This document discusses the evolving role of IT in banks and other organizations in the age of empowered customers. It argues that to succeed, organizations must become "customer-obsessed" and focus on delivering outstanding customer experiences through technology. The role of the CIO and IT function must also evolve from being focused internally to being integrated with the business and focused on customer value. The document outlines three steps for CIOs to take: 1) Build a strong business-technology foundation, 2) Rethink IT communications, and 3) Influence and innovate as a partner to the business.

1. Banking & I.T : Finding the Common Ground
New Role Of I.T & C.I.O in Banks
By Samer Abu Zayed
Deputy CEO/Head Of Group I.T and Enterprise Program
Banking Technology Summit – Jan 2012
Amman - Jordan

2. New Role of I.T in Business Organizations –
Business Motivations
In the era where the customer has tremendous influence over business
strategy, organizations need to be customer-obsessed to retain
customers and dominate markets.
governments must become citizen-obsessed to remain in power;
customer expectations are rising dramatically. Customers
today are increasingly online; demand contextual,
personalized service from every interaction; and have
embraced the power of their complaints
to establish market leadership, customers will develop
brand loyalty through technology-enabled outstanding
customer experiences as well as direct product or service
perceived value and quality of supporting services.
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3. We Have Entered The Age Of
Empowered Customers
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4. Characteristics Of The “Empowered Customers” Age
Customers have more power than ever. With online reviews and mobile web access, your
customers know more about your products, your service, your competitors, and pricing than
you do. Remember “Where the buyer has full information about demand, actual market
prices, and even supplier costs, this usually yields the buyer greater bargaining leverages.
Your competitors now have instant access to your tactics and strategies. Your own
customers are sharing their experiences online, search engines expose interest in keywords, and
everything your competition wants to know about you is on your website and those of your best
influencers. In short, customers practically serve granular insight about you to your competitors’
feet. This amps up competition, since competitors can match or react to any move you make
instantly.
Your can’t build barriers to protect your market share:
• Barriers to entry are minimal, there is always new comers , Startups challenge
existing leaders.
• Competition becomes fiercer : Perfect real-time information exists about competitors’
pricing and practices.
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5. How to Compete in this Empowered Customer Age
It’s no longer sufficient to be simply “customer-centric” or “customer-focused.” The
only successful strategy in the age of the customer is to become customer-
obsessed — to focus your strategic decisions first and foremost on customer
knowledge and retention. Here’s what we mean:
“A customer-obsessed company focuses its strategy, its energy,
and its budget on processes that enhance knowledge of and
engagement with customers and prioritizes these over
maintaining traditional competitive barriers”.
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6. What business model “Customer Obsessed”
Organizations is based on?
1. Invest in real-time insight to build products and services customers will embrace.
For example, they use social technologies to listen to their customers and to gain real-time
insight — transforming slow market research into fast customer intelligence. They then
respond quickly, building products and services based on needs their customers can’t yet
articulate.
2. Spend more on customer experience and service to build and maintain
relationships.
Interactions between customer-obsessed firms and their customers aren’t arm’s-length, taking
place through script-driven call centers. Instead, these companies invest in customer-
obsessed services, delivering rich and responsive customer experience consistently across
channels.
3. Fund sales channels that deliver intelligence about customers and don’t just push
products.
In the age of the customer, firms succeed based on the customer’s experience of value — not
production and delivery. These firms obsess about repeat business more than new business.
They create, maintain, and leverage customer connections, prioritizing the end user customers
over their channels. 6

7. What business model “Customer Obsessed”
Organizations is based on?
4. Shift marketing funds from one-way ads into useful content and interactive
marketing: One-way information delivery no longer works. Successful firms in the age of the
customer don’t just embrace social applications — they focus on them as a foundation for
connection, measuring their impact. These firms are generous with content in their interactions
with customers — like not only providing mobile banking but also delighting customers with
mobile devices that supply information instantly.
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8. The Age of the customer requires CIO & I.T Function in
Business Organizations to change
As explained in the previous slides in the era of the empowered customer and the customer
obsessed business organizations realized that the customer has tremendous influence over
business strategy, In fact business organization can to establish market leadership and
customers will develop brand loyalty through two values :
technology-enabled customer experiences
as well as direct product or service perceived value and quality of
supporting
services.
The CIO and IT have a vital role to play as part of the business — not as a service provider
to the business, but as an integral part of the value delivery process to the customer. This shift
requires CIOs to forget “alignment” a focus on connecting the dots between IT and “the
business” as if IT were just another technology vendor and concentrate instead on shared
business leadership. CIO’s must think about the emerging role of IT as part of the customer-
value ecosystem as a move toward “empowered business technology
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9. CIOs Must Increase Focus On The Customer Experience,
Revenue Growth, And Innovation
There are major challenges to build this new I.T image?
· . . . technology is often absent from strategy planning . . . Unfortunately, IT is all too often
absent when leaders discuss business strategy options. Statistics show that only 29% of firms report
developing any kind of technology strategy in conjunction with the business strategy. As a result,
IT is significantly disconnected from the rest of the business, and CIOs must bridge the gap.
· . . . and CIOs must help IT professionals to stop seeing themselves as separate. We hear
this in almost every conversation with any IT professional — the constant reference to “IT and the
business” as if they exist as two distinct entities. We also see the expression ‘I.T projects”
In fact there’s no such thing as technology projects; they are all business projects with technology
components.
…….CEO’s already understand the connection between technology and revenue.
Integrating
business and technology is increasingly critical to improving organizational performance.
In study after study, CEOs identify technology integration within the business as a key
differentiator in both reducing costs and increasing revenue
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10. 10
When the marketing function in one ‘non I.T’ organization was asked
to list all of the reasons that why it sees IT department 'not too
competent' or 'not at all competent'"
IT and marketing speak different languages 58%
IT doesn't understand the organization business 56%
IT doesn't understand how we adopt technology 48%
IT focuses on the metrics that don't matter to us 32%
Other 14%
But how do other lines evaluate I.T function in the
organization , lets ask the Marketing Function

