The Largest Gap in Technology - The Executive Suite and The Bank’s “Factories.”

To residents of the executive suite,

Take a couple of days off, wear your jeans and a black turtle neck (a la Steve Jobs, the Apple Computer genius) and report for work in a few of your branch lobbies and your back rooms. Result: You’ll get depressed, and then you’ll kick a few butts. How do I know? When banks hire me to do it, my canary yellow legal pad ends up with about 200 systems-related gripes from the workers. A second piece of evidence is even more meaningful because it comes from a highly respected banker. Charles Prince recently found out that Citibank can’t tie together retail customers with four accounts. At least, that’s what the American Banker reported in a story on August 26, 2005. Hello! It’s 2006, does your bank use currently available technology?

The problem is simply this. Executives don’t talk to workers. The working class knows about the deficiencies in present systems, but the resolving class doesn’t, or doesn’t want to know. And no one wants to be a whistle-blower. So the workers use their special skills to by-pass the problems even though their productivity sinks. At the executive suite, everything looks rosy because the work got done.

When I show up at a bank and make my presentation describing deficiencies, it’s anything but rosy. And even though a few hot shots in the room will challenge my findings, I manage to win, thanks to the support of the workers I speak for who are sitting in that knowledge-based part of the back of the board room.

The executive suite is a nice place to work, especially when the residents know the lobbies and back rooms are working at peak performance.

Art Gillis
Spokesman for the Workers
1/16/06

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