Jean Sebastien Charest - The Impact of Digital Change at BDC

Summary

Jean Sebastien Charest talks about the significant impact of digital change within the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC). He highlights how the shift towards cloud technology and digital automation is transforming working methods both internally and externally. The organization faces challenges in managing these changes as it moves from on-premise systems to cloud-based services, necessitating upskilling of employees across departments. Moreover, there is an ongoing reformation in data management practices aimed at streamlining processes and enhancing operational efficiency. Charest stresses on the importance of incorporating change management strategies from day one to facilitate seamless adaptation and reduce disruptions. He also underscores the need for consistent data interpretation across different departments to ensure uniformity and efficiency.

Highlights

• Transforming internal operations and client services through digital change is crucial at BDC. 🔄
• The transition to cloud-based systems from traditional on-premise setups is a major shift for banks. ☁️
• Upskilling staff is essential as new technologies reshape the workplace. 📚
• Automation allows employees to focus on customer relationships and value-added activities. 🤝
• A consistent change management strategy should be incorporated early to adapt smoothly to new changes. 🔧
• Cross-departmental consistency in data interpretation is vital to operational success. 📊
• Decreased data manipulation leads to higher performance and lower risks in operations. 🔍

Key Takeaways

• Embracing cloud technology necessitates a cultural shift and upskilling of current IT personnel. ☁️
• Digital automation helps employees focus more on value-added tasks rather than mundane processes. 🚀
• The transition to cloud-based services from on-premise systems marks a pivotal shift in operational strategies. 🔄
• Effective change management must be integrated from the starting line to handle constant and shorter iteration cycles effectively. 🔄
• Establishing a single source of truth for data across departments enhances consistency and operational efficiency. 📊
• Adopting new data management practices reduces manipulation and enhances performance while minimizing risk. 🔍

Overview

Jean Sebastien Charest from BDC discusses the bank's embrace of digital transformation, emphasizing the challenge and necessity of adapting to new digital solutions. By introducing cloud technology, BDC is revolutionizing not only their internal processes but also the client services they offer. The shift encourages a culture of upskilling as staff must now become adept with new technologies, ensuring they remain relevant in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

The move to cloud infrastructure from traditional on-premise systems marks a significant change in how the bank operates. This shift requires a rethinking of the operational roadmap, breaking down silos to create multidisciplinary teams responsible for various digital products and services. It highlights the importance of having change management strategies ingrained in every step of the rollout process to mitigate disruptions and ensure smooth transitions.

A critical component of this digital journey is reimagining data management to support efficiency and consistency across the organization. By adopting new standards for data manipulation, BDC aims to streamline processes, reduce redundancy, and improve performance while ensuring all departments rely on a single, trusted source of data. This approach not only enhances operational outcomes but also reduces risks associated with inconsistent data handling.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Change This chapter discusses the importance and implications of change within internal operations as well as in services and support provided to clients. It highlights how change affects ways of working in the business world.
• 00:30 - 01:30: IT Operations and Cloud Technology The chapter discusses the transformation in IT operations and cloud technology, focusing on breaking down barriers between development, solutions, infrastructure, and operations. It highlights the shift towards multidisciplinary teams where members are responsible for building, tweaking, and operating their own solutions, emphasizing a more integrated approach to IT and cloud management.
• 01:30 - 02:30: Impact of Automation and Adoption The chapter titled 'Impact of Automation and Adoption' discusses the transformation of operational methods within the IT domain, particularly in a banking environment. It focuses on the shift from traditional on-premise infrastructure to cloud technology. This transition is described as significant for banks, which have historically relied on their in-house built expertise for maintenance, upgrades, and system operations. The chapter emphasizes how adopting cloud solutions and software as a service (SaaS) can potentially enhance the bank's operational capabilities, efficiency, and service delivery.
• 02:30 - 03:30: Managing Disruption and Change In the chapter titled 'Managing Disruption and Change,' the focus is on the need for organizations, particularly banks and large enterprises, to adapt to new ways of working amidst technological advancements. There is an emphasis on upskilling and transitioning expertise to embrace digital and data-driven approaches. The narrative highlights the internal changes necessary for non-IT staff to navigate, especially as automation takes over numerous processes. The discussion underscores the urgency of responding to these challenges in a timely manner.
• 03:30 - 04:30: Challenges with Data Management The chapter discusses the importance of technology adoption in data management. While advanced technologies can enhance operational efficiencies, their benefits can only be realized if employees integrate these tools into their daily routines. This empowers staff to focus on value-added tasks and client relations, rather than mundane duties like data entry and manual process handling, which should be automated by technology.
• 04:30 - 06:00: One Source of Truth for Data In the chapter titled 'One Source of Truth for Data,' the discussion focuses on managing organizational changes, their impacts, and the disruptions they may cause within the organization. It emphasizes the natural human resistance to change and implies strategies for effective change management.
• 06:00 - 07:00: Concerns and Transition The chapter 'Concerns and Transition' discusses the complexities of digital transformation, emphasizing that change is a constant and occurs in shorter cycles than in the past. The narrative highlights substantial shifts in work methodologies over the past two years, advocating for proactive integration of change management strategies rather than retrofitting them after processes are in place.

