Listen to episode ten of the ‘Don’t Break The Bank’ podcast and subscribe here, Spotify, Apple or Google Podcasts:
By Matthew O’Neill, Industry Managing Director, Advanced Technology Group, VMware Office of the CTO
Wow, we are now in November and what a year this has been. No matter how you look at it, this year has been “interesting”, to say the least. Just looking at it from the perspective of our Don’t Break the Bank podcast, how we’re all managing in the pandemic has seeped into all of our conversations.
We’re now on our tenth podcast, discussing the issues and challenges IT decision-makers are facing in Financial Services, especially the issues they face trying to keep the lights on whilst freeing up resources from Run The Bank activities to meet their cost challenges and hopefully to reinvest in Change The Bank projects and innovation. When we recorded our first podcast, we obviously had no idea how 2020 was going to pan out. Looking back at those first three, recorded pre-COVID, it seems hard to think that it was less than a year ago.
Even the ones we did in March, as we tried out recording from multiple locations, seem like a decade ago. It seems unbelievable that we have still not yet returned to the office despite seeing colleagues and customers everyday through Zoom. That’s because, as Spencer Pitts points out in our latest session, we’ve gone through various phases – three, to be precise. It’s a subject he discusses in depth in this episode, as he and Guru Venkatachalam, our new Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Asia Pacific, compare how our customers in different regions have adjusted over the last six months.
As well as the three phases, Guru and Spencer talked with us about the impact on employee engagement, and how that could all change, how decision-making processes have radically altered and how established banks need to act in the light of FinTechs potentially gaining ground on them. We found it to be a fascinating conversation and one that my co-host Brian Hayes and I came away with lots to think about, again.
Spencer’s attendance also marks the first time we’ve had a guest back on, having been in our second episode all those lifetimes ago. We expect he’s amending his LinkedIn headline to reflect that ground-breaking status right now.
In all seriousness, we’d love to hear your feedback. Now that we’ve hit double figures, what are the topics you want to hear about? Do you want to learn more from one of our past guests? Would you like to join us in a future episode? We’ve got some exciting topics and speakers lined up.
Next time we hope to be talking with a fascinating and engaging customer we met at an Industry Round Table event. Still, we’re always keen to hear from our listeners, so please do leave a comment or send us a message. In the meantime, take care, and if there’s anything we can do to help, get in touch.
