IT executives in today’s financial institutions face many business challenges. Banks require a diverse and skilled workforce to assure the stability of complicated legacy systems, to maintain and enhance the performance of dozens if not hundreds of customized applications, to support new product and channel innovation, and to meet the changing needs of users.

Meeting all these demands also requires a significant operating budget. On average, financial institutions spend a higher share of their revenues on IT—up to 9 percent—than other industries do.1 Unfortunately, this investment’s value often isn’t fully realized, as a result of insufficient controls on incoming demand, poor resource coordination, and a lack of performance transparency. While in our experience, many executives have taken steps to drive down the costs of delivering IT services, most haven’t solved these fundamental barriers to productivity breakthroughs. Meanwhile, performance pressures on IT are rising as bank margins remain under pressure as a result of modest global growth and continuing uncertainty in financial markets.