By Mark Reeves, Partner

Innovation and service quality are critical for banks to succeed. Business and technology change initiatives play a key role in creating innovative, high-quality new products and services that can help banks meet consumer demands, comply with regulations, replace legacy systems and develop new businesses. However, most banks’ current approach to managing and executing their change projects is inefficient and costly.

Business and technology change innovation consists of three vital components:

• Inventive use of traditional content-focused tools, such as creating a standout Web application for customers or developing superior interfaces to exchanges.

• Process change, which can include executing business and technology change more efficiently, automating processes to enable change across a broader scope, or improving diagnostics to accelerate change implementation.

• Improving the work-life balance of change professionals by providing resources, job opportunities and strong networking channels to help change personnel excel and grow throughout their career.

Banks can improve their business and technology change innovation through changeSourcing, a new concept that allows financial institutions to enter into a strategic, long-term partnership with an external service provider and work hand-in-hand on change initiatives. The third party does not take the change project over completely but rather acts as a partner with the bank and supplies skilled change resources in a strategic way.

In addition to providing experienced professionals who add value through improved innovation, the service provider can bring to the table quantifiable measures and mechanisms that define good service and help deliver change projects on time and within budget. A third party also offers an outside view to examine the efficiency of the bank’s current protocols for managing and executing change projects.

As innovative business and technology change occurs, banks need to strike a balance between maintaining control and pursuing transformative change in alignment with risk and compliance requirements. changeSourcing helps them do just that.

Mark Reeves is a partner at Capco.