Category: Technology

” I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails always to reach my destination.” – Jimmy Dean.
Change is inevitable, and there is a need to be implemented almost on a daily basis. Evolution is a tricky topic. Honestly, not many of us like changes in our life be it at the workplace or in our personal lives.
Just imagine a situation wherein approximately 20 years back, if people would not have accepted computers and continued with the typewriter, what would have happened then? Would there ever be a scope of so many improvements and technological inventions we are witnessing today? A change, even if it is a small one might change our ways of living.
It is always said that the road to success is never easy. The difficulties include changes, patience, perseverance and a strong will power to achieve something different and valuable. But how do we know that the change we are implementing will lead to sure shot results? So in this post, we discuss how do we measure change success.
Before discussing the metrics of change success, we need to understand that it’s not always the result which matters many times the way we manage a situation, and how we tackle the changes is what matters the most.
Success parameters
The Project Success Measure parameters determine if a project is successful or not. But this is just a perspective of viewing the result of the change; there are many other facets of evolution which you need to consider before concluding. For instance, many projects look lucrative from a marketing perspective, but the overall profitable benefits are limited.
Collective team adoption
For any change implementation, there needs to be a change in team formation set up first. Cooperative compliance by the employees especially in the field of technology, systems, and implementation is what you need to consider. We all know that total adoption of change policy cannot be implemented from day one, it will be gradual and over a period.
Often, we tend to misjudge the situation when there is a low benefit realisation. And then the change management team will be held responsible for not performing as per expectations. But the actual reasons for low benefit realisations are many, and that may or may not be related to the efforts taken by the change management team. For example, the change team would have achieved great success, but the overall policy would have been illogical due to which the benefits realisation stands low.
Profits/Benefits Realisation
Benefits realisation is the most uncertain part of the change topic one can explore. Benefits tend to appear over a period, there is no sure shot guarantee to measure the profit realisation beforehand. Hardly there are any projects which would generate profits immediately after implementation, and it takes time.
The process of change and the pathway to success
The quote by Robin Sharma “Change is hard at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end” perfectly puts light on the insight of how a change process takes place. But what matters the most is the execution. A well-planned implementation of a change policy can do wonders to the organisation, and at the same time, a poorly executed plan can fail.
Amazon is an iconic example when we think of change and success. When Amazon went online in 1995, it used to sell books. Next, they started with CDs and DVDs, and today I doubt there’s anything Amazon doesn’t sell.
When we talk about change management, not all changes will result into success, some may occur, and some may not. At times the change policies fail, and at the organisational level, these failures need to be sustained and catered for either with an alternative plan or by just bearing the losses. Scrutiny of ‘what went wrong’ and how to overcome it next time backed by a strong SWOT (Strength Weakness Opportunities and Threats) analysis will lead the path to success.

Culture transformation could perhaps best be defined as a constantly changing process of updating a company’s outlook or culture, and ultimately, its policies, and actions to reflect a more efficient of operation. Culture, itself can perhaps be best defined as a collection of values, beliefs, and other attributes that comprises any person’s personality. This directly reflects onto how a person thinks, what he or she thinks or even how they react to a particular situation. Culture in an organization develops over time, with each idea that spreads around its individuals until they are firmly rooted in the organization.
Transforming such a culture can be quite a challenge, however, not impossible. Since individual personalities are an integral part of the culture and knowing that personalities could be changed, means that even a well-rooted culture could be transformed if done in the right way.
The first step that must be taken when transforming any company’s culture is to figure out which parts of the business work, and which do not. This involves assessing the qualities of every single employee. This will help the organization have an idea of how to transform and help identify what factors to look out for when improving the organizational culture. Changes must be applied at two major levels, the organization as a whole, as well as among the different subunits of the organization.

There are 4 important steps which must be followed by any company seeking to transform its cultural structure. They are as follows:

1. Understanding how the present culture works are very important. There is no point in going forward unless this is first accomplished.
2. Based on the understanding of the present culture, the organization must now decide on the direction in which they would like to go and also decide upon its new outlook or the perception that they wish to convey to other people.
3. Just knowing their goal is not enough. The organization must come up with a plan to achieve that goal despite whatever setbacks they may face.
4. Every member of the organization must strive to change themselves and their behaviours in accordance with the new direction that the organization wishes to go in. This is the most difficult part of the transformational change.

