Financial Institution Advantage and the Optimization of Information Processing. Keenan Sean C.

software vendor who is marketing that same vision to other institutions amounts to nothing less than a decision to make the firm less competitive.

      It is not obvious how an institution should approach narrowing or eliminating the IT rift, but one thing is clear: It needs to be recognized by the senior leaders of the firm as a challenge to be overcome, and this is unlikely to occur unless corporate leaders themselves are more IT savvy than they have been historically. A more deliberate and holistic approach to information processing means not only structuring physical data processing and analytic capabilities (as discussed below), it also means creating an organizational structure to match that modernized business model (also discussed below). This means that the overall strategic direction must be identified, that the underlying physical infrastructure must be aligned with that vision, and that a plan to match personnel with that model must be developed and communicated throughout the organization. One of the principle consumers of that communication has to be the firm's human resources department, which may itself be required to take transformative steps in order to implement that strategy. The existence of dedicated IT HR departments that only hire into IT roles serves to propagate and reinforce the rift. (Interestingly, poll data from users of internal service providers within U.S. corporations found satisfaction rates for IT (MIS) and HR at 28 and 24 percent respectively9– dead last among internal providers.) If the HR function does not clearly understand the need for more strategically deployed skill sets across functions and across the revamped information processing complex, it will be impossible to implement such a strategy. This means more subject matter experts need to be embedded directly into the HR organization.