The benefits of the cloud are well known and clearly understood by most of our clients. They are looking to find operational cost savings while also deferring capital and licence payments.
Now, the ease of realising this dream of a simplified architecture in an outsourced environment varies from client to client. Take a multi-territory, large bank, for example – that’s a complex outfit with a decision-making mechanism to match.
For Experian, as the service provider, working with the biggest of clients on sizeable projects also provides its challenges. It needs big ambition, bold thinking, and commercial depth, which is rarely implemented.
It’s why we’ve created the Strategic Client Group, so we can elevate our commercial thinking and deliver more successful banking projects across EMEA’s many markets. We’re matching up with the demands of central procurement groups at our most significant clients.
The cloud is a particular focus of this new group because large banks worldwide are centralising their technology and platform choices. They want to simplify future changes and become more nimble in developing a strategy around a changing customer environment.
Flexibility is key
Applying new software features and upgrades at speed and scale through the cloud is near the top of every client’s list of wants.
From the conversations the members of our Strategic Client Group are having in the industry, we know our clients want a partner who is shadowing their thinking. “Can you offer Platform-as-a-Service in our key territories?” is a question we often hear and can answer affirmatively and quickly.
But our largest partners expect much more than just a ‘solution’ and an invoice. They expect guidance on how and when to implement and the flexibility that is inevitably required in large scale projects.
Minds are changed, plans are redrawn and – as the last 18 months have taught us all – the environment we operate in can be turned on its head.
Our outlook is not to encourage organisations to rush to the cloud in every country they operate in.
There will be cloud-ready territories now, and then those which need time and flexibility to adapt. Both approaches can be correct and deliver enormous value.