This blog is based on a recent interview with Dianne, Lapierre, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Raymond James Ltd
Information technology (IT) innovation in an enterprise involves using technology in new ways to create a more efficient organization and improve alignment between technology initiatives and business goals. Challenges and approaches differ widely between the public and private sectors, and even within different verticals of the private sector – finance for example, with its high degree of regulation is very different from manufacturing.
Dianne Lapierre, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Raymond James Ltd, shared some thoughts on innovation in a highly regulated environment. “There’s a lot of bureaucracy, a lot of governance, a very strong attention to detail and the concept of failing and failing fast is not one that’s very comfortable. It’s like “Do it right the first time and make sure everything is perfect.”
Innovation in this type of company has to fit within the framework of a very conservative interpretation of regulation of things like data sovereignty. Hence a lot of the opportunities for being more cloud centric or taking advantage of other opportunities aren’t available in this context.
The financial sector relies on relationships. Historically, financial advisors have been concerned about allowing technology to get between them and their clients. This perspective is changing now, and there is a new pent-up demand to leverage what technology can provide. Finding the balance between the conservative history and the innovative present will be the challenge for IT leaders in the very near future.