Information Champions: The

People, Product & Services

Framework
Creating Information Leadership in the Banking
Industry
Bernard Sia (bernardsia@gmail.com)

Dec 2010
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

“Information” tends to take a life of its own with the proliferation of disparate vertical, niche based and point
information solutions introduced throughout the life time of the business. Instead of managing the complexity,
organizations allowed the complexity to bury nuggets of intelligence where the effort to identify the proverbial
needle becomes more expensive than the negative results of making off the cuff decisions backed only by hunches.

Management consultants have attempted to provide horizontal based best practices and process abstractions that
unfortunately, have not been able to relate to the business and thus turn academic; resulting in artifacts resting
atop dust ridden shelves.

The solution lies in orientating the business decision making through business seeing glasses versus technological
myopia. In summary, the ability to truly demarcate and identify the value chain of the organization to uncover
essential business advantage.

The objective of this document is to produce a banking picture of how decision making should be supported and
enhanced by information. We aim to produce an actionable model that can be adopted immediately provided that
there are leaders who know where the organization should be and acts on meeting these goals.

THE PROBLEM STATEMENTS

MATRIX MADNESS, KINDA LIKE HELIUM

As Helium can exist as a superfluid at 2.17 degrees Kelvin (-271 Celcius) where liquid viscosity disappears,
exhibiting zero friction and thermal conductivity skyrockets; the same principles apply to organizational
accountability that lacks a central figure head. The situation requires tremendous energy to bring the ‘excited’
state of ‘hot and gassy molecules’ to exhibit superfluidity; as an analogy, the performance levels required from a
performing organization. Thus having multiple organizational units accountable for similar sets of information will
only lead to conflict and situational deadlocks and misalignment. Throw in a matrix reporting structure and
madness ensues.

BUSINESSES AND PEOPLE ARE NOT STATIC: DYNAMISM REQUIRED

Various researchers have shown how conflicts, disasters and issues lead to unfreezing moments (Bruland, 1982),
(Carley and Harrald ,1997), (Dutton, 1986); which unfortunately, is a sad but a very real phenomenon of managing
a virtual concept that exists only in the mind – the business organization. Only through conflict can we see that the
mirage of stability is not real, organizations require continuous change and fresh inputs.

An organization is not in the logo, in its walls, or departmental units; the organization is fluid and the virtual nature
means that the CEO must heard mists to coalesce into some semblance of transitionary reality. In line with that
spirit, any form of structural rigidity is also an illusion of control as it will only lead to myopism in both vision and
restrict the dynamism required to perform.

Page 2
 Figure 1 - Typical Static people configuration for Business/Application Services

Business
A) Customer Fronting Business Users
B) Superusers manages the business application
C) Information Technology supporting the system

Direction of Services offered

This problem is reflected above, where a superuser group in B) is typically created to offload information
processing from actual customer fronting business people. Although still kept within the business structure, the
model is ‘static’. Superusers slowly but surely devolve into IT-speak; losing the business knowledge edge that the
team initially had. Instead of forcing down and evolving information needs, Superusers begin to defend the
inefficiencies and issues of IT. The biggest symptom of this happening is with organizations where the Superusers
are equated to the system, for example, Superuser A is in charge of the CRM system or Data Warehouse.

When the structure stagnates, further symptoms appear; for e.g. data inaccuracies, inability to identify information
needs and improvement projects which are summarily rejected by management because the team has lost the
business-speak required to quantifying and justify the improvements.

IN ORDER TO BUILD THE FUTURE, WE NEED TO BE COGNIZANT OF HISTORY

Alas, to address how strategically a virtual concept like business can be directed, the business needs to know
where it stands today and where it needs to be tomorrow; in relation to its competitors, itself, its customers and
stakeholder expectations.

The information management unit of the organization needs to build upon lessons learned much like how software
evolves from one feature set to the next. Take the iPhone for example, and how Apple has continuously injected
incremental improvements into a single branded product. An organization that does not have a productization
mindset will suffer the curse of repeating history. So we beg the question of whether a company has a soul, can it
reflect and improve or choose to live only by the moment? And to answer the rhetoric, the soul is within the
product and services that the organization provides, the ability to evolve and improve upon the product feature set
consciously and with deliberate intent.

So information evolution and the intelligence to make decisions from collective corporate information and evolving
these requirements as the company grows is a fundamental feature of productizing information.

An organization without an information soul will be perpetually damned.

Page 3
SOLUTION SUMMARY – INFORMATION AS A DYNAMIC SERVICE PRODUCT

In summary, we need to transition the existing environment where businesses own and influence information
technology adoption to a clean separation between business and IT per the figure below:
Figure 2 - Information as a Service

Now To Be

t s
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io Business
at ns
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In nt
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All technology are no longer owned by

the business. The business only owns
Information Systems SuperUsers/Owners Information Report Info
the data. And needs to map out the
journey of how information needs
Owner Preparation/ Services expands within the organization
Notes
validation Productization
The business owns and finances the IT
systems in use. It is also manned by,
user administrators and skill set required
Information User Report
s

to prepare business reports

fo. need

Systems Owner Admins Preparation/

Charge Backs
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MIS User ETL SQL Integration Technology

MIS ETL SQL Integration Technology
IT head Admins Productization
IT head
& Evolution

The vision is a service and function oriented approach where “Information Owners” displaces “Information
Systems Owners”. The definition, evolution and lifecycle of usefulness of the information will fundamentally be an
information governance activity that resides within the business.

Page 4
Figure 3 – A Balanced State of Existence sans Intermediaries (e.g.-> Info System owners)

Business

IT

Page 5
SOLUTION CASE STUDY: THE BANKING INDUSTRY

In identifying information needs for the banking industry we must begin with identifying how value traverses
through the banking business. For purpose of simplicity we will only cover 4 aspects of banking, namely Retail,
Wholesale, Investment and Insurance. We will also perform a high level abstraction of how banking functions as a
financial intermediary between business to business, customer to business and customer to customer;
fundamentally, the lubricant that facilitates economic transaction and vis-à-vis national growth.

