Conference Report 3
Banking Frontiers, in association with Dell India, organized an unconference on workforce transformation for the BFSI industry in Chennai. Highlights of the discussions:
While new technologies do their work, many aspects of the financial services involve human hands. Whether it is opening/ closing an account, sanctioning a loan, chasing a defaulter, cross selling or fixing a failed transaction – there is a human touch required at the front end as well as the back end. The digital transformation therefore is incomplete without workforce transformation to serve customers who are digitally savvy, as well as those who are not.
Workforce transformation calls for agile and versatile software and hardware. While software upgrade is an ongoing process, hardware is expected to last for years and hence must be chosen thoughtfully. It must be rugged, reliable, secure and portable. A recent Forrester Research report has identified micro PCs as a tool that improves user productivity and experience among 61%of organizations, i ndicating that even the humble PC continues to evolve alongside the digital revolution.
Ramesh Vijayakumar, VP & Head - Digital Banking, Lakshmi Vilas Bank
Cognitive learning will be required for enhancing the thought process and learning for the employees. Cognitive learning is an essential requirement for BFSI companies.
Sushil Cherian, Head - IT Projects, TVS Credit Services
The end user deals with the user interface and it is more a part of the application process. There could be variety of factors on easy application of UI. The companies face month-end challenges and most of the system problems happen during this period. There is need to make simple innovations to enable designers to visualize the system before it is built.
A lot of framing needs to be done where the user journey gets understood and the focus is on understanding the end user experience. The user’s input finally makes or breaks the system, and his perception will describe whether the system will succeed or not. There is need for standardization and use of desktop or mobile device depends on different use cases. There is difference between user experiences and we are trying to bridge this gap.
Rajiv RG, Vice President - Process Excellence, Madura Microfinance
Business needs to be agile and customer needs to be serviced fast. Today’s work force is very much mobile, and BYOD, or Bring Your Own Device, system is the norm today. Critical information of companies is at risk with BYOD unless there is definite processes to control risks involved. MDM or Mobile Device Management, software helps in clear distinction between work profile and professional profile, and it restricts copy and download functions of official data on the personal device. It is the
first important thing that companies need to consider before allowing BYOD to the employees.
People are accessing data from across the globe, and hence data needs to be classified properly from top to bottom. Data access needs to provide on a need to know basis. Data needs to be protected so that the right people have access to the right data on their right devices.
People are the greatest assets of the company and they are the weakest link of the company too when it comes to security. The cultural change keeps happening and there is no golden standard which can be followed forever. As the world is evolving on technology, something that works today may not be secure tomorrow. Whether it is an open source or standard software, patching needs to be done on continuous basis.
Companies need to e volve with multifactor authentication to be more secure and employees needs to be trained accordingly.
Ravi Seshadri, VP- IT, Bharti AXA General Insurance
Sometimes too much compliance is a hurdle for the sales team. If the company follows compliance rules and regulations, then it will help in building trust among the customers in the long run. There should be restriction in password usages in the organization; password should not be allowed to be used in the less risky areas. In specific cases, the concerned person should be given authority to use passwords to protect the important data of the company.
Anand, Product Specialist, Dell India
Dell hardware is certified for security software tools like McAfee, K7, Secure Works, etc. Our drivers help with auto download of software. We have recently introduced fingerprint authentication on the power button of our laptops, and this has eliminated the use of extra fingerprint device. Our hardware is TPM 2.0 certified and it is completely secure. In our 7000 series laptop model, we have internal inbuilt privacy screen filter to protect users’ privacy.