking questions about their experience, thus replacing the traditional satisfaction survey and helping build even better customer journeys in the future.

Your support team can focus on the important activities

As in many fields that are currently seeing rapid developments thanks to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), the rise of chatbots in customer support is raising questions about human agents eventually seeing their jobs taken over by robots. This is however far from being the case. Chatbots aren’t set to replace customer service representatives, but rather take care of the grunt work and help agents do their jobs more��efficiently, in better conditions, and with more satisfying results for themselves and the customer. Chatbots are just like human agents in that they learn on the job and improve as they go along. AI-powered chatbots can gather and analyze cross-channel data from a wide variety of sources, including previous conversations with the customer, social media profiles, web searches, and interactions with websites. This enables them to personalize their responses and improve them with every customer interaction while providing agents with essential analysis grounded in previous conversations and similar use cases. Unlike human agents, chatbots can’t handle situations that require in-depth analysis or diplomacy. What they are great at is taking the weight off customer support teams by welcoming customers and reassuring them that their issue is being addressed, before responding to simpler requests and filtering the more complex ones towards a customer service representative. The benefits are obvious: agents no longer have their time taken up by routine questions and can focus on bigger, more complex tasks that require their creativity and advanced problem-solving skills.

In conclusion, customer support chatbots are a great investment for any organization, big or small, seeking to give their customer service representatives the help they need to smooth the customer experience journey and boost brand loyalty.

91����’s Digital Workplace solution is all about services revolving around the end-user, a framework that puts the users where they belong – right at the center. With this ‘user first’ approach, certain principles are framed which provide End User Computing Services to enhance the complete customer journey. The end-user outlook provides the ultimate vantage point for very high user experience and satisfaction. We understand what it takes for the IT teams to strategize end-user centric services and get the most out of them despite modern-day service challenges, multi-vendor and multi-technology environment, and complex infrastructure and applications. Knowing just the ‘what’ without the ‘why’ is of no use, as almost all the toolsets and platforms that are part of the Digital Workplace are easy to implement and manage in large and complex IT environments.

Author:

Manoj Kumar P S
Solution Architect, Digital Workplace

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We all know that Banking constitutes an essential service and was one of the first sectors to embrace Digital Transformation, which is considered the panacea for COVID-19.����When COVID-19 struck, there was an initial view that banking will not be significantly impacted by COVID-19 as compared to other sectors such as Travel and Hospitality. However, we know that the digital enablement of banks is at various stages and maturity levels. According to Forrester*, banks are just going through the motions of transformation;��only 14%��of global financial services firms believe that they have the right technology infrastructure and applications in place to deliver great and differentiating CX. This tells us that all banks were not ready to face the challenges brought to the surface by the pandemic-induced lockdowns.

Given the dire situation, many areas will emerge where less prepared banks will be impacted – particularly those with limited digital or self-servicing capability. The dimensions of this impact will be felt across both customers as well as employees. There have been several reports of Tier 1 banks – including Lloyds in the UK, Bank of America, Mashreq, and Westpac to name a few – who have reported significant fall in profits, primarily on account of bad loan provisioning.��

While for the normal end customer, there may be no impact on availing banking services, across all standard transactions like payments, direct debits, and funds transfer, etc., underlying issues faced by banks, building societies and financial institutions will continue to remain. I was a panelist in an 91���� Global Webinar where the banking fraternity from almost all parts of the world participated, and we discussed this topic in detail and generated revealing insights.

Not surprisingly, according to our audience the most impacted Banking areas were back-office operations, followed by call centers, and finally, customer self-service channels. It appears that almost all focus of Digital Transformation done by banks focused on the customers and less on internal-facing touchpoints. Given the remote working of staff and the huge call volumes, back office-operations and call centers may be unable to function as they should.

So, while Banks were arguably better prepared for COVID-19 than other sectors, they are still impacted due to the unprecedented nature of this situation. There are staggering reports of huge impact on customers and employees – customers unable to avail critical services due to closed branches and call centers having horrendous wait times. Moreover, due to staff working remotely or off sick or in isolation, they are unable to perform all functions effectively. This has and will continue to cause challenges for banks and financial institutions across all lines of their business. They not only need to continue business as usual but also work with the respective branches of the governments to make sure that the neediest are not left out – especially across small businesses and the retail spectrum. Among other things, they need to ensure that the monetary benefits, loans, and grants reach those who require them in a timely fashion.

