Information Technology as a career discipline requires innate technical knowledge to excel at one’s job, but that may not be enough to succeed and go to the next level. It has long been accepted that the combination of the right software proficiencies and interpersonal abilities ensures promotion year after year. This makes soft skills equally essential for growth, especially in the upper echelons of the hierarchy. Skill bundling which essentially brings to light the need to ensure everyone has competency in more than one skill is a critical evaluation hiring parameter today. Thanks to the pandemic, the game has undergone an upgrade, becoming a little more complicated considering the nature of how we work has changed beyond belief.

Restructuring the job market

The events of 2020 forced us to reimagine the working culture and had swift and lasting effects on our workplaces. An abrupt shift to remote working became prevalent across numerous industries, resulting in changes in how we function as individuals and as teams. Employees found themselves adapting and bringing social capabilities like flexibility, and collaboration to the forefront.

Analytical and creative thinking, out-of-the-box ideas, design and consumer-centric mindset, business acumen, and agility are some of the marks on the measuring scale one must pass in a professional setting. Incidentally, these are also set to be the top 10 focus areas of those in employment in contrast to the more technical skills which were in-focus in 2019 according to the World Economic Forum’s 2020 report on Future of Jobs.

So, how do you ensure that you are in tandem with what talent acquisition personnel are seeking and be a part of a thriving IT firm?

Here are 10 soft skills now called the ‘Power Skills’ that will help you bag your dream job and move up the corporate ladder.

• Adaptability – Being malleable is a crucial component for career growth as the age old saying goes ‘It is better to bend than break’. Being open to learning new things, taking on new tasks, and making modifications to suit workplace transitions will go a long way. The pandemic brought to light the severe uncertainty with which businesses operate. Therefore, agility and adaptability are a highly regarded soft skill in practically all organisations, especially today. So much so that it dictates work patterns through the Agile 2.0 model adopted by most IT organisations.
• Collaboration – With Agile mode of functioning and remote access to teammates, collaboration has become even more necessary for IT professionals to fulfil a business task. To be a future leader, one must be able to work with everyone, despite differing perspectives. Special preference is also given to individuals if they carry the right attitude in dealing with ambiguity and supporting the entire team to focus on a common goal.Since firms have adopted WFH in the pandemic, a highly collaborative working between the development, testing, DevOps, and business teams makes success a shared goal. Increased interactions beyond work also make it easier to band together in times of crises, which in turn ensures high yield.
• The X Factor of Creativity – Given the highly demanding world we live in today, IT professionals are required to look ahead, anticipate challenges, and develop solutions for the future. This kind of foresight needs a lot of imagination and creativity. A popular myth is that some people are inherently creative, and some aren’t. While it is true that some people may have a naturally artistic bent of mind, creativity can be acquired through exercising different ways of thinking. Akin to any other talent, it requires consistent hard work and practice. To expand your creativity spectrum, it is advisable to hone your hobbies beyond the scope of technical requirements to broaden your capability of being ingenuitive.
• Risk Taking appetite and resourcefulness – IT professionals need to have an appetite for risk taking. IT employers prefer risk taking and a mind-set for building their future leaders. Being resourceful in IT on the face value may seem like you must know how to discover technology, software, and new products that enhance your productivity at work, but it is clearly more than that. IT personnel who are willing to stay ahead and informed through various subscriptions and competitions (such as ethical hacking), can prove to be an asset to the organisation. Getting monotonous and redundant will hinder your growth, hence keep an eye for new learning and strive to stay abreast on acquiring new knowledge.
• Emotional intelligence / quotient – EI / EQ is a critical soft skill for leadership and is becoming most sought after in hiring across industries. It is essential in developing high-performing teams, especially with today’s focus on company culture and teamwork. We are wary of the traumatic impact of Covid on our lives, thus highlighting the need for emotional intelligence and empathy towards each other. In a WFH setting, you certainly need to practice emotional intelligence to ensure effective teamwork.
• Communication – Today, nearly every IT role requires communication skills. With the high number of emails, proposals, and design documents that an IT professional sends out, clear communication is crucial. With the quantum of work and responsibilities, ineffective and incoherent communication is bound to have a negative impact on your projects. Today, communication is beyond face to face, thus mastering effective communication regardless of the medium is now more important than ever. With tools like Skype, Slack, Flock in addition to internal platforms, have aided IT professionals to map workflow and daily tasks with their teams effortlessly.
• Analytical abilities – An IT professional is essentially a problem solver. The knack of being able to anticipate challenges/issues before they occur and feel motivated to learn about different technologies becomes crucial to be able to survive in a competitive environment. In the IT industry, you are not only expected to be able to detect and fix technological problems using analytical skills, but also problems that may arise in your team. As an IT professional, being data-minded helps in finding actionable solutions and identifying insights.
• Curiosity – IT professionals who exhibit an inquisitive streak have a distinct advantage as they come across as eager learners and have an insatiable yearning for knowledge. Curiosity about the inner workings of technologies as well as people, will get you a long way in your career and life. Reading research papers, solving assessments, and seeking answers will not just broaden your perspective but also contribute to your holistic growth.
• Perseverance – Giving up on the task at hand at the first sign of conflict, doesn’t bode well in any situation, especially in your workplace. As technology is ever evolving, there is a new challenge on the horizon every day, and perseverance is a must-have skill for keeping up with the pace of the dynamic industry.
• Presentation Skills – With information at hand, it is equally important to know how to put it across to your team. As an IT professional, you will be required to present your ideas and projects comprehensively. To convey your thoughts in a cohesive manner, being comfortable with your team should be of paramount importance. It is possible to acquire that confidence by simple public speaking exercises and narrowing down your points to a crystal clarity.