An important paradigm for the reader to adopt is that this is seen from a 3 rd party external view of the bank and
should not be confused with how the bank examines itself internally. After which we will then analyze
informational needs required to both monitor and control the processes for performance. Secondly, we will
disregard whether the services are delineated by Islamic or conventional banking.

The figure below attempts to capture the essence of banking (from a customer standpoint) and we will then
explain how the services are consumed. Note that we will cover how the banks work with regulators subsequently.
In summary, economic activities are circular in nature, much like night and day; people buy and sell goods, and
buying can be fuelled by financing attained through loans, or should the consumer be a corporate entity, avenues
to attain funds through listing appear. Banks facilitate this by providing credit and payments infrastructure,
investment banking underwriting services, enabling even more buying and selling, thus perpetuating the cycle.

In short, banks should continuously ask the question, “What business are they in?”; what is the bigger picture? Are
banks in the loans or banking business?

Or are banks really in the business of business…?

Page 6
Figure 4 – Abstraction of Major Banking Services

1
2

Receivables 1
Corporate
Customers

Payments
Cash
Management
2 Infrastructure
Payments
1 Payment & Facilities Payment
Infrastructure Infrastructure
& Facilities & Facilities
1

Credit Credit
Infrastructure Infrastructure
& Facilities & Facilities
Wholesale Banking
A
Small Customers Base, Med. To Large Transactions Size
Financing Financing
Infrastructure Infrastructure
& Facilities & Facilities
Corporate Retail Banking
Customers
Large Customer base, Small Transaction Size
3
Savings/
A Deposits

3 Insurance Business Retail

Customers
Benefits Medium Customer Base, medium transaction size, Infrequent
2
Financial Financial
Protection Protection

Investment Banking
Underwriting/
Even Smaller Customer Base, singular very large Investment
BookRunning
transactions Infrastructure Investing
etc.
& Faclities
3

A
Corporate
Employees 2
Business Activity Advisory
Services

Flow of Transaction

Banking Services
Corporate Public Listed
Other Banking Services Customers M&A/ Corporate
Acquisiton
4
(e.g. Leveraging)
4

Note: Trustees, Will writing, estate management, venture capitalism are ignored for simplicity, and wealth management services are also left out on purpose. The Insurance businesses are also
simplified, and claims process are also hidden and abstracted as part of facilitating a payment transaction. There are also more complex activities in investment banking that de-risks financial exposure
through securitization and structured products that we will not cover.
 Key Description
Activities
At the end of the day, people and businesses need to pay for consumption.
1

Customers conduct investing activities through shares, bonds, options etc.

2

3 3 Customers also require financial protection through insurance products

Corporate customers conduct larger payments

1

2 Corporate customers also require a means to track payments that they receive, also to manage their trade receivables.

A corporate customer may also acquire another corporate entity, and this transaction may require funding as well as advice from the banks
4

A Customers also require more funding for business growth through private debt securities and/or equities

Ultimately, all the activities above will result in money changing hands.

A SIMPLIFIED VIEW OF THE BANKING VALUE CHAIN

Now we shift the paradigm inwards, where the major activities above can be explained through the following value chains.

Major Value Chain Description Major Input Output Value Added Objective
Business
Line
To marry retail/corporate Retail Deposits/ Financing and  The ability to widen the gap between the cost of maintaining deposits,
customers deposits with financing Banking and Savings credit and the profits of providing credit.
needs of both other retail and Whole Sale  The ability the lower the cost of providing these services
corporate customers (This can be Banking  The ability to provide competitive financing (compared to
viewed in reverse from a financing competitors)
standpoint)
To provide a bundled corporate Whole Sale Deposits, Financial  The ability to provide an end to end corporate banking experience and
banking services that can Banking Payments, Advice, package that is facilitative to business efficiency.
expediently assist and reinforce Receivables Product
the monetary transactions of bundles
businesses
To marry retail and corporate Investment Investments Underwriting  The ability to create a brand (professionalism, knowledge,
investors with organizations seek Banking Services expediency)
 financing through private debt  The ability to understand the business and its value and articulate that
placements or securities or to potential customers.
convertibles  The ability to perform all of the above at the most competitive fees.
To provide advisory and Investment Corporate Advisory  The ability to value a takeover/merger target
consultancy services on corporate Banking information Services  The ability to structure a leverage takeover and the necessary fund
mergers and takeovers raising activity required, suited to the risk appetite of the customer as
well as its day to day business operations.
To provide a payments and Retail/Corpo Entity, Successful  To provide the most competitive rates and expedient as well as
remittance infrastructure rate Banking Location, Transfer convenient experience for this service
Monetary
Amount
To provide financial protection to Insurance Risk Coverage  To provide the most competitively extensive protection program for
customers Aggregate the customer while lowering the claims, while still maintaining an
expedient and pleasant experience for the claims process.

Figure 5 - Two viewpoints that needs to be factored to perform strategic and operational analysis

External Paradigm: How a bank affects and profit from surrounding micro/macroeconomic forces

External Paradigm:
Business Services

Internal Paradigm: The Value Chain

BANK’S RELATIONSHIPS WITH REGULATORS AND OTHER EXTERNAL STAKEHOLDERS

As the relationship is fairly straightforward we can summarize the interactions within the table below.

Key Activities Output Parties

To contribute to national level Tier-1 Capitalization & Risk Central Bank
monetary and financial stability (M1, Weighted Asset Ratios, other
M2, M3) financial data
Basel Requirements Tier-1 Capitalization & Risk Central Bank, IBS.
Weighted Asset Ratios, other
financial data.
Operational/Corporate Risk
reporting.
Credit and Exposure Standings Customer credit standings etc. Central Bank

Anti Money Laundering & Terrorism Flagged financial transactions and Central Bank
Reporting accounts.
Listing Activities Underwriting details Securities Commission
New Financial Product innovations Product Specifications (credit card, Central Bank
funds etc.)
Misc. Compliance Requirements Data Protection Act Central Bank, Securities
documentations etc. (long list) Commission
Note: Table items are illustrative only and not a comprehensive representation of regulatory interaction activities.

