Countless projects are going on in the organization. Many of them are deemed critical and put a ton of pressure on the shoulders of IT leaders. Each one has a familiar, pressing question attached to it: How is the project coming along?
For example:
How’s that digital transformation initiative going?
How’s the cloud migration program looking?
Are the app modernization projects on track for an on-time and on-budget release?
These may be a few questions IT executives in the Financial Services sector have on their minds at any given moment—sometimes even in their dreams as they try to sleep.
One could easily extend this line of thinking (or questioning) to other technology-based initiatives that are also likely underway across the organization as it looks for ways to stay relevant, competitive, and resilient.
Because IT is sitting at the center of these technology-based projects, it’s not uncommon to further paint them with a tech-based brush. And while this tech-based view is natural for leaders and managers with either the word information or technology in their title, they aren’t the only ones looking at the world of innovation in this way. This tech-based view may be reaching other levels and functions throughout the organization as technologies, technical lingo, and creative scenarios make their way onto television and the radio and then into your peers’ and colleagues’ daily meetings
Don’t expect this trend to go away any time soon. This tech-based view is very likely to continue to broaden and deepen for many years to come. For example, this year alone, Forrester forecasts tech spending by banks to achieve double-digit growth.1 More tech investments mean more tech projects and more tech-driven conversations.
Gartner concurs with this sentiment, forecasting that worldwide IT spending will grow more than 5% across all sectors this year, reaching almost $4.5 trillion—as organizations turn to more strategic long-term programs over reactionary project-based spending.2
What does this all mean for IT leaders in the financial services sector? It means that technology will be at the core of everything that the organization is trying to accomplish. It also means that IT leaders may succeed at completing their projects but, at the same time, fall into the trap of being too tech-focused, missing the points that matter for the business, and unknowingly leaving the institution in a precarious position of being bogged down in technical debt in the years ahead.
Citations
1 – “Banks Will Double Down On Innovation In 2022,” Forbes, Nov 11, 2021 (link)
2 – “Gartner Forecasts Worldwide IT Spending to Grow 5.1% in 2022,” Gartner, January 18, 2022 (link)