Like famous author Daniel Goleman once said, ‘ ’In a high-IQ job pool, soft skills like discipline, drive and empathy mark those who emerge as outstanding’’. Thus, as the definition of modern workplaces is constantly changing, merely acquainting, and learning the technical aspects of your IT job is not enough. Identifying and honing soft skills too will increase your productivity, build lifetime professional relationships, and help you thrive at your job. These 10 critical soft skills can accelerate your next IT career.

Originally published on TimesJobs

Today, more than ever, people value the ability to transact and carry out tasks from the comfort of their homes or on the move otherwise referred to as ‘anytime anywhere’ banking. Corporate banking is in the cusp of revolutionizing its identity with significant layers of digital transformation.

This blog reflects existing roadblocks of digital transformation in corporate banking, the focus areas and the limitless benefits associated.

Existing roadblocks in digital transformation for Corporate Banking

The pace of digital transformation in corporate banking is slower in comparison to retail banking. Many existing dilemmas reside within this segment which causes a hindrance towards effective digital transformation.

• Monitoring and management: Portfolios and positions in corporate banking need consistent monitoring and management, which might be challenging to do digitally. Corporate bank customers go beyond looking for banks that provide financial services; they often want partners to help them manage their businesses properly.
• More at Stake: The relationships in corporate banking require more commitment from the customer and bank, which can be challenging to achieve. Since the stakes are higher, the risks also increase their reluctance to foray into digital transformation in corporate banking.
• Complex to Implement: Retail processes are more straightforward and more linear to understand, making it easier to adopt digital transformation processes without a hassle. The services in retail banking are also very productized, making them easy to navigate. On the other hand, corporate banking might mean that a large corporation has many accounts across geographies, currencies, and banks, complicating it.
• Corporate banking is relationship-driven: As opposed to retail banking, corporate banking is developed by relationships that might have taken several years to build in some cases. Many of these relationships were from in-person meetings and interactions using paper documents. It has been challenging carrying over and using digital transformation in corporate banking for these relationships.

The four ways of digital transformation in corporate banking

While there are existing roadblocks in digital transformation, corporate banks can still manage to transform digitally which can yield them accelerate business growth. We have listed for ways

Predictive insights through Big data and Analytics for improving sales pipeline

Banks have access to a lot more information than other companies in other industries. They collect data through onboarding, account openings, and the several transactions carried out. Meaningful insights can be drawn out from such data for boosting sales and marketing effectiveness. For example, Big-data and analytics can play a significant role in personalizing customer engagements. This means, banks can recommend appropriate products suitable for a particular customer. Similarly, service improvements can be initiated using sentiment analytics.