WHAT NEEDS TO BE MEASURED?

Any business service offered will have to balance between the 3 factors below, banking is not an exception.
Figure – Micro Service/Product Operation Forces of Business

Efficiency/Speed
Efficiency can mean speedy delivery & happy customers or highly robotized and st

Efficiency through automation could either mean, lower process costs, or high maintenance costs, eating into profits

Revenue & Margins Customer Satisfaction

Customer feels short changed should profit margins be exceptionally high and banking rates are uncompetitive
In order to make sustainable decisions that maintains this precarious balance; succinct and accurate “information”
about the business performance is required. Hence we ask the reader the following questions, and it must be
answered through the following order of prioritization:-

a) Do you know the decisions that need to be made?

b) Do you know how frequently these decisions are made?
c) Do you know the information that is required to support the decision?
d) Do you trust the information provided?
e) Do you have the information?

If the answer for the first question is not available, we should not proceed with any “strategic” uses of information
and work on operational needs only (keep the lights on activities). Any attempt at strategic uses will only lead to
wasteful IT centric implementations with little value as the organization lacks the strategic maturity and will to
profit from the information. Interpreted differently, the business has no soul; it functions like a machine.

Another key takeaway is organizations that spend an inordinate amount of time gathering thousands of fields
without knowing why the business makes the decisions that they do. Organizations that begin their information
management journey from the bottom up will be lost in the diarrhoea of data.

Lastly, the act of ‘measuring’ and ‘extracting information’ can also lead to behaviours that sacrifices one area for
the other. For example, most KPI systems fail to address corporate performance holistically, information are
typically massaged to look good and the KPI becomes an end in itself. Finally, the company falls into the trap of
reporting a KPI that has no correlation with actual business performance.

A good information management system and process are able to attain the required information for decision
making without injection of decision making bias as well as disrupt the natural ecosystem of the business flow.

BREAKING DOWN THE CASE: AN END TO END VALUE CHAIN ANALYSIS

For the example below we will break down the first value chain, bridging of depositors which has money with
creditors that require money into its individual processes.

Major Value Chain Major Business Input Output Value Added Objective
Description Line
To marry Retail Banking and Deposits Financin  The ability to widen the gap between the cost of maintaining
retail/corporate Whole Sale / g and deposits, and the profits of providing credit.
customers deposits with Banking Savings credit  The ability the lower the cost of providing these services
financing needs of both  The ability to provide competitive financing (compared to
other retail and competitors)
corporate customers
(This can be viewed in
reverse from a financing
standpoint)

Although as explained above, that business activities looped back into it self, the internal intermediary processes
can be strung out and analyzed further.
Figure 6 - From Deposits to Loans
Treasury/Trading/
Reinvest Deposits Investment
Activities
Collateral = Assets
Perform Asset &
Collateral Mgmt
Investment Profits = Interest Profits =
Assets Assets

Reuse Assets &

Perform ALMT Accept Savings/ Savings = Liquid Ascertain Provide Loan/ Perform Credit Attain Credit/Loan
Attain Depositors Liabilities for Loan
Check Deposits Liabilities Exposure Financing Products Check Customers
Product

Deposits = Semi Liquid

Liabilities
Provide facilities
Securitize Loan
for buying &
Products
receiving cash

We are thus able to perform several key decisions to improve business performance; the triple forces described
previously apply as yardsticks. Major processes within the value chain are in orange and secondary activities
spawned from the major processes are in yellow. The subsections below describe potential information reporting
aggregation.

PRODUCT ADOPTION PERFORMANCE

We can boil down production adoption performance into several areas, for example:-

a) Conversion rate of new product marketing activities

b) Performance of current product, i.e. large number of NPLs is a symptom (which can be caused by systemic
economic factors or overzealous sales) and having 10 million depositors is not indicative of a performing
bank should the average deposit size be 1 dollar.
c) Ability to ascertain the elasticity of investing on one or more of the 2 factors (customer & efficiency), and
how it impacts the bank’s bottom line.
Treasury/Trading/
Reinvest Deposits Investment
Activities
Collateral = Assets
Perform Asset &
Collateral Mgmt
Investment Profits = Interest Profits =
Assets Assets

Reuse Assets &

Perform ALMT Accept Savings/ Savings = Liquid Ascertain Provide Loan/ Perform Credit Attain Credit/Loan
Attain Depositors Liabilities for Loan
Check Deposits Liabilities Exposure Financing Products Check Customers
Product

Deposits = Semi Liquid

Liabilities
Provide facilities
Securitize Loan
for buying &
Products
receiving cash

Key decisions that can be made are:-

a) New product innovation in deposit and savings to increase funds flowing into the bank’s coffers.
b) Investments that need to be made into marketing activities and the potential returns that it will provide.
c) Defining what is ‘competitive’ in terms of services and fees when compared to other banks and deciding
on a targeted marketing approach to corner the market for a particular product.
d) Accepting and rejecting operational improvement projects

e) How banking products should be branded and evolve from one function set to another.

f) Decommissioning or collapsing non-performing products.

g) Adjusting product parameters to increase profits through pricing

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Without delving into the details, a holistic 360 view of banking customers will uncover further opportunities for the
banks to purvey their products. A key point here is that customer experience is highly correlated with product
performance (i.e. the overall service package experience). Secondly, customer analysis should ultimately focus on
customer buying behavior to capitalize on providing more services to facilitate the activity. The psychological
analysis and understanding allows the bank to compel customers to put money in the bank, be it for investment
purposes or for pure savings.

