IT-Business Alignment Creates Value at Yes Bank

The way we run IT at Yes Bank is very different from the way IT is run at other banks. I don't have any programmer, database administrator, or any person of technical profile in the team. That is commoditized. So either you buy the solution rather than build it or you buy services, not people. We outsource our IT majorly both on the application and infrastructure side, and on the delivery basis and Service Level Agreement (SLA) basis rather than people basis.

What IT does internally is to work along with both the businesses and various partners to find the right solution. So, I would say, we are solution brokers. As a result, my team's job is to partner with the businesses to understand their needs, rather than wait for the businesses to come and tell us what they want.

To develop the ability to work along with the businesses, one needs to build those skills. So our team comprises mostly of business analysts, and they partner with the businesses in terms of looking both at the current needs as well as future needs.

For example, we have created a platform called Insights2Engage. This involves providing not just data about the customers but also relevant insights, so that we engage with the customers better. This means that instead of saying that these are the five things we want to sell to all our customers, we say that for this specific customer can we sell him something which we know he requires rather than try to carpet bomb him. So this results in creating a lot of customer-specific insights.

Today, there is a huge wave around mobile. We have been working with our business teams on ways to leverage mobile. YES Bank was the first bank to come up with the mobile banking remittance application. We are looking at multiple applications for different people and their needs. This is being driven jointly by technology and business.

These are some of the ways in which we are helping business create value using technology solutions. The game is around the ability to piece together the jigsaw puzzle. It is not about creating the jigsaw puzzle itself.

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Umesh Jain is the CIO at YES Bank. ...

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This post has received 1 Comment

Conwyn Flavell said on February 20, 2012 11:20 PM

My question is how do you innovate? For example imagine a world without on-line credit card checking, or pin&chip technology or Internet banking, or mobile telephone top up. These all were created by the banks to move the industry forward.

You need people in IT who can see future opportunity so when the business analyst says ‘I want X’ then IT says ‘you need Y.’ This is also true for other industries such as Engineering or Retail.

It is easy to claim IT is a commodity and the outsourcing community will always be there for you with the required economic justification but I suggest having IT technology on the inside is far better than on the outside.