KEN BEBEE / COURTESY OF BANK OF AMERICA
in the final stages
of transitioning
our California and
Northwest regions’
core banking systems
into the model
platform used by the
company so that we
have a single, core
banking platform
across the U.S.
We retired 11,000
different batch jobs
that ran daily and
decommissioned 110
obsolete applications.
Continued from page 8
one of the
company’s
key operating
principles
is to clean up all legacy
issues. Those targets are
well in sight.
what was the
impetus behind that
project? The undertaking of an initiative
like this is challenging. It produces a
great benefit to existing customers but is
not necessarily the
next great product
you’re going to use to
boost revenue. But
one of the company’s key operating
principles is to clean
up all legacy issues.
Those targets are
well in sight.
what other projects have you overseen? We’re proud
of our mobile banking platform. We had the first
mobile banking app for the iPhone. In terms of commercial clients, in the last 24 months we have made
significant enhancements to the CashPro Online
portal. We scaled it so that clients can use it globally.
In our wealth management business, there’s a portal
called MyMerrill that now allows clients to see both
their banking and investment accounts.
have you had any failures along the way? We had
a very public and painful degradation of service at
the end of September 2011 in our online consumer
banking space. From a statistical perspective, it was
not nearly as damaging as the public perception of
it. On our worst day, we successfully processed 97%
of our customer interactions. But we took an event
that should have been manageable and made it into
a six-day event. We had media folks logging on to
Bankof America.com and seeing a flash page meant
to be a click-through page to online banking, and it
used the words “occasionally unavailable” or “tem-
porarily unavailable.” It then offered a click-through,
[but] anyone who looked at that page thought we
were saying we were unavailable.
what did you learn from that experience? We need to
be brilliant at reacting. We used to have some time to
fix things. Now, because of the speed of technology,
I know about [problems] at the same time our clients
do, and our ability to react becomes as important as
the ability to prevent.
how do you react appropriately? Most customers
will try again, so it’s very important that you fix the
underlying problem so that their next attempt is
successful. Then use social media to get accurate information out, and use flash pages and other components to effectively tell customers how to get service.
which upcoming projects are you most passionate
about? I am very passionate about using technology to reduce risk permanently. We always have
to be agile, and the risks of tomorrow are different
from today, but we think of technology as our No. 1
weapon in the art of risk reduction.
We have a couple of significant platforms that are
almost at the end of their life cycle, and there’s tremendous pull from the business and within GT&O to
modernize our global banking platforms.
I’m also passionate about the diversity and breadth
of our technological talent, developing people so
they’re well-positioned for the technology and operating jobs that exist in our company.
does your quest for diversity include programs to
attract more women to i T? CEO Brian Moynihan
challenged me, saying “You have five CIOs, you’re
a woman and you can only come up with one CIO
who’s a woman?” He puts the accountability on me. I
do know from experience that some strategies can be
effective — visible leadership, constant focus and development, and goal-setting and accountability. We
sponsor Women in Technology & Operations, which
is specifically designed to support women technologists as they go through their careers.
As more i T operations move into public and private
clouds, how does that affect what you’re looking
for in i T staff? There is no substitute for world-class
technology and engineering and math.
When I have seen projects that were too slow or
too expensive or didn’t work and play well with other
projects, one of the root causes has been an overreliance on third parties. Coming into the job, I would
have [valued] the versatility and general business
management it takes to manage third parties. Now,
I think an overreliance on third parties creates risk
and gets in the way of outcomes.