Now, let’s take a look at the areas majorly impacted due to COVID-19.

Customer Impact

• Branch operations��– Due to closures, functions typically done in branches will have to be enabled on self-service channels. Small-medium banks/regional banks/building societies will be most impacted. Lack of self-service capability will mean that the vulnerable and needy segments of the population, who are either sick or not digital savvy, will not be able to avail banking services. Even if there is self-service capability, it will now have to take a larger load of the transactions, and it will have to be reliant.
• Customer Key Transactions��– Lack of automation for all functions means that even some of the critical customer transactions, e.g., high-value/international funds transfer, mortgage transactions, loan applications, etc. might get stuck due to unavailability of self-service capability in these areas as well as unavailability of bank staff. Banks need to look at creating additional self-service capability rapidly without impacting their core systems. These capabilities may need to be launched in days or weeks.
• Impact on the most vulnerable��– Vulnerable and old customers, who are in self-isolation or customers who are not digitally savvy or from the poorest sectors of the society are most impacted. While the majority of customers, at least in advanced markets, can continue to avail all the critical services they might need digitally, the vulnerable segments need more focus. Banks need to look at Digital workers/BOTs who can engage with the segment and enable BOT-assisted self-servicing, which can be delivered through an app, portal, push notifications, or even text messages.

Colleague Impact

• • Contact Centre/Customer Help Desks��– Bank’s help desks are likely to be inundated with an unprecedented number of customer calls on account of Branch closures and/or limited self-service capabilities, which will result in more requests/queries directed to the contact center. Staff going on sick leave or lack of remote working options for contact center staff means that tickets will pile up. Lack of remote access to the bank and automation options on top of core systems will result in even simple cases not being closed. Banks need to look at investing in Digital/BOT workers who can not only stand in and augment bandwidth to the bank’s helpdesk teams but can also provide 24×7 real-time solutions to its customers.

• • Back-office functions –��Banks running legacy may not have enabled home working for all functions, particularly back-office workflows. This means that if key workers are off sick, the cases and transactions will get piled up and cause bottlenecks in the overall operations. Banks need to look at automating bank-office functionals to enable straight-through processing and rule-based cognitive workflows.
  • IT Support Functions��– Due to the unavailability of bandwidth and with people becoming sick or unable to work, planned changes as well as the bank functions, get impacted. This will be compounded by the fact that more employees are working remotely and from different locations. The new working model is bound to lead to more support requests and incidents, which will have to be handled in innovative ways. Again, similar to the Customer Helpdesk, banks should seriously look to create a state of the art BOT enabled Service Desk, which will be more resilient and efficient.

Revenue & Profitability

• Provisioning against Bad loans��– Given the pandemic situation, there is a strong possibility for SME and small corporates becoming delinquent, leading to interest income write-offs. Banks will need to make significant provisions for bad loans, which will impact profits. Lloyds (in the UK) have announced that their pre-tax profits have fallen by 95% due to bad loan provisioning, and a number of Global banks have followed suit with significant profit fall reports.
• Reduction in Fee-based income��– Interest/fee-based incomes will reduce due to interest rate cuts and lower transaction volumes. Banks will potentially decide not to pass the benefits of interest rate cuts to its customers as the economic stimuli like mortgage holidays will need to be funded, and just the Govt. grants will not be enough. Banks will need AI/ML-led cross-sell and up-sell capability for new ‘paid’ products, which will offer additional value to customers.
• Identify & Help Vulnerable to avoid Bad loans –��Banks��will also need to proactively monitor and help/assist these customers, which will ensure there are limited bad books. Some of these customers may not have understood or availed the Govt. grants and loans due to a variety of reasons, and a proactive reach-out is essential. Instead of using traditional mechanisms, banks should launch special COVID apps and solutions to handle this situation.

Regulatory and Compliance Related

• Adhere to Regulatory/Central Bank directives��–��There will be a need to launch new products and modify existing products. As central banks inject stimulus to the economy in the forms of benefits, interest holidays, and new loan products, banks will need to stand up new functionality quickly to adhere to the central bank timelines. Banks will need to launch solutions quickly to help their customers and/or use this opportunity to widen their customer base.
• Increased Risk of Fraud and Money Laundering��– In this time of crisis, there is an increased risk of customer fraud and cross-border money laundering, as well as illegal funds transfer. Lack of heightened enterprise fraud management will lead to regulatory fines and reputational risks as well. Again, analytics and AI/ML-based cognitive solutions will be the key to helping banks identify potential cases and prevent loss and customer impact.