Lastly, the bank needs to understand the economic value chain of business to ensure that although money passes
from one customer to another; physically, money stays within the bank. It is not who the customers are, but who
the customer buys from and all the way up and around the economic chain.

FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE
Financial performance typically occurs at the end of the business transaction, in particular the example below. We
say so because only upon the first payment of a loan product can the bank earn revenues through interests. Should
we be examining a payment infrastructure value chain, revenues are recouped immediately through fees charged
from each transaction.
Treasury/Trading/
Reinvest Deposits Investment
Activities
Collateral = Assets
Perform Asset &
Collateral Mgmt
Investment Profits = Interest Profits =
Assets Assets

Reuse Assets &

Perform ALMT Accept Savings/ Savings = Liquid Ascertain Provide Loan/ Perform Credit Attain Credit/Loan
Attain Depositors Liabilities for Loan
Check Deposits Liabilities Exposure Financing Products Check Customers
Product

Deposits = Semi Liquid

Liabilities
Provide facilities
Securitize Loan
for buying &
Products
receiving cash

In practice, financial performance will be taking revenue as well as cost information across all activities of the bank;
making it one of the most complex areas of information management. Ideally the financial system is a component
of an integrated ERP system consisting of human resources, procurement, and budgeting as well as materials
management.

Key decisions that need to be made are:-

a) Investment Appraisals
Should the company be spending money on a particular project proposal or spend it elsewhere? Is there a
standard formula and calculation used that is understood by everyone in the organization, NPV, IRR and
Cost of capital, Discount rate used, does in factor in taxation, inflation...?
b) Budget Performance
Should there be corrective actions made to reinforce budget utilization or should the money be
reinvested into treasury/trading activities?
c) Financial Performance
Which area of business provides the biggest revenue to the bank, and are there growth potential? Can the
bank invest more to extend its market penetration? How much should it spend (goes back to investment
appraisal)?
d) Cost Management , Treasury Performance etc… the list goes on.

RISK AND EXPOSURE

In order for the bank to ascertain the limit of how far it can extend itself financially through business financing,
information from the following processes is required. Looked at differently, a bank who is truly in control of their
risk and exposure information is able to tether at the brink of oblivion knowing confidently where the tipping point
is - a definitive competitive advantage.
Figure 7 - Information Set required to ascertain level of Financial Risk
Treasury/Trading/
Reinvest Deposits Investment
Activities
Collateral = Assets
Perform Asset &
Collateral Mgmt
Investment Profits = Interest Profits =
Assets Assets

Reuse Assets &

Perform ALMT Accept Savings/ Savings = Liquid Ascertain Provide Loan/ Perform Credit Attain Credit/Loan
Attain Depositors Liabilities for Loan
Check Deposits Liabilities Exposure Financing Products Check Customers
Product

Deposits = Semi Liquid

Liabilities
Provide facilities
Securitize Loan
for buying &
Products
receiving cash

REGULATORY REPORTING
Regulatory reporting should be in principle, the easiest to define as the parameters are determined for the banks
by regulators. If the bank is able to perform the 4 different information gathering and decision making above
efficiently and accurately, regulatory reporting is simply an easy extension.

IS IT REALLY THAT SIMPLE?

Naturally the answer is no; specifically because customers interface with the bank through various means:

Retail
Branches

Perform ALMT Accept Savings/

Attain Depositors
Debit Check Deposits
Cards,
Credit
Cards etc.
Provide facilities
for buying &
ATMs & receiving cash
Cash
Deposit
Machines

Online
Presence

If we just examine the first portion of the activity, we can already see the need for a physical presence, through a
retail branch and others specified in the figure. For each of the touch points, the bank needs to monitor service
level availability and performance. As we break down each interaction steps even further, the permutation for
measurements multiplies and leads to information noise. Management needs to filter out what is of value and
separate the chaff from the wheat.

We will see later how this is handled as operational needs in the organization structure section.
INFORMATION AS A SERVICE AND THE SERVICE PROVIDER MODEL

Earlier we mooted the solution as the separation of business from IT in information provisioning; in particular IT as
the information service provider to the business. However, information itself is not owned by IT, but by the
respective business units. To reiterate and simplify, the model looks like this (upward arrows represent direction of
information flow and downward arrows, instructions and key decisions):-

Corporate Bigwigs

Information Owners

Information Service Provider

The simple premise is that businesses cannot fully embrace IT, and IT personnel will not be able to fully understand
and manage the complexities of the business. We should logically leave the two to focus on what they do best.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF AN INFORMATION OWNER

Information owners should be as close to the business as possible, preferably the business themselves, in the case
study, we take the example of financial performance reporting, the information owner must come from the CFO’s
office, the person needs to identify informational needs for financial decision making as well as pre-empt those
requirements. Examples below are defined as an information owner for Financials.

Responsibilities
Data Dictionary/Definition
Manager
Information Lineage and
Transformation
Information Product
Manager
Information Release
Manager
Information Requirements
Provider
Information Governance
Description
To ensure that terms used for financials are institutionalized throughout the
enterprise.
To be the keeper for all financial formulas and transformation that represents the
final management reporting to the corporate stakeholders. From the initial business
source to the final consumer. For example, the financial information owner should be
able to tell the CFO that the discrepancy in the Southern region comes from a specific
branch.
All information provided to the corporate stakeholders is a ‘service/product’. As a
product manager the person needs to maintain a continuous evolution of features,
culling those that are no longer wanted, and adding more features as required. For
example, today; there may be only 3 gearing ratios used, but potentially a recent
study shows that 2 more gearing ratios taking into account hybrid convertibles
extending all the way to subsidiaries and investments would be a better assessment
of liabilities for the bank.
To manage the versioning and change management of information published. To
ensure data accuracy by quality control activities and feedback to the information
service provider. To determine schedules and reporting cycles.
Ultimate requirements provider to IT for all financial related data.
To maintain records management and data leakage protection principles for the
information managed. For example, information classification (secret, departmental
only, CEO eyes only, organization only, public). Whether the key information is still in
draft stage or approved for publication. To aggregate disparate information sources
 and govern the permutations of financial related information. To ensure non-
repudiation of critical corporate records and ageing e.g. archiving and disposal.
Information Area Subject In this area, the person should be a Finance subject matter expert, i.e. Management
Matter expect accounting, financial accounting, cost control etc. and should continuously be abreast
of the latest trend in the subject area and how it impacts the business. Regulatory
requirement expertise will also be required
Key message: The information owner role cannot be static, and should be rotated on a semi-regular basis with
frontline financial personnel.

