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Reluctance To Go Mobile Inhibiting Innovation In Financial Services (enterprisersproject.com)
Lemeowski writes: Compliance concerns have long prevented financial services businesses from adopting mobile capabilities as quickly as other industries. But Yvette Jackson of Thomson Reuters argues that technology advancements have made compliance worries of the past now obsolete, and financial services companies are running out of excuses for not going mobile. She stresses that holding onto this reluctance will cause businesses to miss opportunities, limit innovation, and turn away talent by restraining their workflow. She says, "Any millennial joining the financial services industry, who expects a flawless user experience both at home and at work, is – I'm sure – surprised on their first day in the office when they get to their desk and are transported back in time by the technology they're expected to use."
I haven't done a whole lot of work in financial services, but what I have done was with ancient in-house software that had clunky, keyboard-only interfaces that would make any self-identified "millennial" break down crying. It was also rock solid software that didn't crash randomly or even slow down. It didn't lose data or corrupt files or update fifteen times in an hour. It worked exactly the way it was expected to work: the same way it had worked for decades.
You see, when you're working with millions of dollars in other people's money, a "flawless user experience" is a significantly less important aspect of software development than never fucking up.
I have a feeling that the financial services industry isn't going to miss millennial "talent" who needs to be able to dick around with their accounts on their smartphone anytime, anywhere.
that millenials are allowed to have any responsibility worth having in financial services industry? I have karma to burn, so fume and mod down all you want. But isn't this orthodoxy in technology actually a good thing if it keeps people with poor impulse control away from making decisions about significant-size financial transactions?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I sure don't want my bank account's security left open on a developer's tablet at Starbucks while they chat-up the barista. So please, if you hear about jobs where workers can have access to sensitive customer/patient information while downing shots at the bar please let us know. This business does not respect the security of my information. Working on off-line dev code from home is fine. Access to data off site is not!
national defense, health care, critical infrastructure, etc., are heavily regulated because they are, well, critical. The people that are running these businesses are no different from the malignant idiots running the less regulated businesses, the regulation is therefor needed to keep them in check and avoid the worst of the mistakes and problems you see reported here almost daily. The only thing you can complain about is that the regulations are often not up to the task, but that does not mean there is to much regulation. usually it is the opposite.
That this stifles innovation is good. it gives us time to think.
This woman has no idea what she is talking about. I am posting anonymously because I work for one of the top five banks in the US as a systems administrator whose job is to protect internal IT assets, create monitoring tools, and help make long-term decisions. I am also writing this as a pissed off individual who just read an article written by a complete moron on the subject.
One - my bank that I am employed at has tools and resources that all web based, both internally and for the most part, for all of our customer-facing functions. Most of our sites are at minimum CSS2 compliant, thus making our sites responsive and able to be viewed in a variety of browsers. In addition, like many other banks, we have customer apps for the major platforms. So as far as not being able to be used from a smartphone, or in some other modern manner, I cry foul.
Two - I work from home a lot. We utilize many up to date products / protocols to enable remote workers to access their files, team sharing resources, etc. HR, calendars, employee resources, etc. are all available. Many of these are utilized by several in-house apps / sites to provide custom work environments / workflows for various teams and departments. I operate both Windows and Linux servers (been a UNIX man since before I was out of junior high school), and I employ modern tools. My favorite tool is my Hackintosh running a remote access application ;)
Three - Like it or not, banking and financial institutions are required by Federal (and in many cases International) law to adhere to various standards and auditing procedures, and yes, we get audited quite a lot - which is something the average consumer should WANT AND REQUIRE by any banking institution. Some of this may utilize non-post 2010 technology and/or buzzwords, but it works, and like it or not, it is well understood by both the teams that support these installs as well as those auditing them. You don't change something because some dumbass somewhere said "Wow! This website says this is the next thing - we change NOW!" Plus, like it or not, non-IT people are very difficult to teach / retrain on how to use a new environment, and so is the Federal Government. Sometimes things aren't changed because of some long-standing regulation that controls how changes occur. Perhaps this is why the American banking system is one of the most stable things around... (I expect arguments on that statement...)
Four - Millennials are often not qualified to understand the hows and whys something was implemented a particular way. Sure, their high-falooting college edumacation gave them everything they need to know about IT, so the first thing they do is come in is to run their mouths, and then get frustrated because no one older or more experienced / wiser seems to want to immediately jump on board and run with their new ideas. Sure, new ideas should be explored, but only in time and with the appropriate amount of study and testing. I spend the majority of my days creating tools to help detect and resolve problems on multiple environments automatically. I have to keep abreast on everything going on in the networking and security communities. So, I understand the potential issues with every change I recommend or even make on how to do something. I listen to all the ideas that are brought before me, but I also have the experience to know when something is more or less a fad, and when something can truly improve the workflow for myself, my team, or enterprise-wide. Legacy tools and code are going to be present everywhere for some reason.
Five - Tables and smartphones are wonderful things, but I personally can't be productive in my job using a tablet or an iPad, no matter what someone else might think. I need a laptop or a personal computer that I can run a shell on, etc. Another way to look at this is how can an organization adapt to allow for many different types of technology to be used by people with varying needs as long as their jobs are performed correctly? Has this author never heard of A