Digitize commercial routines to improve front-office efficiency and effectiveness

In corporate banking, relationship managers usually spend lower than 30% of their time in client-facing activities. Banks have tried using many front-office initiatives to no avail; the introduction of digital transformation in corporate banking can help solve this problem better. Process digitization can give the relationship managers more free hand to have more time to interface with clients and even use some digital channels for further communication.

Many front-office software solutions allow these relationship managers to organize their activities and complete administrative tasks quicker. This way, they can meet up with colleagues and prepare themselves for client interactions based on their profiles.

Enhance connectivity with clients and cost-to-sere by using true multichannel banking

Corporate banking models only consider relationship managers as the only vital sales channel and often neglect multi-channel support. This goes back to the relationship-driven nature of corporate banking and the management method. Banks can use digital transformation in corporate banking to use multi-channel banking methods. Some others have started experimenting with more unique coverage models and multi-channel offers for corporate entities.

Digital technologies allow some customers to engage with the bank and perform some activities online, such as capturing information which could even be through mobile devices. Only the complex questions are routed to the relationship manager. These multi-channel methods also allow the banks to reduce their costs to serve customer segments that do not generate as much revenue and justify costs in the relationship manager model.

Automating processes from beginning to end through quick process digitization

End-to-end processes are formulated to reduce complexity and make a customer’s journey faster, smoother and stress-free. Digital transformation in corporate banking regarding the client onboarding process can reduce the time taken from about two weeks to less than 48 hours. Apart from faster processing of procedures, there is also a considerable decrease in error and cost reduction.

Many banks have employed automation and lean methodology processes such as continuous improvement and reducing waste to foster better end-to-end processes. This way, banks can implement digitization technologies through short stints compared to multi-year or multi-month projects, which take too long for results to show. By using digital transformation processes, you can start seeing significant results in weeks.

Top focus points of digital transformation in Corporate Banking

While developing tools for digital transformation in corporate banking, consider these areas as it is one of the most important to customers:

• Risk management: Consider intuitive tools to help customers keep track of the constantly changing risks in credit, interest rates, operations, regulatory compliance, currency, and information security.
• Liquidity management: Develop methods by which customers can easily manage funds for financing, investment, and operations.
• Cash management: Look at easy-to-use solutions that make buying, lending, collections, letters of credit, payments, information reporting, investing, and foreign exchange easier.
• Data management: Develop tools that foster partnerships and collaboration with creditors, technology service providers, chief financial officer, investors, and banks.

What can digitization offer to Corporate Banks?

• Competition Edge: New technologies will continuously develop, which will lead to an increase in specialized skills. Digitization isn’t a one-and-done process. It ensures you are ready for the next technology wave, and you can position yourself to cater to customers and offer new solutions. Allowing employees to develop these skills will sustain the bank’s growth and keep you ahead of competitors.
• Time to market: Digital transformation in corporate banking gives far less time for the banks to release products to the public. Because of the continuous integration and continuous deployment processes, banks can reduce their testing time and release products to their customers quicker.
• Customer Experience: Today, people are looking for services that make their lives easier more than ever. Digital methods focus on providing the best customer experience to stay competitive. Companies that focus on the customer’s journey increased speed and agility in insights, customer adoption of digital customers, and agility in transformations will be the authority.
• Process Simplification: Digital transformation methods have shortened the steps and processes for businesses to connect with their clients. Technology has made it easier for people to connect and banks leveraging that advantage for their digitization brings their workforce and whole architecture together.
• Cost Savings: From managing physical documents to scheduling and making it for in-person meetings, digital transformation in corporate banking considerably cuts down your costs.

How can Maveric help in digital transformation for Corporate Banking?

Maveric is a solution-led banking transformation provider for retail banking, corporate banking and wealth management. As an award winning transformation partner for many leading corporate banks, we can bring our contextual solutions, frameworks and proven accelerators to plan and execute your digital transformation goals. Our extensive banking domain coverage, contextual solutions, insights-led engagement and high velocity execution has enabled us to be a partner of choice for digital transformation.