FINANCIAL INFORMATION OWNER STRUCTURE

CURRENT TENURE AS INFO OWNER

ACCOUNTING MANAGEMENT
TAXATION/
TREASURY (RECEIVABLES/ ACCOUNT & PROCUREMENT
INSURANCE
PAYABLES BUDGETING

For example, on a yearly rotational basis the Head of Management Accounting & Budgeting could be the
Information Owner, subsequently the Head of Treasury etc. The idea is to attain a holistic and continuous
enrichment of reporting attributes and quality that is a close as possible to business activities. Another key
takeaway is somewhat achieving a Dewey like classification construct of aggregating information subjects together;
in this case, financial information.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF AN INFORMATION SERVICE PROVIDER

The information service provide is ultimately IT, and quaintly so seeing that the “I” stands for Information.

Responsibilities
Data Model
Manager/Designer
Information Lineage and
Transformation
Technology Product
Manager
IT Planning & Operations
Description
To ensure the data models used are continuously improved and kept abreast with
business functions. Tuned for performance and culled for lack of use.
To be the keeper for all data mapping between source systems, datawarehouse and
business intelligence tools used to generate the reports. The ability to perform bi-
directional traceability of data stored in systems used.
Again, using the Financial example, the Technology Product Manager will evolve the
technology capabilities offered through various dimensions. For example, for version
2.0 the system will now cater for both Islamic and Conventional financial reporting,
For version 3.0 it will be able to keep geographical information for each transaction
and now can be viewed over a mobile phone. These capability roadmap will be
managed by the respective product managers of both the Information Owner and
Information Service Provider.
In a nutshell, all requirements for Availability Management, Service Level
 Management, Incident and Problem Management as well as the continuous
operational improvements of the technology platform used. Including Vendor
Management, Platform choice, including planning
etc.
Release Manager To manage the versioning and control of the technology upgrades.
Platform Subject Matter Should IT consciously adopt a technology platform for financial information services,
expect the individual should be a subject matter expert for the technology used, for
illustrative example; Oracle FI or SAP FI and is able to map the next evolution and
upgrades that is required to meet the demands of the business

Similar activities for both these roles are:-

1) Change Management, all relevant training and documentation

2) Knowledge Management, continuous upkeep of the capabilities and lessons learned from being an
Information Service Provider as well as an Information owner.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
1) There will no longer be an overarching information governance unit for the whole bank as the function is
embedded to the major functional units.

2) Ownership of information will be a pillared aggregation of key business functions. For example, all
financial reporting will be focused on finance, all retail banking performance reporting will be owned by
the retail head’s office and so forth.

3) Information Owners are Business Subject Matter experts.

4) A business subject matter expert need not be a process expert. A business expert is concerned with
revenues, competitive strategies, and customer satisfaction. A business subject matter expert should
ideally either hold revenue and/or operating accountability. This will ensure that only reports that are
most relevant to business decision making will be produced.

5) Information Owner role should not be a static department with a single permanent head, the head of
department should ideally function on a rotation basis. This ensures that the information owner is
constantly abreast with changing business needs. The longer the information owner is detached from day
to day running of the business, efficiency levels are expected to reduce.

6) The information service provider must work with the information owner to map out the next generation
capability set and business value to attain management support.

7) Finally, the service provider model means that all IT investments in providing and availing the information
to the required owners at the required service level will be done on a pay as you use cost shared model.
HOW THE OVERAL STRUCTURE WILL LOOK LIKE
Figure 8 - Information Owner Structure and Relationship to Stakeholders

The diagram above provides a highly simplified view of how information ownership (champions) will be spread
across the enterprise.

1) Financial Information owner (as a working example) is considered a shared financial service centre. All
financial related reporting will go through this unit and should be the responsibility of the financial
information owners to provide profitability and earnings numbers to the respective business heads. As
financial risk is a subset of finance, it is not displayed as a box of its own. Secondly, financial regulatory
reporting is also expected to come from this office.

2) Operational information owners are also considered a shared service centre, where the operations of
ATM systems, CDMs etc. are centralized as it services all other banking units. As such, the reporting line to
the heads of banking units consists of operation’s service level reporting.

3) The Banking Product Info owners for all the lines of banking shall primarily provide product performance
information in terms of market reach, customer penetration and profitability (taken from finance, see
note 4.) as well as customer information owner.

4) The line towards Finance from Product owners are budgetary figures and estimated targets such that the
financial information owners are able to measure targets vs actual and report it back to the banking unit
heads, as well made available to the product info owners. As mentioned, all profitability information
should be managed by Finance. Lastly, customer information should be managed by a single unit as the
interrelation between companies and persons within the organization should be best centralized. A more
holistic analytics can thus be achieved.
Finally, the reader may ask, what about the information service provider? Simply, ISP’s = IT; and the user should
already know that organizational structure best practices for IT is strewn in COBIT, ITIL and various other
frameworks, such; we will end our discussion on IT on that note.

POTENTIAL RISKS AND MITIGATIONS

This model is by no means perfect, as it is generally untested, and rarely does organizations which place
information as a core focus for decision making exists. Transaction costs of managing and governing the
information is also considered too high and not core business activity. The following lists potential issues and
mitigations mooted.