11. It’s time to develop a new IT philosophy
 It is time for the C.I.O to focus on the external
“final” customer and not only the internal customer
“business lines”
 IT becomes a fundamental part of the business.
In this approach, IT doesn’t sit apart from “the
business” like some third-party technology vendor. This
new way of thinking about IT places the CIO first and
foremost as a business executive responsible for
business performance, with a secondary responsibility
for running and managing technologies and systems.
 The CIO’s primary concern should become
driving business and customer value. The CIO is
primarily concerned with helping deliver value to the
customer buying products or services from the
business and with understanding how the perception of
value is created in the mind of the ultimate consumer of
the organization’s products and services.
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12. It’s time to develop a new IT philosophy
The CIO must work hard to
demonstrate and communicate the
business value of IT. The shift in
philosophy cannot take place in isolation :
The CIO who attempts to make the change
while the CEO still expects the CIO to focus
on keeping the lights on and reducing the
budget year after year have no chance to
succeed. In order to get the CEO to
understand how this change can help the
organization, the CIO must coach the IT
team on how to communicate effectively in
business terms at all times
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13. CIOs Must Evolve IT Through Three Steps To Reach Empowered BT

14. Build The Business Technology Foundation
1. Keep on the lights (Ensure current business continuity
2. Bring new business expertise into IT.
3. Put top talent in the role of IT consultants
4. Measure projects and IT using business metrics.
5. Develop a portfolio approach to technology investments
6. Build rigorous processes designed to deliver consistent results.
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15. “Beyond Alignment: A Road Map For Business-Centric CIOs”
Step 1: The Journey To Customer Centric I.T Function
Starts With Building A Strong Business- Technology
Foundation
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16. Re-Think / Re-Build I.T Communication
Take I.T from “punch of techies” to “people in the
business technology field ” by establishing effective
communication
1. Shift IT from having discrete relationship events to becoming part of the conversation.
Bring new business expertise into IT.
2. Make the end customer an IT responsibility
3. Hire a marketing expert to communicate professionally with the rest of the organization and
promote I.T as business enabler.
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17. “Beyond Alignment: A Road Map For Business-Centric CIOs”
Step 2: Rethink IT Communications To Develop Trust And
Credibility
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18. Influence And Innovate As A Partner Player
1. Plan business strategy, not IT strategy.
2. Become the chief innovation officer by supporting innovation within the organization
through communication medias (SharePoint and others) , also encourage innovation within
I.T function as well.
3. Redefine IT’s role as a service.
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19. “Beyond Alignment: A Road Map For Business-Centric CIOs”
Step 3: Influence And Innovate As A Partner Player
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20. Five Main Essential Metrics for Managing I.T within
Non I.T Organizations
Metric #1: Alignment Of IT Investments To Business Strategy
You can’t deliver sustained business value if the IT strategy and the business strategy are not
aligned and tightly linked.
Metric #2: Cumulative Business Value Of IT Investment
The second metric explicitly measures and communicates the value of IT investments by looking
at the cumulative return of the entire portfolio
Metric #3: IT Spend Ratio — New Versus Maintenance
The third metric focuses on the total IT spend. Depending on the industry, IT budgets consume
anywhere from 2% to 15% of revenues and more than half of all capital spending. However, many
IT organizations find themselves locked each year into a cycle of spending increasing amounts
of the budget on just keeping the lights on — leaving less and less to spend on new initiatives. In
fact, the average IT organization spends 70% to 80% of its budget on maintaining the status quo
versus only 20% to 30% on new initiatives. Best practices companies have taken this ratio to
60/40, and some are actually driving toward 50/50. Measuring and reporting this ratio can be a key
indicator of both the efficiency of IT as well as IT value creation.
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21. Five Main Essential Metrics for Managing I.T within
Non I.T Organizations
Metrics #4: Critical Business Service Availability
The fourth metric focuses on the customers of IT and their satisfaction with the services IT
provides.
The most useful metric would be one giving insight into current and future customer satisfaction —
it would be a leading, not lagging, indicator.
Metric #5: Operational Health
The fifth metric focuses on operational health and stability, without which IT will be unable to
establish credibility with its users and is more likely to be relegated to a role as a cost center rather
than a value center. There are a number of components to consider concerning operational health.
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22. Thank You
Q&A
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