IT-Driven Customer Service or Customer-Driven IT Service: Does IT Matter?

This case deals with a large European financial institution that has built an extensive IT infrastructure to serve its multi channel approach to its customers at the same time as changing into a modern financial supermarket with a large portfolio of almost all financial services. Experience has shown that in this industry, IT does matter. As an example: a few days after take over of a competitor, this competitor's previous owner - 105 small banks - sold Nykredit's products through their 1150 branches. The case can thus be used in a discussion of Nicholas Carr's article "IT Doesn't Matter" (Carr, Nicholas G. (2003). "IT Doesn't Matter." Harward Business Review(May): 41-49). Traditionally mortgage banking would mean either building an extensive branch network backed by central staff functions or joining forces with an existing retail financial institution. However, the Internet made online presence and a call center equipped with the latest CRM tools an inevitable alternative. But this was not viable if the existing IT infrastructure could not be transformed into a modern streamlined multitiered infrastructure accessible from the Internet. The IT infrastructure was - for historical reasons - based on a variety of systems encompassing both systems developed in house, acquired best of suite and best of breed systems. In order to implement a multi-channel customer approach, the financial institution was both engaged in rearranging the old IT systems while building new Internet ready systems. This case is open-ended and does not have a set solution. The business perspective is to discuss alternatives to a financial institution based on branches and especially what this requires in terms of IT support. It is designed to encourage discussion on issues such as physical distribution network versus a strong net presence; the changing role of the IT department, from being supplier of back office systems to delivering the storefront; the challenge of transforming several hundred existing legacy systems to a coherent and multi-layered, Internet-ready IT infrastructure; and modern software development and project management.