パンデミック後の世界におけるITの優先事項

For workers at large-scale Japanese companies, the daily commute has always been an important aspect of business life, as most regular work has been completed in the office. When dealing with complex issues or making important decisions, all the stakeholders usually gather in the office to discuss the relevant topics. The COVID-19 outbreak has challenged this common practice, as companies have been compelled to impose travel restrictions on employees and/or limit the size of meetings. As a result, remote work very likely remains the new normal through 2021 significantly impacting the daily management of financial institutions.

The shift to remote work environments has created increased demand for better solutions for remote meetings, including teleconferencing and web conferencing, and better approaches to virtual collaboration. It has also required that new employment, personnel, and management rules be developed for remote working that maintains face-to-face meetings and office work as options. As for customer service, some processes have needed to be fundamentally redesigned. However, by enhancing business plans, designing thoughtful processes that respect user interface (UI) and user experience (UX), and thoroughly considering the quality and productivity of those plans and processes, companies should be able to make drastic changes in working practices that past business process redesign (BPR) approaches could not address.

The pandemic has also created a lot of uncertainty and caused significant volatility, including price and volume fluctuations, in daily financial markets. The design and implementation of remote work environments required companies to race against time and be flexible enough to change very quickly. In other words, the transition to “amoeba management” (information- and data-driven, autonomous, and flexible organization management) was essential and should have been worth trying, even though Japanese financial institutions and other big companies struggled to implement it. The shift to remote work has also required a virtual process design that takes into account operational modifications and sophistication and is accompanied by rigid business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) management revisions.

There is no point in going back to a time before the pandemic. What financial institutions should learn from this infectious disease outbreak is that remote IT work should be the default in the new normal as a matter of course, not only from the perspective of business continuity but also in terms of business costs, quality, and productivity. After the crisis abates, there will be a new arena of innovations in which cost savings and increased productivity go hand in hand.

The new normal in 2021 is shifting gears from survive to thrive. Prosperity is the goal of the new financial services industry, driven by emerging technologies, as financial institutions serve large enterprises, small and midsize businesses, and consumers, and financial technology vendors serve their customers through their technology offerings.

Celent focuses on insights that will help the global financial services industry survive and thrive. We provide strategic insights and recommendations through our reports on top trends in IT, including IT spending, as well as industry- and region-specific trends in the new normal. For example:

• COVID-19 Impact on FIs’ IT Plans in Japan/APAC
• IT Spending During COVID-19 in Banking
• Adapting to the New Normal, Part 1: A Response to COVID-19
• Adapting to the New Normal, Part 2: IT Spending in the COVID Era
• Alternative Benchmarks for a New Normal
• Future of Cloud in Financial Services
• Top Technology Priorities for Retail Banks in 2021
• 2021 Corporate Banking Research Outlook
• Top Tech Trends in Capital Markets for 2021
• Top Wealth Management Trends: 2021 Edition
• Top Technology Priorities for Life Insurers in 2021
• Top Technology Priorities for P&C Insurers in 2021
• Top Technology Trends in KYC-AML: Transforming AML Operations in The Digital Era

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Celent Survey—IT Priorities in the Post-pandemic World

Celent regularly conducts surveys on trends in the financial services industry. In this survey, Celent looks at IT priorities in the post-pandemic world. In the new normal, one year after the outbreak, has your IT strategy shifted gears from survive to thrive?

This survey consists of 10 questions and takes about 10 minutes to complete. All responses will be statistically tabulated and reflected in our survey report. We will not disclose any information that can identify individuals or companies when discussing the survey results in the report. Those who participate in the survey will receive a summary report of the survey results at a later date. Please let us know about your company’s initiatives.

To participate online, please click here: Celent Survey—IT Priorities in the Post-pandemic World: Shifting Gears from Survive to Thrive.