A cultural transformation is important for any organization because the best results are obtained when people work in the environment that is the most productive for them. This is what cultural transformation is basically about. There are a lot of benefits to this kind of positive cultural transformation, namely:

• Workers will end up loving their jobs and this naturally increases productivity.
• Workers’ pride in their respective companies will increase since they will consider being able to work in a place with such a positive working culture as a privilege.

Workers will be more dedicated, thus reducing costs related to low turn overs.

Almost everything we do nowadays is done on the internet. Be it on the computer, or on the smartphone, by using an app or a website, almost all our activities are done using the cyber waves. Starting from when we wake up, we like to check the news on our smartphones instead of reading the newspaper, we measure our calories burnt on our fitbits while completing our morning jog, we check the weather forecast on our smartwatches, we connect with friends or look up job offers on our laptops, we book our tickets for the evening movie, we make reservations for dinner, all of it through the internet on our laptops.
While this has made a huge difference to our convenience, the underlying issue of security still persists. Many of these conveniences and applications require us to provide our personal details, geographic location and even contact numbers. While these are of no consequence to a service provider, it still makes consumers vulnerable to data theft. Theft of identity is a major problem that many of us underestimate. An even bigger problem is financial fraud where your credit card details are hacked and misused.
Most websites and apps which need a financial transaction from customers have multiple levels of security for their websites so that user data is not compromised. But it is still true that 99 percent of computers are still vulnerable to cyber-attacks or malware. The first reason for is that data volume has increased exponentially over the last few years, and to keep all of it clean requires a huge effort. Second, companies wanting to integrate cybersecurity into their systems are unable to scale up the defenses using regular tools based on SQL without incurring huge expenses. This is the reason Big Data and Analytics is being used in a big way to ensure payment security. This kind of cyber security must have three levels of defense – to prevent any instances, to detect risks before they actually occur, and to adequately respond to any cyber threats to security.
First, advanced analytics can detect unusual activity in a system. For example, if an employee’s mobile device is being inadvertently or purposefully used to download company data, an alarm would be sounded in advance. Secondly, Fintech applications can also plough through tens and hundreds of previous instances and try to form patterns how the attack was done. This will make it easier to come up with an adequate response and proper defenses. Thirdly, these analytics solutions would be able to look at the worldwide macro trends of malware movements that will help to understand possible threats and how best to tackle them.
As a way of protecting themselves from cyber attacks, many companies are also opting for cyber insurance. Just like a health insurance provides protection against major illnesses and hospitalization costs, a cyber insurance protects the insured company against loss of revenue, data, reputation and future business due to a cyber attack or a malware attack. The underwriting of a cyber insurance policy would be very complicated because the landscape of cyber crime is still very hazy and unclear. Also, it is not easy to estimate the extent of loss due to a cyber attack, or at least to convert it into the dollar value.
Even governments have woken up to the real and present danger of cyber crimes, and the immense potential for damage that a data leak or a data theft carries. That is why many countries are putting in place cyber regulations to protect the owner of data and the initiator of e-commerce transactions.

We have well and truly arrived into the digital era, and every facet of our lives is seeing change on a scale never seen or imagined before. People are buying clothes, ordering food, booking tickets, conducting meetings with colleagues or clients and doing so much more in a remote, digitized way. The modes of communication have changed beyond recognition in today’s age. Just like all these sectors, the banking and financial services industry has also been hit by digitization. Transactions, compliance, and customer acquisition are just a few of the banking activities that are now digitized and done in ways very different from how they were being done half a decade ago. Let us look at some areas where change is upon us, and also look at what bankers need to be doing to adapt to this change seamlessly.
Also Read: What is The Difference Between Retail and Corporate Banking?

New Customer Acquisition

Gone are the days when multiple visits to bank branches would be required in order to open a new account or create a deposit. Numerous forms were filled up and several documents and signatures were needed, and it used to take weeks, if not months before a new account was opened and operable. Today, bank officials can go to a customer’s premises with just a smartphone and initiate the process of account opening. Every document gets scanned there, and details are input directly into the device. The account gets opened either the same day or within a few days at most. Potential customers can also download the app of the bank and initiate the account opening process by themselves.

