Mckinsey Quarterly has an interview with Diane Schueneman, Head of Merril Lynch's Operations & IT, Below are excerpts from the same,

The model - Merrill Lynch is one of a growing number of financial-services companies that have combined their IT and operations units in an effort to smooth the connection between services delivered and the technology and processes that deliver them. After all, says Diane Schueneman, the head of the company's Global Infrastructure Solutions, customers are won or lost through the quality of the service they receive rather than any assessment of what part of the company delivered it.

Customer Orientation - I try to remember that we're not a technology company; we're a financial-services company that supplies solutions to our customers around their financial needs-simple as that. Customers don't say, "You do a really great job creating an equity product." They ask, "How well do you deliver it to me?" and "Does it meet my needs?" So the whole reason to combine technology and operations rests on the customer's needs. And to deliver against those needs requires the best operational processes and the best technology. But you can't start with one and graft on the other. It's the integration of technology and operations, from beginning to end, that really allows you to serve customers effectively, anywhere in the world. It's one example of how we're transforming our organization to think differently from the ways that financial-services companies have thought in the past-which is to say you have to move beyond an individual silo mentality.

One project being executed: This is where our infrastructure team got together to basically rethink and reinvent what our entire technology platform should look like. How do we become more efficient, agile, and scalable than we are today? How do we train our people so they have the best skills in the business? How do we organize ourselves so we are delivering all of the firm's capabilities to clients in the ways clients want them delivered?

So in a top-to-bottom examination of our technology infrastructure, the global support model program is systematically looking at how our tools and processes can be improved, how we turn our global footprint into an integrated platform operating from strategically situated centers of excellence, and how we improve training and career opportunities to attract and retain the best workforce.

We have told our people, "Go out and invent a better way of doing things." To empower them, we have supplied resources and management support. That combination of ideas and follow-through is how you create new possibilities.

Skill sets that are a must to thrive in the next 10 years

• collaboration
  


• teamwork skills
  


• Data-management skills - to integrate information into the organization
  


• Successful partnerships
  


• better at procuring, and globalization will be key
  


• Ability to execute in the virtual world

6 Goals for the next 3 years:

• A radical shift in budget priorities: we plan to spend 70 percent on new development and 30 percent on maintenance.
  


• To substantially increase our straight-through processing to 99 percent of our commoditized, high-volume transactions.
  


• Go after downtime by ensuring 99.95 percent availability of our critical business applications.
  


• Improve our global-sourcing abilities by making sure we have the right people with the right skills in the right locations to serve our customers.
  


• Increase client satisfaction
  


• Want to be best-in-class with our e-channels.

I think any CIO role has to evolve to become an integral part of the business's fabric. There's a lot of talk about whether CIOs have a seat at the table, but in a way that misses the point. You don't get the seat at the table and then suddenly succeed; you have to drive a capability in a company, and then you get a seat at the table. Ask yourself what are you doing that is transformational? What are you doing that's a differentiator? Are you thinking differently or are you an order taker?

Tags: cio - merrill+lynch - financial+services - it - interview - mckinsey

Prashanth Rai