Technology Impact

• • Scalability & Resilience of IT Systems��– One aspect that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the fore is the resilience and scalability of the banks’ technology platforms. Some of the platforms, even at Tier 1 banks, are decades old and are tuned only to operate under normal circumstances. Banks are now seeing unprecedented transaction levels related to COVID-19 stimulus packages announced by central banks. Banks who used to process around hundreds of new loan applications a day are now getting more than a hundred thousand each day! Their systems are unable to cope, and banks need to look at quickly fixing the solutions while making new ones for the COVID-19 context without impacting their core systems. One mechanism is to divert the COVID transactions away from the core systems into a new application that is resilient and can scale and take the brunt, passing it on the core in a much more controlled manner.

• • Strengthen Remote Working –��Traditionally, remote working enablement was done for a limited set of functions and applications.��Banks have to re-look at this setup and extend this to all critical business applications so that the operational risks and customer impact are minimized. When we asked our Global audience for their views, the majority of them responded that the remote working of staff is going to be the new normal. In connection to this, Barclays CEO Jes Stanley recently said, “The notion of putting 7000 people in a building may be a thing of the past.”

Conclusion

This pandemic has brought several issues to the forefront.��While no new non-discretionary spend related initiatives or interventions are likely to start, banks will at-least spend the time planning and conceptualizing their transformation initiatives. Bringing out some more results from our Global Webinar, we asked our audience what areas they are likely to focus on and invest in the medium term, and not surprisingly, Customer Experience continues to be the main focus areas with Colleague Experience also featuring as a key area as the focus on back-office Digitization keeps gaining more and more momentum.

The top 5 initiatives that I think Banks and Financial Institutions should focus on are:

1. Rapid enablement of their digital customer and colleague experience solutions��– Self-service capability across all their business functions, not just limited to customer-facing functions.
2. Digital worker/BOT based helpdesks��– Both for Customer help desks and Internal IT help desks, which augment the capability of the human workforce/agents.
3. Focus on scalability and resilience of their IT Platforms (Core IT) –��Review the platform and start making plans and business cases for their transformation.
4. Strengthen cyber-security and enterprise fraud management solutions��– When more functions are brought, online there is a big risk of��Cyber/Ransomware crimes. Lack of strong fraud safeguards makes any online/self-service capability they offer at risk of being exploited by criminal elements.
5. Revenue Risk Mitigation��– In the event of an economic downturn, there is a possibility of customers becoming delinquent as well as��fee income reducing. Banks need to��find ways to remain competitive and profitable. Banks will have to invest in solutions which will enable cross-sell/up-sell and also identify potential customer risks.

91���� has launched several Banking-focused solutions to manage the COVID-19 situation and provide better preparation for the post-COVID world. Our solutions cover every single aspect and dimension mentioned above and offer point capability in all these areas. Please contact us to know about our industry-leading offerings.

The Global Webinar I have referred to in this paper is now available as an On-Demand Webinar. Please do take time out to participate and provide your feedback, which will help us to further calibrate and finetune our COVID-19 response. You can access the Webinar��.

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As the third largest mortgage provider and one among five top commercial lenders and current account providers, the bank had to comply with the regulatory deadline of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The goal was to meet the PSD2 norms for strong customer authentication (SCA or multi factor authentication) across its digital channels. With the COVID-19 pandemic eliminating the chance of our team being physically present at the bank’s facility in the UK, both Client and 91���� set up the infrastructure, teams and tools to remotely ensure that the change to the bank’s digital systems were made within prescribed deadlines and without impacting its 14 million customers base.

The regulatory requirement the bank needed to meet included implementation of 2F authentication for:

• Standing orders and setting up new payee customer journeys for retail customers
• Remote log in for retail and business banking customers
• Confirmation of payee changes

How do you meet deadlines when COVID-19 disrupts the work environment?