Compliance

Artificial intelligence and machine learning have begun to be used in a big way to ensure the bank’s compliance with regulatory requirements. Fraud, Risk, and Money Laundering are some of the areas where artificial intelligence is being used to detect patterns in banking activity of clients or to detect unnatural activity in order to forecast possible fraud. The regular compliance reporting and vetting of transactions for risk are also being automated to a large extent. What this does is to reduce the risk of human error, and it also reduces the chance of a particular bank official taking an individual judgement which could be biased.

Regular Transactions

Banks actively discourage clients from visiting banks to carry out their regular banking transactions. Banks now have apps where regular transactions like transfers, cheque book requests, submission of compliance forms, and even requests for address change can be done remotely through the app or through internet banking. This also frees up bank employees for more productive work, and a contrarian point of view says that this paves the way for reduction of manpower.
These were just three examples of how digitization has changed the way we bank. But the change affects not only customers of the bank. It also changes the way bank employees go about their business. As banks grapple with the challenges of coping with these changes, some of their employees who have been in banking for a decade or two are finding it a big challenge to adapt their working style to the new requirement. The leaders at these banks need to sensitize the earlier employees and take them along on this journey of change. A few decades back, when computers began to be used by all bank employees, a similar churn had been noticed among employees who had so far been used to maintaining the ledgers in hard copy. Those who could adapt and train themselves did survive, while the rest perished. Similarly, the bank employees of today would need to be completely attuned to the digital way of doing business with the bank’s customers.
Related Article: Banking in India: Initiatives of the Government

Although it is a well-worn cliche, the phrase the only thing constant is change is still true today as it was years ago when first coined. In fact, one could say that this is even truer in today’s disruptive times than it ever was before. There is no individual or company today who doesn’t go through gut wrenching change, some of it dictated by external circumstances, and some of it brought on from within. In the context of a company, the people who have it most difficult during such periods of change are the managers or the people who lead teams. They need to understand the changes and internalize them, then they need to explain these changes to the people in their team and get them completely on board, and they also need to provide status updates to their superiors. If you are a manager, there are some things you need to keep in mind and plan for when you have to navigate your team through a period of tumultuous change.

Change for Change’s Sake

If you are the one initiating the transformation and change then you must avoid the temptation to change things around once a year just to keep everyone on their toes. If you do not have a valid reason, then there is no point fixing something which isn’t broken.

God Is In the Details

There are some managers who prefer to first get the ball rolling with only a high level plan, and then fine tune their plans along the way as and when they hit roadblocks. But that strategy works better if the team size is relatively small and it is easy to communicate and explain changes at regular intervals and get the team to change their work styles accordingly. When the team is larger, though, it is a much better idea to have a complete change management plan ready before initiating the change, in as much detail as possible.

What Is the Purpose?

A clear view is very necessary of what the successful implementation of the change will provide once completed. Unless you know where you want to reach, you won’t be able to walk in the correct direction. The plan made at the beginning should include a set of measurable outcomes that the change will provide.

Appoint Generals

An army might have a brilliant strategist as its commander-in-chief, but unless it has efficient generals who can actually implement the strategy on the battlefield, the army is bound to lose. As a leader, you need to have a few people in your team who will provide supplementary leadership for specific activities or for specific sub-teams.

Be Flexible

Many leaders get so emotionally attached to their ideas for change that even if they are able to see that some of it is not working, they refuse to change it and rework their course. The leader must be reasonably flexible to be willing to cut his losses and exit when needed. For that to happen, a good leader would also have a Plan B for every aspect of his overall plan, so that if something doesn’t work out, he can move to the alternative plan.

Expectation Management

Every member of the team must be very clear as to what is expected of him for the plan to succeed, and what results can be expected if he does his bit properly. This will allow the leader to hold people responsible for their contribution, and also understand the reason why some of the expected results are not showing.
Change for any team is often a painful and difficult process, and the above steps would help the manager to make the process easier for himself and for his team.