Cloud workforce implications for financial services organizations has been saved
Perspectives
Cloud workforce implications for financial services organizations
An integrated workforce is critical to the cloud adoption journey
Cloud adoption is no longer just a business priority, but a business imperative. While many top-performing financial services organizations are at the edge of this digital disruption, fully integrating talent into a workforce that can deliver on the full promise of cloud remains a challenge.
Explore content
- Cloud-enabled workforce: A business imperative
- Cloud-able ≠ cloud-enabled
- Enabling your workforce for the cloud
- Legacy workforce strengths can accelerate your cloud journey
- Getting started
Cloud-enabled workforce: A business imperative
Gaining momentum in the past five years—and accelerated by the seismic disruption to work, workforce, and workplace caused by the COVID-19 pandemic—cloud adoption is shifting from a business priority to a business imperative.1
And, although the market performance drivers in the financial services industry have remained consistent, top-performing organizations are increasingly at the edge of this digital disruption across the business landscape. Building a cloud-ready workforce in this new world of work is a talent imperative.
However, in the urgency and excitement generated by ramp-ups in investments and in new cloud infrastructure and services, even leading organizations are constrained by a limited ability to acquire, upgrade, and/or integrate talent into a workforce that can deliver on the full promise (and full ROI) of cloud adoption.
Is your team ready for the cloud?
A perspective on cloud workforce implications for financial services organizations
Download the PDFCloud-able ≠ cloud-enabled
What to modernize, when, and how are all fundamental questions in an organization’s cloud journey, and executing a strategy that gets these questions “right” has never been more complex.
What many organizations discover in their journey, even with expert planning of their tech stack, is that their cloud adoption is constrained by a lack of strategic planning for cloud’s new demands on talent and the workforce. Talent obstacles are abundant, even at the most technically sophisticated financial services organizations. These obstacles can include lack of technical know-how, poorly defined roles and responsibilities, limited coordination between business units, and failure to retain cloud-ready talent due to cultural practices and outdated ways of working.
Talent obstacles are abundant, even at the most technically sophisticated financial services organizations. These obstacles can include lack of technical know-how, poorly defined roles and responsibilities, limited coordination between business units, and failure to retain cloud-ready talent due to cultural practices and outdated ways of working.
However, realizing full cloud ROI is nearly impossible without a workforce that knows how to strategize, operate, and execute in a cloud environment. Today’s workforce, with today’s skills, cannot realize the full value of cloud investments without a strategic plan for developing cloud-ready, cloud-enabled teams enriched with the new skills and ways of working that will power the next generation of technology solutions in financial services.
Enabling your workforce for the cloud
Developing a tech workforce that is ready to adopt, operate, and execute in the cloud, and an enterprise workforce (including business leaders) that is fully aligned to the cloud vision, will generate more ROI from strategic tech investments in cloud infrastructure.
In cloud-native and cloud-mature organizations, the consistent indicators of workforce cloud enablement are represented by six key success pillars.
Legacy workforce strengths can accelerate your cloud journey
Financial services is an industry particularly well-suited to thrive in the cloud. Organizations seeking momentum in their cloud adoption journeys can harness:
Getting started
Developing a cloud-enabled workforce involves six key steps organizations can take to help them recruit and retain the talent they need to help them navigate their cloud journey.
To fully realize the ROI on cloud, make changes collaboratively. While the efforts of a cloud endeavor may be siloed, its impacts are not.
A leading global insurer created a top-down mandate for driving cloud, with each unit assigning cloud adoption goals to business and IT leaders. The goal for driving cloud was not just measured in terms of the number of applications migrated, but also in the reduction in mean time to change for business capabilities, as well as new capabilities delivered—hence driving the true value of cloud in a collaborative manner.
Roles should be redesigned for cloud, and these efforts should be collaborative—an effort between both IT and HR. With greater collaboration comes greater clarity around the workforce needed and the ability to build a tailored workforce plan for talent sourcing.
A global investment management firm composed future role and skill profiles with a cross-business think tank to understand both enterprisewide and business-line-specific needs for future hires.
With the desire for a more innovative and skilled workforce also comes the need for a redesigned learning approach. How can we use the cloud to grow these skills in the workforce?
A national consumer credit and banking company established its own “tech college” to attract, retain, and develop top technical talent, establishing priority disciplines aligned to core business strategy. These disciplines were led by “deans,” who were respected technology business leaders.
In reorganization, it’s essential to ensure that leaders in place understand the power and capability of cloud. Legacy operating models must be reimagined and redesigned to fit the new ways of developing and operating cloud applications and managing cloud usage patterns.
A leading global insurer stood up a "fit-for-purpose" centralized cloud operations team to support individual business units. This team provided certified cloud services, security, and architectural guardrails, while enabling business flexibility. Services ranged from "zero-touch" to "white-glove" depending on needs and skills maturity.
A cloud-based governance pays homage to a traditional governance while being updated to match the innovative speed generated by a cloud system.
Many organizations today are implementing controls and guardrails through patterns and code versus traditional governance methods. The guardrails help drive an accelerated and less onerous governance, with only exceptions requiring manual interventions.
As agile teams continue to become the norm beyond IT, it will be imperative that the enterprise workforce, business leaders, and business partners across the organization be comfortable with new norms and new ways of working. Up-front planning for these changes will mitigate adoption risks and avoid adoption plateaus.
One regional bank developed a video series to introduce the business to agile and “new ways of working.” The video prepared business leaders and teams for increased collaboration and teaming with the IT organization.
Looking forward
In the midst of unprecedented disruption, cloud adoption has soared, and it’s often financial services organizations that are leading the way. Cloud’s ability to accelerate the drivers of financial performance is one reason why. However, without the right talent model in place, financial services organizations can flounder on their cloud journey.
Organizations that succeed will leverage their existing strengths, to be sure. They will also realign and reimagine operating models and leadership. Most importantly, though, they will reimagine and reinvent their enterprise talent model to help them take full advantage of the cloud’s transformational promise.
End note
1 Deloitte Insights, "The future of cloud-enabled work infrastructure: Making virtual business infrastructure work," September 23, 2020
Get in touch
Josh Haims
Principal | Human Capital, Deloitte Academies Portfolio Leader
Recommendations
Regional banking technology and cloud adoption
As banking goes digital, regional banks look to keep up
Deloitte Cloud Workforce and Operating Model Services
Transform to enable the full value of your cloud investment