91���� set up a remote team (peak size: 40) to work on the bank’s requirements. From the client side Product owner, Analyst and Client manager worked remotely and continually on meticulously planning the roll out of the 2F authentication to 100% online banking users across the platforms of Web, Mobile and tablets.

The 91���� team members connected using remote access service (RAS) using distributed agile model. The scrum teams both onsite and offshore connected from the safety of their homes.

A number of collaboration tools were used to ensure smooth functioning and on-time program delivery:

• Microsoft Teams/Zoom video conference and tele-conference for Agile ceremonies and collaborations
• WhatsApp group for instant offline communication
• Confluence to communicate priority changes

Since we had low RAS infrastructure availability to handle the vast number of remote connections required for the project, we used a `follow the sun’ model. India members connected and worked prior to start of UK business hours, participating in daily stand ups and connected again when required during post UK work hours. RAS was upgraded to aligning with the peak remote connections requirement. Gradually members are now being moved to common work timing between onsite and offshore

100% customers migrated before deadline for 100% success

The problem of deployment was made complex by the spike in usage by bank customers in March. These implementations were well planned by the Product owners and Client Manager, well supported by team members of 91���� to implement stepwise incremental user migration to the new platform. Finally, before the regulatory deadline, 100% customer migration was achieved—just as the threat from COVID-19 had begun to peak in the UK.

Appreciation from key anchor and Manager of Channels IT, had these words to mention: “Amidst emerging COVID 19 situation at that time, new logon went live with full roll out on 10^th & 13^th March across Retail & Business Banking. My heartfelt congratulations to the entire team for the good work, dedication and the support you have shown throughout the roll out phase & to support them round the clock. People have worked in shifts covering different time zones / weekends to cover the sheer volume of traffic across these platforms and to continuously monitor the application.

Logon is one of the most complex journeys technically and the handshake to core application was done seamlessly. Creating sophisticated dashboard & alerts / watchers, are some of the proud achievements we can always cherish & this could not have been achieved without your good work, support and dedication.”

The bank’s Senior Manager, Channels IT, took note of the effort: “Amazing work from each one of you—especially in the current climate. Thank you for navigating through such a complex and difficult journey. You have remained focused throughout and shown true collaboration.”

Product Owner for Channels IT, summed up the outcome as “I would like to say well done on your efforts to get SCA login over the line for retail and Business. We made the regulatory date despite many obstacles and dependencies – you should be proud of what has been achieved and the current performance of the code is v positive.”

COVID-19 has placed numerous challenges before businesses; it has been no different for us. But with each passing day we find that with innovation, perseverance and presence of mind we can battle the pandemic and ensure life continues with as little disruption as possible.

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In a crisis like this, each stakeholder behaves and responds differently (but mostly in a pre-determined and agreed manner). The key is to understand how each stakeholder evolves their plan during this dynamic period of crisis.��

Some factors that are being affected –and which will evolve—are discussed below. Eventually we will need to redefine and fine-tune them once the impact of COVID-19 recedes. This is essential to developing a sustainable and resilient business.

Business operation will demand an updated Business Continuity Plan (BCP). In any value chain, BCP is managed by multiple stakeholders. The way BCP has evolved during the crisis will aid in redesigning the process, translating into better client acquisition process and financial goal management. The “new” unknown unknowns must be considered during the redesign of BCP along with a slew of new regulatory requirements that will inevitable be on their way. The corollary is that existing information security policies will come under the microscope and must be aligned with the new work environment.

People management is about to take a massive turn. People are the foundation of great asset and wealth management. With social distancing and travel restrictions, employees will be away from their clients. The lack of proximity in interactions will hinder their creativity and effectiveness. In the post COVID-19 period, success will depend on how well tele/ remote/ virtual working tools are used to manage interactions, queries and solutions. A new set of best practices must ensure that customized responses are available, teams collaborate and managers monitor processes and simplify interactions.��

Customer management is about to undergo a revolution. Custom views of interpersonal client interactions have been central to understanding the risk and reward profiles of clients. This profile pivots the design and execution of financial goals and portfolio creation. Advisors must manage this process in a virtual world and develop custom views that keep their customers responsive to markets and macro-economic changes. The utilization of virtual workshops, sessions, webinars, social media live casts and podcasts will grow as tools for continuous��communication that also provide extra comfort to clients. One of the important aspects of such tools will be the ability to archive interactions for retrieval and analysis at any point.��

Using technology to manage portfolio and trade desks will set off organizations on the hunt for robo-advisory systems, trade bot platforms, cloud and other automation tools. The tools they select will provide competitive differentiators. New technology will provide new use cases and scenarios which will fold into existing processes and deliver a stronger response to client requirements.