Jean Sebastien Charest - The Impact of Digital Change at BDC Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 um you're dealing with change then uh it sounds like with your internal operations but also with the services and support that you provide to your clients exactly and the change aspect is is it's critical and yet so change in our world means change the ways of working so i
• 00:30 - 01:00 said it before for our i.t colleagues the way that you know they deploy the solutions the way that we're breaking the barriers between the development and the solution building and the infrastructure and the operations of our solutions going more in a world where we build teams that they own it uh they build it they they they tweak it they operate so so so they're the ones that are now you know in a multi-disciplinary team
• 01:00 - 01:30 uh responsible for the solutions for the road map so that's changing our ways of working uh within it introducing of cloud technology also changes a lot for a bank that has a lot of on-premise um infrastructure that has you know build over the years the expertise to maintain and upgrade and patch and you know make sure we operate these systems to a world where the cloud brings us more and the software as a service of
• 01:30 - 02:00 this world brings us more of a commodity around these areas so we need to upskill and transition these expertise towards new ways of working but also in the digital side and the data side changing a lot internally folks that are not i.t if we automate a bunch of processes because that's where the bulk of the the challenges in in in a bank and many large organization is today's world your the time to yes for
• 02:00 - 02:30 your client the efficiencies of your processes um are game changers and so you control technology and everything but you need adoption you need people that integrate these new ways of working in their day-to-day job so that they spend more time in value-added tasks relation with the client tasks and not you know being people that do data entry or that are pushing through a process internally that that we want technology to take care of that
• 02:30 - 03:00 okay so you're making a lot of changes and presumably those changes are having an impact and to some degree uh creating some disruption inside the organization can you talk a bit about how disruptive the change might have been and what you've done to manage that and make it happen effectively humans we don't like change so that's uh that doesn't have anything
• 03:00 - 03:30 to do with digital it's hard for people so there is a lot of literature on you know how to and there's a lot of theory around how you do change but in today's world that change happens on shorter iterations it's the changes there constantly the past two years have been very generous in in in ways of working that we need to change so um you do not want to uh bolt on your change management strategy at the end it
• 03:30 - 04:00 has to be built in the way that you work the way you deploy the way that you interact with the end users day one um must be change driven and and you know to your point on how disruptive it is well talking about data for instance um in a world where you know in a bank data is that's the only thing we use right data is that will lead to our credit decisions data will lead to our operational
• 04:00 - 04:30 um you know reports to our kpis everything is built around data um and there is a lot of of today you know people they're used to accessing data that is raw data or you know building solutions that have their own data and then there's a lot of downstream manipulation of the data you'd be surprised and this is not only bdc i've worked for the job name before for a number of years and in other large
• 04:30 - 05:00 banks and our financial institutions the same data is inter you know different interpretations are different you know the departments if you go to a large chartered bank and you ask them how many clients do you have depending on who you ask they're going to have a different answer right because because they don't access the same data some will treat clients because they bank with a certain part of the bank some will say no no they're both clients on the insurance side so they're not you know they're not clients so so it's like
• 05:00 - 05:30 people are used to manipulate the data and there's there's a lot of efficiency loss also because they they cleanse the data on their side they most certainly apply business rules to the data because the raw data you know probably is not um easy to interpret so they all have their the manipulation so this leads to hard to bring changes because when you're you know you either want to upgrade your systems or your processes you know if if everybody accesses the data in different ways it means um it's
• 05:30 - 06:00 hard for you to say hey this was your solution this is the new solution and the numbers they don't balance why because there's not a single source of truth around data so it's hard because now we're saying hey guys you need to trust the fact that now we're going to bring this data all manipulations and business rules will be applied at the source and then you consume this data the same way marketing risk and financing will consume this data and and and that will lead to operational
• 06:00 - 06:30 uh benefits because less manipulation but it also helps us be more performant and it addresses our operational risk around data manipulation within the organization so it's hard it's hard because people have been working like that for years absolutely and yeah presumably that has been some uh concern amongst the people who use the data in old ways and there's a need to move them to the new way of doing things
• 06:30 - 07:00 you