As part of a technology simplification initiative, CBA has cost all 2200 business apps it employs to determine what to maintain, digitize, or cull. The financial institution spoke about the project at high level many times this year, with CEO Matt Comyn saying in his full-year results conference that the project is about “streamlining and automating our IT estate.”
At TBM Council’s ’21 conference this week, the details of how CBA is moving through its technology estate application by application were exposed.
CBA has cost all 2200 business software it uses as part of a technological simplification drive to choose what to keep, digitize, or eliminate. The banking institution has frequently mentioned the initiative this year, with CEO Matt Comyn stating in his final results announcement that it is about “streamlining and automating our IT estate.” TBM (technology business management) is a technique for estimating the cost of running IT platforms and calculating the benefit they generate.
CBA said it sought to deploy a “custom made” and “very personalized” TBM model to increase IT mutual accountability in 2018, but ran into “data-related problems inside IT and finance” and had to “start again,” according to banking and finance program delivery manager Richard Spalding. Whenever the bank was hit with margin pressure during the pandemic, it didn’t know it needed to cut down on technological waste.
CBA chose to “emphasise speed above perfection,” according to Spalding. “How then can we offer the right amount of openness at the right time so that our commercial and IT executives can implement digitisation initiatives and program optimization [or] modernization at the right time?” he asked. “We have to perform at a fast speed to allow them to execute at a fast rate.” “If you’ve had a plan that aims to save hundreds of millions of dollars over a few years, every month that you take to give the transparency that allows to execute, we’re probably pushing out $5-10 million in benefits.” “I defy anyone to argue that customising and adding 3 months to the process is worth it.”
Assisting CBA and its technological simplification goals is a significant early use case for TBM. “Both of the sizes of an application estate and how we’ve designed the application stack are targets for our tech simplification initiative,” Spalding added. “In certain situations, we may need to spend less on technology for a specific phase since we haven’t properly optimised it.” “In other situations, it may show that we’re spending too little on technology since it’s low for that stage of the house loan application process as compared to human level spent by operational to process mortgage papers.” “For all of us, that will be the next horizon.”