Digital Workplace teams will be in demand. When we get to a virtual world, we also add volumes to interactions and transactions. A big change will be presented to EUCaaS owners. They will have to effectively utilize their existing teams and also provide a helping hand to manage increased volumes. This will be besides the burden of reorganizing existing resources and developing and utilizing bots for end-user issue management.

In the long term these changes will transform the overall value chain in asset and wealth management. When the industry is affected by the next catastrophe, it won’t panic. Instead, game changing digital process will have been baked into their systems, creating resilience and responsiveness.

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Data Privacy has existed for more than a decade. Privacy policies try to give the data owner (the consumer) the right to know what type of personally identifiable information (PII) is being collected and how it will be used. In addition, privacy regulations are increasingly insisting on allowing the data owner to opt out of having their data used and provide the option of legal action when regulations are breached.��

These regulations make common sense. And should therefore be an intrinsic part of system and application design. Essentially the data protection principles should be built “by design and by default”. In simpler words, it means to “knit the fabric with security in each stitch”.

Data Privacy has shot into the limelight recently because the countries and regions adding regulations is growing swiftly. From Argentina to Australia, India, Japan, and Taiwan, over 50 nations already have data privacy laws. And the number of lawsuits based on privacy violations and breaches of individual’s rights is growing.

In response to the concerns around data privacy, the practice and framework of Privacy by Design is gaining traction. The term, as is perhaps already evident, means that security should be built into a product by design instead of being added in later by third party products and services.

When does it apply and to who?

Privacy by Design applies to individuals and organizations engaged in developing or maintaining business processes and IT systems:

• IT Systems: Data protection by design must be well thought through and integrated into projects from the start of a plan. There are ways to ensure this becomes simple: from a SDLC�� viewpoint:

Requirements Gathering

• Identify privacy and security expectations, PII data elements��
• Consider security aspects for application/systems upgrades/revamp������
• Identify infrastructure security requirements
• Identify security threats and vulnerabilities��
• Review security threats and vulnerabilities from stand point of individuals/data subjects
• Consider data security aspects for the 3 states of digital data – “data at rest”, “data in transit” and “data in use”

Design

• Consider “Security by Design” as a concept and apply the principles
• Consider a layered approach to design and use best practices for ensuring application security e.g. OWASP Top 10 application security risks, VAPT, WAPT
• Demonstrate how privacy and security is built in the architecture/blueprint��
• Consider using masking, hashing, encryption, network security, backup, end point security etc. for securing data and infrastructure

Development

• • Analyse and implement the fixes required to eliminate “false positives”
  • Trace the development to requirements to ensure all security requirements are addressed

Test

• • Consider Vulnerability testing including Infrastructure and Application tests, VAPT, WAPT
  • Identify clear responsibilities with customers on test scope, provision of data and test environments
  • Ensure security requirements are rolled to in production��

• Organizations: The performance of business activities requires the identification of data owners in an organization – data being sourced primarily from employees, customers and service providers. Each activity like data collection, deletion and processing requires assignment of role and data owners must be identified in an activity within business process. Consider Privacy by Design philosophy in business processes within functional groups by –������

• Ensuring privacy in workflows of business processes and touch points of data exchange between processes
• Design the business activities to protect personal data
• Define role-based accesses

It has become critical to build a privacy culture in organizations as data privacy regulators across the world become more active. Going forward, managing data privacy should be a consideration even before developers get down to writing code.

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Some industries like travel and hospitality are going through an existential crisis, while others like retail and manufacturing have been badly hit by the spikes and troughs of disrupted demand and supply chains. Banking is perhaps less visually impacted (for now), as irrespective of self-isolation or social distancing, it is a necessity and a fundamental utility akin to gas and electricity. But there is a lot coming down the road for sure.

