The future of business lies in the hands of those who can harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics—and the time to act is now. Global spending on artificial intelligence (AI), infrastructure, and related IT and business services, will more than double by 2028 when it is expected to reach $632 billion, according to a new forecast from the International Data Corporation.
Simultaneously, the World Economic Forum estimates that by 2025, AI will disrupt over 85 million jobs, while creating 97 million new roles that demand a hybrid of digital and human capabilities. Furthermore, an IMF report concluded that 40% of jobs around the world will be affected by AI. In advanced economies, that number rises to around 60% of jobs.
Companies that can innovate and adapt quickly to this seismic shift will not only survive but thrive in this new landscape.
Such growth and scale of opportunity to implement AI technology has left financial services companies struggling to know which projects to select. For example, shareholders often pressure global banks to focus on cutting costs to drive profit growth, leaving limited resources for both maintaining essential IT systems and exploring AI-driven transformation projects (McKinsey & Company, May 2021). Balancing these competing priorities requires a strategic and agile approach to project selection—where the ability to innovate while remaining agile can be the key determinant of success.
The key focus area for rolling out Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to date has been in Back Office Operations. Examples include implementing RPA to replace repetitive tasks such as data requests from external auditors and correcting formatting and data mistakes in requests for funds transfers.
This means that repetitive manual activities in Operations could be automated in a much shorter time than previously thought possible, as smart bots work with legacy systems to deliver automation benefits quickly.
With so much growth opportunity for AI in banking, it would be easy to jump at the first opportunities that arise and attempt to roll-out the new technology as quickly as possible using standard in-house project management methodologies. However, MIGSO-PCUBED ’s experience working with clients on a full lifecycle approach, from ideation to embedding change, tells us to pause here.
Our approach, which we term ‘Enterprise Agility’, entails a number of methods, tools and templates to enable agility across any organisation by applying agile techniques to support PPM delivery.
We use our ‘Innovation Framework’ within large organisations to support innovation by encouraging entrepreneurial behaviour. Recently, we applied this framework within a major automotive company to help the CEO filter and select high impact initiatives to fund. The initiatives selected received initial funding and then had to quickly demonstrate their value. If those individual initiatives failed to show their value, funding could be easily re-apportioned to a competing idea.
The SELECT and VALIDATE phases of MIGSO-PCUBED ’s Innovation Framework (pictured above) are centred around project design and selection. MIGSO-PCUBED have developed a set of tools and techniques to ensure that the most innovative technologies and approaches are selected for implementation in the areas associated with the highest future revenue and/or cost efficiency potential.
Once project selection has been validated, we move onto the ACCELERATE phase. Here, technology is deployed, integrated and scaled as quickly as possible.
Depending on the scale of the roll-out and the specific needs of each client, the focus for implementation could be on a traditional Agile approach, or Agile at Scale for larger implementations using the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe).
Regardless of which approach is followed, you can expect to see the following key features of a MIGSO-PCUBED Agile approach:
- Project delivery is broken down into small iterations with specific requirements/goals
- Retrospectives at the end of each iteration aid continuous improvement
- Short development cycles allow for fast feedback to deliver viable, iterative products (and thus value) as early possible
- Highest risks managed at project start, with increased opportunity for reducing risk at subsequent stages (contrary to a traditional waterfall approach)
- Flexibility to quickly adapt to changing environments
Many Financial Services clients have a large portfolio of potential RPA projects however due to time constraints and limited capital budgets, leave value on the table while their competitors streak ahead. MIGSO-PCUBED can work with you in selecting, validating and accelerating your project delivery to ensure you stay ahead of the AI curve.
