Anthony Malakian: Trust Your Gut
There are two common—but nebulous—refrains in our industry: aligning IT with the business, and calculating returns on investment (ROI). The former is a principle that CTOs would like to say they’ve achieved, while the latter is a calculation that can prove CTOs’ effectiveness—or leave them hanging in the wind.
Heads of technology at user firms discussed both of these issues—IT–business synchronization and ROI—at WatersTechnology’s North American Trading Architecture Summit in New York last month.
Lack of Transparency
Hemathri Balakrishnan, enterprise architect at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, has been studying the lack of IT transparency, as it relates to the business, across the industry. He found that in the Asia-Pacific region—a hotbed of new IT undertakings—there is less than 4 percent visibility of the overall IT strategy at the development community level.
“Organizations are struggling with how best to get the IT strategy aligned with the business,” he says. “If you see the number of strategic projects compared to tactical solutions put in place, there’s a very big gap.”
Balakrishnan has worked to create a grassroots movement throughout the organization that helps to promote innovation and that everyone feels a part of. They should also know what the end-state should look like. But that is often easier said than done, says Vladimir Ignjatovic, head of IT at UBS Wealth Management. This requires constant communication between the developers and management, who typically aren’t as tech-savvy as those building the platforms. “We’re always trying to communicate to the business the key initiatives and long-term goals,” he says. “We always try to discuss the strategic initiatives with the business from their perspective.”
There Will Be Failures
Sands Capital Management’s Ryan Bateman talks at length about this very challenge in this month’s cover story on page 28. At Sands Capital, Bateman seeks to convey that there will be failures, but that they are part of the process of being successful.
“To create an innovative culture, you have to set up the business to understand that everything is not going to be successful—there are going to be failures because we’re going to swing pretty hard if we’re going to get ahead of the trends with the limited budgets we have,” he says.
However, he says, quantifying ROI is a harder task. “I find it difficult to capture ROI on a lot of the things that we do,” Bateman explains.
When marrying business strategy to technology, traditional ROI calculations may not be appropriate. A lot of it comes down to deliverables and gut feelings. If the business wants to be somewhere in two years, IT has to be there in a year so that it can try out different technologies and ensure that the tools, platforms and resources are in place when the business is ready to fire. But that’s a case of business leading IT.
“I still don’t know how to measure the ROI on that,” Bateman says.
Ignjatovic at UBS is in a similar boat. “ROI is very important, but sometimes it’s hard to judge if you are saving with a certain project,” he says.
Paternal Wisdom
Throughout my life, my father has always reminded me of the four stages of knowledge, the first two of which are easily understood: You know what you know, and you don’t know what you don’t know. The information is either in your head or it isn’t.
The other two are trickier: You know what you don’t know, and you don’t know what you know. In other words, there are things that you think you know even though you’re wrong, and that even though you might think you are ignorant of something, you actually do in fact know the answer. I think of it as a case of your gut being right or wrong.
Qualifying true ROI when aligning IT to business strategy is often a gut-feeling sort of endeavor. The stage of knowledge in which you find yourself might go some way toward determining whether or not you will be a successful technologist.
Only users who have a paid subscription or are part of a corporate subscription are able to print or copy content.
To access these options, along with all other subscription benefits, please contact info@waterstechnology.com or view our subscription options here: http://subscriptions.waterstechnology.com/subscribe
You are currently unable to print this content. Please contact info@waterstechnology.com to find out more.
You are currently unable to copy this content. Please contact info@waterstechnology.com to find out more.
Copyright Infopro Digital Limited. All rights reserved.
You may share this content using our article tools. Printing this content is for the sole use of the Authorised User (named subscriber), as outlined in our terms and conditions - https://www.infopro-insight.com/terms-conditions/insight-subscriptions/
If you would like to purchase additional rights please email info@waterstechnology.com
Copyright Infopro Digital Limited. All rights reserved.
You may share this content using our article tools. Copying this content is for the sole use of the Authorised User (named subscriber), as outlined in our terms and conditions - https://www.infopro-insight.com/terms-conditions/insight-subscriptions/
If you would like to purchase additional rights please email info@waterstechnology.com
More on Emerging Technologies
Ice moves to meet demand for greater cloud, AI capabilities
The exchange also outlined competitive advantages behind managing its data and cloud strategy internally during its Q1 earnings call on Thursday.
FactSet looks to build on portfolio commentary with AI
Its new solution will allow users to write attribution summaries more quickly and adds to its goal of further accelerating discoverability, automation, and innovation.
How Ally found the key to GenAI at the bottom of a teacup
Risk-and-tech chemistry—plus Microsoft’s flexibility—has seen the US lender leap from experiments to execution.
The IMD Wrap: Beginning of the end for data audits?
This week, there’s exciting news for data bean-counters in the form of a partnership between two vendors that could change the way we view and track data usage and audits.
S&P debuts Spark Assist genAI copilot, draws up ‘Blueprints’ of combined datasets
S&P’s Kensho subsidiary has rolled out new emerging tech products leveraging AI to explore and combine the vendor’s wealth of datasets to solve common use cases.
Nasdaq reshuffles tech divisions post-Adenza
Adenza is now fully integrated into the exchange operator’s ecosystem, bringing opportunities for new business and a fresh perspective on how fintech fits into its strategy.
Liquidnet sees electronic future for gray bond trading
TP Icap’s gray market bond trading unit has more than doubled transactions in the first quarter of 2024.
Most read
- Chris Edmonds takes the reins at ICE Fixed Income and Data Services
- DTCC urges affirmation focus ahead of T+1 move
- FactSet looks to build on portfolio commentary with AI