I have spoken to many banks and CIOs in the last few weeks and discussed and shared thoughts. The immediate focus has been on business continuity measures, on getting remote work from home (WFH) processes up and running and ensuring the technology and infrastructure is in place and getting contact centers and helpdesk to support the business. But now as it stabilizes, and it becomes evident that this is the ‘new normal’ (a phrase you hear everywhere), there is a clear thinking emerging on some potential steps and imperatives for the bank CIO.��

Stress and impact on the self-service/digital channels of engagement

Over the last two decades, internet banking and mobile banking were built as independent channels to the branch, call-center etc. and the utopian goal over the last few years has been to achieve an omni-channel outcome where customers could engage across channels seamlessly. Yet the technology stack has been built incrementally with band-aid solutions and some of the current mobile/internet channels are cumbersome and already legacy systems. Today, due to COVID-19, the entire stress and impact is on self-service via the digital online/ mobile channel, and there has never been a better time or a business-case to look at transforming this.�� There is cheap and proven technology around to choose from. Mobile-first, cloud-native and secure; out-of-the-box functionality that can easily integrate with your existing core-systems, and canned workflows and processes that can easily be tailored. And low-risk implementation models that are plug and play and bolt-on, delivered in days and weeks rather than months.

Don’t put your change budget and discretionary spending on hold; modify it

Most enterprises are programmed to follow set patterns of risk management. The first response to a disaster is to put discretionary spending on hold. “Let’s focus on BAU,” is a comforting idea amidst the chaos. But the lessons of 2008 should not go waste. In 2008, savvy banks invested in modifying their technology estate, IT legacy systems and their limitations, while the markets were still in turmoil. They got fit before the downturn loosened its grip. And when economies returned to normal, these banks zoomed ahead leaving their competition far behind.

Core-systems transformation/ modernization and approaches – either ‘rip and replace’ or ‘hollowing out the core’ – have in the last decade matured significantly. They don’t necessarily need to balloon into spends running into millions (which then get railroaded by inter-company political agendas) and fail spectacularly and become a career-limiting outcome for the people involved.

Trim down the change budget by all means but talk to your IT partners and see how it can be put to better use and explore how some proven technology and approaches can simplify and transform your existing IT limitations. This could be the best time to do this.

Agile IT Delivery – make it global and distributed

When Agile development became institutional in the last few years, and Agile manifestos, and stand up meetings sprang up everywhere, the purists recommended co-location as mandatory and suddenly development and testing teams all in the same floor/building became de rigueur. This was somehow seen as a conceptual clash with the global delivery (onshore, nearshore, offshore) model and local IT contracting and costs mushroomed exponentially. Some of the braver CIOs saw this as unsustainable and took the step of working with their IT services partners and pioneered Distributed Agile development models. These have now matured very well with robust tools, technologies, processes and ways of working with remote teams.�� And when COVID-19 struck, unsurprisingly, these distributed agile teams were the first that adjusted to the new normal. Today when everyone is working remotely, whether a developer logs in from his home in Boston, Birmingham or Bangalore, it doesn’t make a difference. But it does make a difference to the bottom-line when the unit cost of delivery is different in each of these.��

And then with automation and other efficiencies, there has probably never been a better time to go all-in and consider Distributed IT delivery models that reduce your unit cost of delivery.

Move (even more) to an opex, pay-per-use model

In the last few years, SAAS applications and platforms have paved the way for increased familiarity with the consumption-based spend pattern for IT. On the other hand, large clunky lock-stock-and-barrel outsourcing contracts with black-box operating models are distinctly unfashionable. But there is a clear middle ground here for parts of the IT spend and estate to be carved out intelligently and moved into an opex model with your IT services provider, with guaranteed performance metrics, productivity improvements and clear transparent dashboards that give you all the control you want and the services and scope can be tweaked as required.

By implication, IT vendors will step up their game with new models. While some of the larger vendors may struggle to move fast enough to change their cookie-cutter outsourcing frameworks, or not be as hungry because of the dropping contract values, or perhaps be loath to cannibalize existing contracts, chances are that flexible, nimble and agile mid-tier providers will knit together these offerings much faster than their more mature competitors.��

The winners…

In my view, this is not the time to wait and watch; it is a time for decisive action. Banks and their CIOs (and their IT partners) have a window in which to turn this setback around and those that react fast and adapt will end up as the winners. To borrow a phrase from Malcolm Gladwell, those who see this as a phase of ‘desirable difficulty’ will be the ones that thrive.

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