Conclusion

Digital transformation is an unavoidable topic in corporate banking. Agility and flexibility of banks to respond faster to their customers will be the key to success. Furthermore, superior customer experience with insights led ecosystem will be the ultimate goal through exponential digital transformation.

COVID-19 has deeply stirred and shaken up the roots of everything that we knew once, throwing businesses, the people, and their innate beliefs in a chaotic state of what we are calling the ‘new normal’. A far cry from the normal that existed before, the new world order brings with it a plethora of challenges for businesses to operate in the already intensively competitive market.

The most critical implication of the new normal comes for the HR managers and the leaders of the company, desperately calling for a rapid and effective transformation in talent management and leadership strategies.

What will be the fate of the remote working scenario? How crucial is the role of AI and bots for effective workforce planning? How can the HR managers devise and implement better policies in the new normal?

Along with addressing many of such concerns, this blog will also highlight the key considerations for the HR team to undertake while developing post-COVID talent management strategies.

Taking the big decisions

Number 1: Continue work from home or return to the office?

“41% of employees are likely to work remotely at least some of the time post the pandemic.”

Gartner’s HR survey has clearly depicted that most organizations, especially the larger ones are likely to continue the work from home (WFH) model.

The pandemic led to an overnight shift from office working environment to remote working, leading the companies to discover the new way of managing work that they never knew could function so well. A Deloitte study showcased that 85% of the leaders said, “agility of their workforce to cope and adapt to the new ways of working is the one thing that surprised them the most.”

So, is it wise to return to office when people have become used to operating from the comforts of their homes?

HR teams will have to carefully base their decision of resuming office or continuing WFH on factors like the type, scale, and size of the business operations, the level of cloud adoption, the employee resilience, and their zest to reskill and upskill, etc.

Apart from this, employee productivity and data security will be the driving variables to arrive at the most favorable solution.

Number 2: Permanent or contractual gig workers?

Pandemic has led the HR departments to take some stern decisions regarding the size of their workforce, forcing them to cut jobs and roles to minimize the operational costs and stay afloat amid the tough times.

In the times when every company is looking to fetch maximum output in minimum costs and is mostly operating in a remote environment, contract-based jobs have seen a tremendous boom, instilling back the organizations’ confidence in outsourcing.

Moving forward, the HR teams will now need to develop a more planned and structured strategy, defining the job roles, their criticality, the spot in the job hierarchy, and other such aspects to gain a clear understanding of the jobs that require permanent, loyal workforce and those that can be easily outsourced.

Prerequisites to developing a future-proof, flexible strategy

Before the leaders and the HR and talent managers begin to realign their strategy to fit the new normal, they need to unlearn a few beliefs that worked in the pre-COVID era but are kind of obsolete now and start embracing the new ones.

Below we discuss a few things that the leaders will need to consider before they build a refreshed talent management strategy for the better times ahead:

• Identifying potential areas that can be improved using a new approach, new technology, or automation.
• Analyzing the company’s position in the digitalization journey and its effectiveness in adopting the same.
• Assessing the type of talent needed across all functions and departments to add value, both internally and externally.
• Focusing on building a more flexible, agile talent management model that is adaptable and resilient to any unforeseen circumstances.
• Rebooting the work scope, work description, performance rewards and management, hiring practices, etc.
• Striving to build more empathetic and productive work environments for employees to attain their organizational, career, and personal objectives better.

Three Critical Areas to Focus

Talent management in the new normal will be significantly shaped by the decisions and transformations that take place in three areas – automation, reskilling and upskilling, and navigating remote work in the light of security and autonomous operations.

Let us discuss each one of them in detail:

Automation

Any and all things within the organization that is repetitive and requires a step-based approach should be done by AI tools and bots. Automation will play a key role in talent management strategies, allowing the managers to make better decisions based on the organization’s capacity and willingness to adopt AI technologies. AI can also prove to be a blessing for companies with complex yet repetitive functions requiring huge manpower as they can drastically reduce operational costs with the right bots and automated tools in place

Reskilling and upskilling

As digital transformation, moving to cloud systems and adopting more advanced IT technologies to function become a necessity rather than a choice, individuals and managers need to continuously and rigorously undertake upskill training of self and team to make themselves more efficient and productive with the new, hyper-digital working environments. Reskilling the existing talent will be equally necessary for fungible skills and for more cognitive-based job roles as AI takes over the mundane jobs.

