Data and cloud are two of the most integral facets of business today, and organizations must be proactive in making timely and quality decisions. I recently attended the CIO Talk Network (CTN) event, “Steps to Enabling Data-Driven and Cloud-Powered Business Innovation” and participated in a panel discussion on how organizations are defining their success metrics, deciding how quickly to implement changes and rethinking their business and technology architectures.
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Innovation Challenges
When it comes to innovating with cloud and data analytics technology, many firms face similar challenges. The technology landscape is evolving rapidly, challenging different stakeholders across financial services and other industries, to align on what is happening in the marketplace. For example, data used to be primarily stored in traditional, siloed databases, which then evolved to data being stored in files on distributed hardware (a technology called Hadoop). Over the past few years, that has transitioned to data being largely stored on the cloud via cloud providers such as Amazon, Google or Snowflake. This represents a tremendous change in a relatively short period of time.
Another challenge firms face, especially within IT departments, is making sure that these new technologies elevate their clients’ experience. Implementing these technologies should add value and take the business in the right direction.
Finally, striking a balance between focusing on business innovation and business value and building out the right architecture is an important decision. Firms must consider how much change they want to make. Without the right architecture, the rate of change can be slow because of complexity, but if the architecture is overbuilt, the speed to market can be difficult. Creating the right value for the business while enabling the right scale is imperative.
Enabling Transparency
The financial services industry is a voracious consumer of IT services, specifically cloud and data services. There is a lot of value that can be realized from leveraging these technologies to elevate the client and consumer experience for both internal and external stakeholders. Data can be used to create transparency for clients in terms of the business process and where they are in the business process. That transparency can be used to drive meaningful value.
One way we can use cloud and data services at DTCC is to create transparency in the trade lifecycle process. This transparency creates both internal and external value by allowing data to be easily accessible for research and decision-making. Cloud technology also enables the degree of innovation to be scaled up across the enterprise. DTCC has invested in several platforms, like our API platform, which allows clients to connect to each other seamlessly.
Looking Ahead
Cloud and data technologies present a range of innovative opportunities in both the near and longer term. DTCC is investing in a modern data ecosystem across our businesses. This data will be cataloged, and quality attributes will be identified for that data. Our businesses will be able to rapidly innovate with that data because of the existing foundation. If a business or person has an idea that they think has merit, they can progress it forward. If it does not have merit, it stops. This is the benefit of speed and data democratization.
In the past, innovation was more difficult because data required specialized knowledge and getting access required a significant number of approvals. But in this modern, cloud-enabled data-driven ecosystem, the data is primarily self-service, which makes it widely available and accessible. Security, approvals, and privacy considerations must be taken into account, but getting access to the data is much more streamlined. This opens the possibilities in terms of the number of people who can start innovating across DTCC.