Risk Description Mitigation/Recourse

Information owners as
business owners do not see
the value of managing
information. Thus
participation and
enforcement are weak.
Information owners are at a
lost of how to proceed
There will be too many
product information owners
There will be too many
reports and too much focus
on the information instead
of running the business
Centralization of IT services
lead to support issues and
backlog.
The organization will be doomed to repeat its current existence, but at least
management is cognizant of that fact and accepts the repercussions of decision
making backed by less than perfect data as it is always faster and convenient.
Training on information management is required. Particular information
architecture. Within the banking industry, compliance and regulatory requirements
will form the basis for structure and control. Naturally, regulations do not run the
business!
The preamble on banking business servers to illustrate that abstraction of business
functions is possible. From the abstraction, products should be aggregated to its
core function. Is it a loan product? Is a payment facility? It will definitely be a
mistake to split hairs assigning information owners on 50 different loan products,
from Islamic to Conventional, from various mortgage products to auto financing
packages and assign a product information owner for each one.
Indeed, this is the other extreme of the spectrum. And it will be strange indeed to
have business owners asking for 1001 reports, the CEO and CFO should be well
aware that the moment a head of business comes into a meeting with 50 different
slides and inane facts and figures that does not relate to business performance, the
function is best vacated to someone more capable in articulate business strategy.
IT will have to increase various areas of expertise and minimize skill gaps. These can
be done through internal training, new resources, or partnering with vendors. IT
will also require a higher level governing structure in the form of Enterprise
Architecture to visibly map the improvement and journey that are directly
correlated to corporate goals.

CASE STUDY: TRANSITIONING TO THE INFORMATION AS A SERVICE MODEL

We continue with the banking industry case and explain a fictional as-is scenario.

AS-IS SITUATIONS AND PROBLEMS

THE ACTORS
A fictional bank contains the following departments, its daily tasks and challenges are explained.
Unit Name Roles and Achievements
Data Governance, Oversees primarily the administration
sits under the COO and upkeep of the Customer Master
Data Management system. The team
has done an exemplar task in
maintaining consistency of Customer
Information throughout the group, but
unfortunately the sphere of influence
oddly stops with retail banking.
Enterprise Oversees the enterprise data
Information warehouse that is an extension of a
Management Financial application. Prepares
under Finance financial reporting to the CFO and
anyone else which requires financial
reports
Management A program specifically created to
Information upgrade the business intelligence
System capabilities of the bank and better
Department also flexibility for knowledge workers to
reporting to CFO manage their own reporting and data
representation
Other Banking Fundamentally responsible for
Unit’s Financial performance reporting, market
Management strategy and aggregated sales
structure reporting up to the business unit
bosses.
Information The team that’s responsible for the
Technology overall operations of the IT systems as
well as configuration of the data
warehouse and BI systems.
Challenges
The team wishes to extend its sphere of governing
information throughout the enterprise which
unfortunately, has been cornered by other units
like Enterprise Information Management and
Management Information System.
The team has total control over access of financial
information and guards all enhancements to the
system. However, issues vary between slow
system performance to inaccuracies that requires
time for revalidation. Working with IT and the MIS
team to trace the problematic record or process
failures.
Naturally being a tangent activity and somewhat
seen as IT driven, the team is fraught with
challenges in displaying that the investment has
value. The team is also receiving backlash due to
broken reports, as another project which replaces
the existing Financial Accounting System (a source
system) to a new platform.
Unfortunately, the rewiring of BI reports that
dependent on the source system was not done
cleanly enough to stop the broken reports from
reaching management.
Main gripes include existing reporting systems not
tailored to the respective business unit needs.
Essentially the practice is first come first serve,
where the first business unit who invests on the
said infrastructure & solution will hold a virtual
monopoly and usage. Forcing the business units to
establish their own system.
The team is forced to capitulate whenever a new
vendor successfully enamours the users and
introduces a new reporting tool. Platform
rationalization is only marginally successful and
remains a challenge due to these factors.
Secondly, rationalization exercises are not seen as
value adding to the business as it is IT focused
instead of business focus. But little do business
 know that these point solutions are escalating IT
support and maintenance costs.
The challenges and symptoms are all by products of:-

a) Having the user own a system/solution instead of IT. To some extent, funding the IT improvements. This
leads to ‘mine’ vs ‘your’ system among the different business units.

b) Allowing various units to handle essentially the same role, e.g. Data Governance roles clashes with other
Information units within Finance.

c) Inability to deliberately execute the technology investment plan from an IT standpoint as technology
selection is user driven instead of IT, leading to ad-hoc point solutions that cannot be reused or extended.
Vendor platforms, diversity and complexity skyrockets.

KEY OBJECTIVES & PROJECT TEAM STRUCTURE

Our objective is to establish a business focus information management framework where businesses drive
information needs while IT manages the technology landscape behind it. We also need to eliminate structural
issues that lead to the symptoms above.

PROJECT APPROACH & STRATEGY

In order to meet the final goal of information ownership by major business functions, we have to start somewhere.
The strategy is to gain the most value and set the tone as well as foundation for subsequent implementation, i.e.
financial reporting and subsequently move on to other major business units that can be abstracted and realigned.
For example, customer information management should be a shared service across the enterprise instead of
belonging to retail or wholesale banking separately.

1) Setting the Technical Foundation

Because of the disparate point solutions and multiple ownership of systems; head office needs to set the
example by funding an appropriate end to end solution that can be shared across the bank. In this case a
standard solution for ETL, Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence.

If existing investment reusability is possible and the existing platforms can be expanded for this purpose;
all the better. Moving forward from there the implementation steps are similar to generic green-field
enterprise information reporting and data warehousing implementations but with a brown field influence
in impact analysis.

a. Establish a map and portfolio of all source systems in the bank and key data sources.

b. Establish a standard integration/extraction process

c. Establish a data model that can be expanded cleanly and quickly.

d. Establish a reporting subscription and publication model.

e. Establish a demand management process to address new information needs from other units
across the bank.

f. Establish a modelling process to be able to quickly simulate how information can be rapidly
provided to the business.
 g. Establish a governance process to ensure that data dictionaries and definitions are steadily
institutionalized.

h. Establish a rapid testing process that can weed out data inaccuracies and ensure quality.

i. Establish a training program to ensure technical personnel are continuously abreast with the
technology used.

j. Remove/Consolidate reports that are underutilized.

