SunTrust CIO Talks SMAC (as the Foundation for IT Strategy)

SunTrust Banks Inc. just got SMACed.

What will be the key areas of focus for bank technology groups in the year ahead? SMAC, says SunTrust CIO Anil Cheriyam — SMAC, as in social, mobile, analytics and cloud.

Aligning more closely with the bank’s business units is also a clear agenda item for SunTrust’s CIO.

SunTrust had $174 billion of assets, at the end of the first quarter of this year.

Bank of the West and Comerica are moving along similar lines. Kirsten Garen, CIO of Bank of the West, discussed embedding tech executives in the bank’s business units, and Comerica’s CTO George Surdu told us that his team is charged with pulling together the lines of business and fostering collaboration.

SunTrust’s Cheriyan echoed Garen and Surdu in his comments to Bank Innovation regarding his department’s plans for the rest for the year and 2014.

“We have launched a significant transformation over the last 18 months,” Cheriyan wrote. “Specifically, to streamline and prepare our organization to address market imperatives, and more closely align IT to the business.”

He described how his group will leverage this work going forward. “Now that structure is in place, and we are positioned to focus on five critical areas.”

These areas are:

Digital strategy to enable anytime, anywhere, “my way” interactions — is critical to drive deeper client relationships and marketshare. How does SunTrust provide what a customer wants and needs in a clean an unobtrusive manner vs. becoming just another obstacle the bank’s clients must surmount in their busy day.

Harnessing the value of data. Data is now the most valuable asset — or, more accurately,  a competitive weapon that drives ease of implementation and success in digital channels — that moment SunTrust strives for, of eliciting customer “delight” with an app, product or service, is often driven from below by data, and without that moment, in this market, SunTrust says it can’t compete.

Process and Operations are big-spend areas at SunTrust with what the bank considers to be direct impact on client experience, product profitability and overall efficiency, representing significant transformation opportunity.

Improving shared infrastructure and further leveraging our service-oriented architecture to improve re-use and speed-to-market.

Modernizing core infrastructure with an eye to the performance of newer platforms, employee productivity and the client experience.

Cheriyan also emphasized the importance of building an innovation culture at the bank, a big part of which is simply moving faster. “It’s more, faster, better — at an increasingly accelerated pace,” he said.

External partners, whether established vendors or startups, are essential to the bank’s innovation efforts.  “When it comes to innovation, talent is more important than ever before, and the right strategic partnerships can be game-changers,” Cheriyan said.

Within the organization as well, the tech team has a central role in pulling the business units together. “Also essential is building the structure, tools, buy-in and engagement for the cross-enterprise collaboration to remove organizational obstacles enhance organizational knowledge, and yield the kind of serendipitous ideas and innovations that can quickly move the needle.”

EASIER SAID THAN DONE

Of course, getting IT and business units together is easier said than done. There is a tradition of antagonism between the two in many bank cultures, said Kris Hansen, managing director of the consulting firm Axxiome. Hansen commented that, for example, tech people who get embedded in business units are often ineffective because they are either isolated or go native — “and it becomes an ‘Apocalypse Now’ situation.” And if they are effectively carrying a message from the tech team to the business units, they can be see as dictatorial or hostile. “It should be a two-way street,” Hansen said, with information and ideas flowing back and forth between IT and business.

For Cheriyan, SMAC will be the driver at SunTrust.

“The reality is that most of our clients are banking with several devices as they move through their day,” Cheriyan said. “There is a lot to learn from other industries [in mobile], such as retail. Cloud is also important to our ability to quickly scale to support growing client needs.” Analytics and social banking help round out the customer view and keep in contact with digital-first customers.

Cheriyan refers to “apps and gadgets” — which get press as the short game. “The long game is focusing on using smart technology solutions to give our clients a sense of financial well-being; put another way, helping our clients sleep at night.”

The term SMAC is often associated with Cognizant, though that was not how its use was intended here.