In short, the talent managers will need to imbibe the culture of continuous learning across everyone in the team in order to help them stay relevant and climb up the ladder in a more meaningful and fulfilling manner.

Navigating remote work environment

If the organization is sticking to the WFH model for the time being, the HR managers will need to build better policies and strategies to make remote working more productive, resilient, secured, and autonomous for better outcomes. They will need to strike a balance between being empathetic to the employees’ challenges of working from home and driving them to be equally productive like in the office. Another major focus of the managers should be to inculcate a sense of responsibility along with authority and flexibility to become efficient decision-makers, helping the leaders to shift to more autonomous modes of operations.

The Road Ahead

Preparing for the future, the organizations and the talent managers need to brace themselves for new challenges along the way. Talent management in the coming time will require managers to rethink their normal work ways and nurture more personalized, meaningful ways of retaining the top talent while simultaneously embracing the power of AI as well as contractual gig workers.

Maveric have re-designed the Talent Management function to nurture young talents, enrich individual’s technical and functional skills and to meet future skill demands. We call it as hire and nurture program, where we recruit and groom fresh talent and provide them with rigorous training on business fundamentals, functional and technical competencies apart from soft skills. Post which, we put them in pseudo projects and closely monitor their performance and problem solving skills before we deploy them in live client projects.

As part of our 2025 growth mission, we are looking to hire across our multiple operating geographies. Our India based offices would account for the maximum new hiring, these include our regular office locations in Chennai and Bengaluru, along with Pune as our next destination. Most of these hiring have already started across our various businesses such as data, digital, core banking (Temenos) and quality engineering. You can be a part of our family and #acceleratenext your career with us.

When it comes to Indian tradition, culture and ancient historical events, you cannot miss the beautiful city of Pune. Once called Poona, the city has witnessed the birth of greatest Maratha empires who played a significant role in India’s freedom. It is more or less the cultural capital of Maharashtra in a way. When it comes to modern-day-living, the city offers all that you need.

At Maveric Systems, we are in full bloom in Chennai and Bengaluru. We are coming to sow our seeds in this city with plenteous talent – Pune!

If you are striving for Banking Domain Excellence, Maveric is the right choice

With 2 decades of banking domain experience and 1800+ specialists, Maveric is now looking to expand its footprint in Pune with talented individuals who could be part of our future growth journey. Our banking customer stories on their transformation journeys have been phenomenal over the years. Whether it is retail banking, corporate banking, cards, wealth management, and more, we have produced result-driven outcomes using our tech and domain-led competencies. These include Data Tech, Digital experience engineering, Core banking, and Quality Engineering.

So what are you waiting for? Come join our team and build the future of digital banking with us!

Current Open Opportunity for the Quality Engineering team:

• Java Selenium Automation Experts
• Required Experience – 4 to 10 years
• Job Responsibilities
  • Strong hands-on experience in API Test Automation
  • Experience in BDD/TDD process
  • Strong experience in Automation, Java and Selenium
  • Proficient in bug tracking and test management tool-sets (JIRA, SVN, GIT, Jenkins, HP-ALM)

Get in touch with Jayalakshmi G for the open opportunities

Email your profile to jayalakshmig@maveric-systems.com and do not forget to mention the relevant job opportunity.

Choose Maveric, as I did

Be a part of world-class Quality Engineering Team for Banking

Maveric’s QE teams lives by with its core promise of continuous quality. This promise is brought alive via Digital-age QE solutions, and cutting-edge test approach that is engineered for speed and geared to bring QE at scale. We foster a culture of “95% QE automation”, through our IQe platform, tools, accelerators, and matured frameworks, which are engineered with cognitive computing and predictive analytics for intelligent automation. Be a part of world-class quality engineering team for Banking.