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Akshaya Gaur

The worst time to plan for a crisis is when you are in it: David Awcock, Group head of Technology at Standard Chartered Bank (SCB), said it all with that one sentence, to describe how the bank is reacting to the current turbulence in the financial sector across the world.

It is an interesting time to meet with SCB, with its focus in Asia, Africa and West Asia — regions less affected by the calamitous developments that shook the West.

eWorld met with Awcock and Akshaya Gaur, Executive Vice-President and Head, Software Solutions, at Scope International, the bank’s technology arm. Interestingly, despite meeting us separately, each’s answers to our queries were near identical.

On the economic slowdown affecting their operations, the gist of what they said is: “Everybody is affected. But there is no big change in the way we operate. We continue to do what we did, but are hopefully doing it better.” But push them a bit and they do throw light on some steps they have taken to make a difference.

Awcock says that since technology typically helps cut costs, it has been a focus area for Scope. “We have been very disciplined about cost.” In other words, a Rupee saved is one that can be re-invested. So Scope has been focused on increasing its efficiency.

For instance, it is now using its Business Intelligence and Customer Relationship Management tools to know its customers better. Says Awcock, “We have put in a lot of effort in building a knowledge base about our customer’s habits and patterns.”

“Who are we servicing? Should we be doing business with a particular profile?” are questions that the tools help answer.

Scope is now focusing on populating the database with information about clients that helps identify the type of clients it services. “We look at increasing important ratios such as the cross-sell ratio. It does not matter what tool you have but you need to have the data to use it on.” He clarifies that Scope is not spending new money on these tools but trying to get the best out of what it already has.

David Awcock

Scope allows employees to work from home. Says Awcock, “That allows us access to people who would not otherwise have been available for work.”

Hot-desking is another concept that Scope is experimenting with. Says Gaur, “Our software solutions’ people use office space sparingly at night. So, we are now trying get people from other departments, which work nights, to use the infrastructure — the space, PC and phone — so that we can save on electricity and related costs.

Gaur clarifies, “We are not reacting to the outside environment now. We have been doing this for a while.”

Scope is also consolidating its IT hardware. Says Gaur, “If we have five-six servers coming up for replacement, we opt for virtualisation and deploy one powerful server. Not only do we save on space and electricity and cooling needs, but also on software licences, which are sometimes applicable per microprocessor.”

According to Awcock, “We are also simplifying things.” For example, he questions the need to store, online, bank account statements that are more than five years old. “One customer in three years would want such a facility. So we decided against that and saved on online storage.”

Since wearing the ‘head-software solutions’ cap a couple of years ago, Gaur says he has been focusing on metrics. He dwells on the quality management framework, an in-house metric for Scope. He says, “You can’t have a uniform quality policy whatever the size of the task. If you apply the same precautions for a small process as you would for a bigger one, you could easily kill the smaller process. So you need appropriate precautions.”

He also cites Scope’s focus on doing things faster, cheaper and better, something that IBM first did. Says Gaur, “If you focus on ‘faster’ and ‘cheaper’, it doesn’t necessarily become ‘better’. But focus on ‘better’, and the other two benefits would automatically accrue.”

In these trying times, software services companies have let go of more people than they have in the past. For Scope, says Gaur, net headcount has remained ‘flattish’ at about 2,500 people, across the software solutions team.

As told to K Bharat Kumar

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