EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW
From geek to green Tom Crawford explains to FST how IT and business users can collaborate and utilize business technology solutions to take advantage of the green shoots of recovery.
Why does IT need to change the way it supports the business? Tom Crawford: Recent Consumer Price Index results, General Motors’ rebound from bankruptcy and stock market trend lines all point to the beginnings of global economic recovery. Companies are positioning for a return to growth and a land grab of new business isn’t far behind. According to Forrester Research, increasing innovation is among the top three most important executive goals. Successful CEOs demand increased innovation capacity, so pressure for the IT function to support the rapid introduction of new products is increasing. We are seeing leading companies defi ne new markets, combine products and services in new ways and introduce new business models. For example, mobile phone handset manufacturers are bundling music, maps, games and applications on handsets with varying pricing models. The pressure to innovate generates creativity in product development. However, it also places demands on the back office to match innovation in the front office. Banks need a customer-centric back office that ties behind-the-scenes technologies to the customer experience. To answer that need, IT must disband older operating models and architectures to embrace collaborative development and composite, agile applications that can deliver rapid change. The customer-centric back office sounds intriguing – and hard to do. How can firms make it happen? TC: Composite applications are the key. Forrester Research has coined the phrase ‘Business Technology’ to describe the convergence between IT and business priorities. We’ve
found that composite application development delivers 50 percent faster than traditional models by reducing wholesale system change and introducing agility and collaboration between the business and IT. We call it the ‘sandpit’ environment, where business requirements can change while IT maintains control over integration, modeling, compliance and scalability. Because business users understand data outputs like regulatory reports, transactional control and risk metrics, they can contribute data flow models and business rules. IT effectively delegates these responsibilities to the business, enabling IT to deliver against ever-decreasing timescales with reduced cost and risk. Our clients have told us that the ability for business and IT users to collaborate in the application design and development environment has been crucial for business innovation. Our product, Microgen Aptitude, is completely graphical and intuitive, and maintains the detailed level of control, performance, integration and technology options that IT demands. Why do modern applications need to be services-based and what does that mean for my overall architecture? TC: Business change is constant and the rate of change is increasing, so companies cannot architect for a single target state. Instead, they must architect for change by breaking down business operations into a set of unified services that can be rapidly assembled in new ways, with new business rules to meet the evolving requirements. In the traditional development model, the business requirements of most IT projects change during the time it takes to deliver the project back to the business and a stack of IT tools such as ETL, BPM, web forms, BAM and SOA create a complex and inefficient path for data to travel. Delivery times of more than six months are common – but fi nancial services organizations cannot wait that long. Th is makes agile solutions that enable collaborative development with the business absolutely critical. The collaborative capabilities within Microgen Aptitude help IT organizations adapt to rapidly changing business rules. Our clients tell us that the solution delivers measurable benefits, including extreme levels of performance/throughput, cost savings, stronger transaction transparency and rapid composite application development. For fi nancial fi rms, ensuring IT requirements are met while business strategy is supported is, ultimately, the best way to turn geeky technology into market growth.
“Successful CEOs demand increased innovation capacity, so pressure for the IT function to support the rapid introduction of new products is increasing”
Tom Crawford Joined Microgen as Divisional MD in Feb 2003 after five years as COO at another high growth quoted software business. Tom integrated and led post acquisition, four Divisions of Microgen spanning Banking, BI, Energy and Wealth Management sectors. He is now SVP of Microgen North America, building out the Microgen Aptitude business in the US.
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