2) Setting the Business Foundation

a. Establish a key product champion in finance that can steer and direct this engagement and
ensure compliance by other units.

b. Manage expectations of the key project stakeholders that clear leadership is required.

c. Form the business team that will drive the change throughout the financial reporting structure.
This will be the core change management and training team.
d. Prioritize value statements, quantify those statements and ensure corporate sponsorship that
these values can be translated when the information is available. Also explain how.

e. Ramp up the breadth of financial management skills required to manage the transition as an
financial information owner.

PROJECT TEAM STRUCTURE

To reiterate the message of the framework, the structure is fragmented into major business units and considering
the crux of banking lies with finance, the first information owner should be the CFO’s office and a bank is too highly
regulated, and too visible to not have a performing financial reporting and analytics team.

We also assume that this structure will form the basis for all financial reporting and dashboards to the respective
heads of business unit and eventually the CFO. It’s simply unacceptable to allow the head of Retail Banking to
receive a report that’s totally different from the CFO’s numbers.
 Project Steering Committee

CFO
(Program
Sponsor)

Head of
Head of
Wholesale
Retail Banking
Banking

Overall Project
Director

Business IT Project
Project Manager Manager

Wholesale Financial IT Change

Retail Banking IT/Business
Banking Business Testing Mgmt/ Solution
Financial Lead + Analysis
Financial Lead + Architect (SME) Deployment
Change
Change

Technical
Requirements Business Test BI/Reporting/
ETL & DW Lead Infrastructure
Lead Lead Interface Lead
Lead

SI Technical
SI Apps Vendor
Vendor

Note: PMO and procurement roles are hidden to not clutter the discussion.

Business Roles
Role Name Responsibilities
CFO (Program Sponsor) To provide steering, direction and decision tie breaking/resolution
Head of Retail Banking To provide steering, direction and ensure that Retail Banking financial reporting
interests are reflected accurately.
Head of Wholesale To provide steering, direction and ensure that Wholesale Banking financial reporting
Banking interests are reflected accurately.
Wholesale Banking To ensure that requirements of Wholesale Banking financial reporting are captured
Financial Lead + Change and provided to the IT/Business Analysis.
To provide feedback, participate and coordinate the necessary change management
activities within Wholesale Banking come deployment of the new reporting
standards.
Retail Banking Financial To ensure that requirements of Retail Banking financial reporting are captured and
Lead + Change provided to the IT/Business Analysis.
To clearly articulate and envision business value and key decisions that will be made
from each information set.
To provide feedback, participate and coordinate the necessary change management
activities within Retail Banking come deployment of the new reporting standards.
Financial Business The primary business domain expertise on financial reporting, ensuring compliance to
Architect (SME) regulatory reporting, ensuring standards in reporting, and requirements are gathered
accurately and reflective of the needs of the business. To provide financial reporting
methodologies and best practices. To design a reporting structure that is easily
understood and flexible and to ensure that the terminologies are institutionalized
 throughout the enterprise.
Requirements Lead To capture and document business requirements as well as necessary screen shot to
ensure accuracy and context of the requirements are not lost. The document shall be
clearly understood by the business. Able to handle workshops and manage conflicts
of interests during those sessions, able to keep the sessions moving.
Business Project Manager To ensure the coordination and alignment of the respective business units. To ensure
that the project charter, scope, plan and deliverables are endorsed as well as adhered
to by the business participants. To collectively manage project issues, risk and scope
change management with the IT project manager. To provide project
communications to relevant steering & stakeholders. To lead procurement activities.
To lead procurement activities and negotiations. To perform vendor management
during implementation.

Technical Roles
Role Name Responsibilities
IT Project Manager To ensure the coordination and alignment of the respective business units. To ensure
that the project charter, scope, plan and deliverables are endorsed as well as adhered
to by the technical participants. To collectively manage project issues, risk and scope
change management with the Business project manager. To provide project
communications to relevant steering & stakeholders. To lead procurement activities
and negotiations. To perform vendor management during implementation.
IT Business Analyst To work with the Finance Business Architect (SME) in translating business
requirements into specifications that can be worked on by the DW & BI leads. To
work together with Finance Business Architect (SME) in clearly defining business
requirements.
Testing/Release Lead To ensure that the solution provided are tested for accuracy, stability, consistency,
availability & performance and to manage the bug tracking and closure exercise
during UAT and pre-live tests. To also perform release management of fixes post live
until handover is over.
IT Change To ensure successful training of both the business users in acclimatizing to the new
Management/Deploymen reporting standards.
t
Solution Lead To ensure that the overall platform design and standards comply with the roadmap
and direction of Enterprise Architecture, and to cohesively glue the implementation
of the project; covering aspects of ETL/DW/ BI Reports and the Infrastructure.
To work with ETL/DW/BI/Technical lead to define a logical roadmap of subsequent
evolution.

ETL&DW Lead (Note that To design the reporting screens and prepare specifications of how the ETL processes
for complex tasks, this will be presented.
role could be split into To design the data models required for the Datawarehouse.
two) To be an SME on the ETL and Datawarehouse tool.
BI/Reporting Lead To design the reporting screens and prepare specifications of how the BI report will
be presented.
To design the reports based on the technical constraints of the BI Tools.
To be an SME on the BI reporting tool’s capabilities
Technical Infrastructure To lead and manage technical vendors engaged in preparing the necessary
 Lead
SI Applications Vendor
SI Technical Vendor
infrastructure (servers, software, networks and security) required for the new system
to run.
To perform configurations based on the specifications provided by the BI/Reporting
Lead and ETL/DW Lead
To perform the delivery, installation, configuration and testing preparation on the
infrastructure components specified by the technical leads.

