Going for the middle market

Teody D. Suarez, senior vice president and chief information officer (CIO) of East West Banking Corporation, found some advantage in being a former medical student on his way to pursuing a career in information technology (IT). He said the mental framework required for the IBM training course in programming and systems analysis was similar to that needed for medicine.

"Both courses needed analysis based on logic or reason," Suarez said. His background in medicine, which required quick reading of volumes and volumes of books, also allowed him to easily memorize an entire IT course, normally taken for a year, in just three months.

His involvement in banking began in 1976 when he was invited to join the IT group of Family Savings Bank where he stayed until it was sold to the Bank of the Philippine Islands in the 1980s. He subsequently became CIO of two other banks and a telecom company. Last year, Suarez re-joined the Gotianuns through East West Bank.

Niche player

The commercial bank had just put together a transformation program and a CIO was needed to help set up the kind of organization, systems and processes envisioned by the program. East West Bank wants to be efficient and profitable by providing customer-oriented, integrated and innovative products and services "delivered in a significantly better way to a select group of customers with emphasis on the middle market."

Suarez describes the middle market as small-and medium-sized businesses, single proprietorships or joint ventures that usually do not get satisfactory service from the bigger banks. They may well be among the country’s top 5,000 corporations.

Under the office of the CIO are four divisions – marketing support and services, information technology outsourced to a third party, systems and methods, and quality management – working together to address the bank’s well-defined market.

"My role is to oversee this end-to-end process of product conceptualization and development, including packaging, technical development and implementation, so that our infrastructure will be able to support the new product, producing the delivery operations manual outlining policies and procedures, and then reviewing the quality aspect based on customer or user feedback," Suarez explained.

Repackaging

As a result of his study which determined the gaps in the bank’s products and services vis-à-vis the market needs, East West Bank has begun re-packaging existing products and services and introducing new ones. The bank has also rationalized branding for easier recognition by its target customer segments. Hence, products such as BizCheck (a bundled deposit account and accounts payable system) and Access Banking have become by-words and easy "blockbusters".

To perk up its corporate image, East West Bank is gearing up to reposition aggressively before the end of the year. East West Bank should be expanding its 38-branch network to 46 before the year is over and should be spending close to P1 billion in the next three years to implement its transformation program.

Suarez believes it is a very exciting time for the bank’s stakeholders as they commit to transform East West Bank into an even bigger and friendlier financial institution attuned to the needs of the customers.

Sound advice

His advice to CIO wannabes?

"It’s important to be good technically. Understand the various technology available, keep updated regularly. But also be very, very good with your business. Understand banking, manufacturing, telecom or whatever business your principals are into. Don’t be just a techie. Be a business professional, too. IT has often been identified as a ‘cost’ of operation. The modern CIO can make it revenue-generating. He must strive to understand every element of the IT infrastructure that can be utilized as a product or service, and then make it earn for the business."

Suarez assures his fellow IT professionals that the acronym CIO does not mean "career is over." Instead, it means "career improvement opportunity." He says as every organization or corporation is increasingly relying on IT to succeed, the best operations executives or even CEOs may be coming from this field.

"IT simply pervades all components of an organization. For example, if a system is set up to prevent fraud or control risk, who would be the best person to go around a system other than the one who developed it? My sentiment at this stage is that the best auditors used to be accountants. Now, it’s the IT guy. That’s why more and more organizations will want the sharp IT guy to be on their side," he concludes.