WHAT HAPPENS TO THE ACTORS

1) IT will be part of the technical team in white.

2) Enterprise Information Management unit should technically be able to function as the Financial Business
Architect, provided that they have the relevant skill set and still tightly engaged as an operating area of
finance, e.g. Management Account, AR/PR, Treasury etc. If that skill set is lost, then they would be best
merged into the IT team as Business Analysts.

3) The MIS team can be absorbed into the technical and/or business implementation team as Testers,
Business Analysts and Change Management due to their exposure to the technology product.

4) The existing Data Governance unit will be merged into IT as experts in data quality and institutionalization
of data dictionaries for IT. They will be the SME to spread the gospel of data governance and records
management principles to the business as well. The team will lead respective Information Owner
Governance personnel to ensure cross pollination and institutionalization of governance principles.

TRANSITIONING THE BUSINESS STRUCTURE POST LIVE

Financial Info
Owner (SME)

Financial Info
Governance

Financial Info
Release
Management

Once the project has completed, the Financial Business Architect will need to be maintained for a short period of
time and function as the Information Owner. The person however, will plan to handover his reign to a specific head
of business in Finance during the end of their tenure. Ideally to ensure that the financial reporting standards are
continuously improved upon and tuned to capture the key decision needs of the other financial units. For example,
Treasury in Finance is fundamentally different from the team managing Procurement or Accounting.

As the Head of unit also has a day job, there will be a need to create a more permanent Financial Information
Governance Team. This team will build upon the standards already defined during the implementation and ensure
that the dictionary of terms used, traceability of information sources and conflict resolution and troubleshooting of
discrepancies are done together with the IT people. They are also the requirements personnel to specify new
business specifications to IT.

Financial Info Release Management should assist the Financial Owner in planning out new sub projects and
improvement with the IT team; they will coordinate with the rest of finance in deploying these new features and
work with IT in coordinate releases and managing the release process. For example, roll out, training. These two
boxes will fundamentally collapse the roles and responsibilities mentioned in “Roles and Responsibilities on an
Information Owner”. For example the Financial information Product Management role is a combination of both
these boxes.

HOW IS IT DEPARTMENT’S STRUCTURE?

Fundamentally unchanged, but the operating paradigm needs to. Instead of being a cost centre it will be a profit
centre, with reasonable margins that is sufficient to be reinvested back to the overall IT system improvements. To
avoid conflicts of interest, the IT personnel’s KPI CANNOT be judged from margins made but through the overall
accuracy, performance and stability of the system. This will avoid overzealous IT managers from pegging margins
generated to their bonuses.

The service provider model will also reduce the need to depend on business for upgrades and improvements and
all funding decisions will be a CFO decision. It also decouples the influence of business in determining for IT the
technology they would prefer to use.

The bank will transfer all asset ownership to IT, whereupon a cost plus allocation model will charge back the cost of
maintaining existing systems including a margin that is sufficient enough to snowball into funds that can be
invested back into system improvements.

The calculation of the said margin and cost allocation model is beyond the scope of this model and needs to be
revisited separately. However, it is crucial for this to happen to break the cycle of “me vs. Your” system that is
prevalent amongst multi subsidiary and large corporations.

The key question here is whether the IT organization has the maturity and exposure to be managed as a profit
centre.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

We began the journey with 3 problem statements, having multiple organizations managing overlapping set of data
but owning various systems; the static nature of organizational departments, particularly information
management; and the organizations lacks an information soul, the non-existence abstraction and productization of
information to be consumed by various areas of banking; resulting in leadership gaps and users who are unable to
drive requirements and improvements.

So we laid out the solution that began with leadership, the embracing business functions as the ultimate owners of
information and not the system. An idea that is largely influenced by Enterprise Architecture principles of starting
with the strategic intents, business aspirations and needs before we can even provide IT solutions to meet these
goals.

To end, we reemphasize that the info-owner role is not an ivory tower position and perpetual, the information
owner needs to be rotated through the particular business line that owns the subject area. Lastly, there’s a need to
decouple business from IT and for IT to function as an information solution provider to business. Let IT chart its
own destiny, and in order to do that, a mechanism that drives improvements through a self sustaining charge back
cost plus model is required.
APPENDIX : SAMPLE PROCESS FOR INFORMATION SERVICES PROVISIONING

Information Service Provisioning

Process: New Information/Reporting Request
(Any business
unit requiring
Consumer

Clarify and Finalize

info)

Request for New requirement, scope

Start
Report and proposed
approach
IT: Demand
Planning

Ascertain Info
Owner Area &
Route/Track
Progress
Business: Info

Joint planning session to

Owner

Ascertain requirement ensure that design Kick Off Project

alignment with info specifications are inline with user End
product evolution plan with information owner info stakeholders
product evolution plans
Governance
Info Owner:

Conduct joint
Info

planning on
requirement
IT: Business
Analyst

Ascertain initial
requirements &
Impacted system
Conduct joint Design and
Specification session,
reusing Info assets if
available. Providing
Governance

sample recordset that can

IT: Data

be produce. Ensuring
alignment and cohesion
with IT technology
evolution and plans.
Impact analysis, data
model extension etc.
IT Systems

Delivery
Solution
Owner/

Form Project
Execution team
APPENDIX - SOURCES

Bruland, Tine. “Industrial conflict as a source of technical innovation: three cases.” Economy and Society 112 (May
1982): pp. 91-121.

Carley, Kathleen M., and John R. Harrald. “Organizational Learning under Fire: Theory and Practice.” American
Behavioral Scientist 40, no. 3 (1997): pp. 310-332.

Dutton, Jane, E. “The Processing of Crisis and None Crisis Strategic Issue.” Journal of Management Studies 23, no. 5
(1986): pp. 501-517.