Technology
Top 5 digital transformation pitfalls

By Richard Farrell, Chief Innovation Officer at Netcall
While 70% of organisations have already piloted automation technologies, many struggle to achieve the full potential of digital transformation, with less than 20% managing to scale across multiple parts of their operations.
Organisations often fall into the same common traps, so we have put together a list of the top pitfalls to avoid based on ours and our customers’ experiences.
Try to avoid these stumbling blocks for a faster, more seamless digital transformation journey.
- Go big or go home mentality
Digital transformation is upending business and operational models. Facing this new reality, some leaders are trying to get ahead and dive full force into digitisation. This can lead to starting with overly complicated projects or prematurely implementing an automation across operations. Instead, organisations should start simple, then use that project as a case study for the rest of the organisation.
Kate Hurr, Senior Manager Digital and Customer Experience for Cumbria Country Council, said, “You just have to start somewhere and deliver something – it doesn’t have to be right, it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be something that people can start to use”.
Some make the mistake of starting with a complex project to speed up their ROI and, while they can learn a lot, they can often find themselves encumbered in the sheer complexity of the project. By starting smaller, organisations better facilitate their team’s education on new tools. This newfound knowledge can then be applied to more complicated projects moving forward.
Organisations also tend to falsely assume they need to acquire extensive technical expertise for significant change. However, as Kate from Cumbria Country Council said, “You don’t have to build a development team with the obvious technical people. We built our transformation journey on the back of really good business analysts, with some technical support and oversight”.
Amid talent and skills shortages, organisations can still embark on an effective and personalised digital transformation journey using a Low-code Application Platform. An in-house development team can create software that connects systems and automates processes, that can be further enhanced with RPA and AI to unleash intelligent automation capabilities.
You can start small and build from there. Any organisation that embarks on this journey is going to make mistakes along the way, that is an unavoidable part of the learning process. The key is to learn from those mistakes as you move forward.
- Lack of strategy
A strategy needs to be in place in advance for effective digital transformation. Without one, digitisation will likely lack focus and use resources inefficiently. Long-term goals along with shorter-term plans over a variety of time-scales should always be kept in mind.
Vicky Green, Digital Programme Manager at Ashfield District Council, said that starting without a blueprint led to a lot of confusion and a lack of direction. Having learned the importance of strategy on the digital transformation journey, the Council now works off a blueprint that considers where they want to be in three years and offers structure, purpose, and priorities.
Any strategy should be developed in consort with people across the organisation – especially those who will be using the newly implemented tools – because it is these people that will determine whether a solution is met with failure or success. Their feedback should be considered during planning and for determining what processes to automate.
By including colleagues in the building design process, substantial buy-in is cultivated and applications are tailored to what will most boost productivity and ease workloads.
This up-front work, ahead of any actual development or implementation, makes the eventual roll out of automations much smoother by helping prioritise what to automate first and avoiding the time and cost of reworking ineffective implementations.
It is key that organisations take the time to understand processes before they start automating them. As Anand Patel, Head of Technology & Innovation at Network Rail, said, “Sixty to 70% of the work is done before you start doing any coding whatsoever.”
- Going it alone
Working with a partner or vendor can be an easy and cost-effective way to ensure digital transformation success and accelerate access to markets, talent, capabilities and technologies.
A committed partner with proven expertise and experience can help deliver impactful and tailored outcomes and achieve fast ROIs.
A partner with a robust low-code platform can enable your organisation to adopt a flexible approach that integrates well with your existing infrastructure and allows you to digitise at a pace that works for you. Such a platform can offer a range of advanced technologies like robotic process automation (RPA), artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities, omnichannel communications, etc.
A suite of solutions and innovative partners allow organisations to create the automation roadmap that works best for them, maximising returns, better servicing customers or citizens, boosting productivity and relieving employees of excessive workloads.
- Trying to put an ‘I’ in team
All too often, organisations take too long to realise the importance of bringing your entire team along for your digital transformation journey, from the beginning. Digital transformation is a collective effort, which makes communication across employees and stakeholders essential.
This coordination makes sure everyone is working towards the same goals, avoids repeated mistakes, encourages learning and builds a culture of innovation. It also saves costs by avoiding double work and automation chaos.
Low-code empowers more people from your organisation to participate in the development process. Business users can be trained to be low-code developers, unburdening IT teams and speeding up digital transformation efforts. Communication between teams results in the most effective automation journey. Rather than relegating all development to a siloed IT team, business and IT should share the entire lifecycle.
For Waverley Borough Council, using low-code and partnering with a provider that offered learning resources enabled them to utilise and upskill their existing talent and engage in time-saving collaboration. Linda Frame, the Council’s IT Manager, said that such a platform empowered their staff to use and create what they needed.
By unleashing collaboration across your organisation, under the governance of IT, faster and more effective results are delivered.
- Risk aversion
We learn from our mistakes. The most successful organisations reward and embrace this mindset, realising that experimentation is a requisite for innovation and creativity. One review of teams at Google found that when employees felt they could take risks without shame or criticism for failure, they did better work.
This ethos fosters faster time to value because when workers are not worried about unattainable perfection, they iterate quicker and more often – and repeated iteration is the name of the game when it comes to digital transformation. Find your minimal viable product then start and improve from there.
“Don’t expect to be right the first time, iterate it. Because being right the first time costs you a lot of time. Instead, get feedback and incorporate real-world experience,” said Anand from Network Rail.
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Business
Enhancing cybersecurity in investment firms as new regulations come into force

Source: Finance Derivative
Christian Scott, COO/CISO at Gotham Security, an Abacus Group Company
The alternative investment industry is a prime target for cyber breaches. February’s ransomware attack on global financial software firm ION Group was a warning to the wider sector. Russia-linked LockBit Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) affiliate hackers disrupted trading activities in international markets, with firms forced to fall back on expensive, inefficient, and potentially non-compliant manual reporting methods. Not only do attacks like these put critical business operations under threat, but firms also risk falling foul of regulations if they lack a sufficient incident response plan.
To ensure that firms protect client assets and keep pace with evolving challenges, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has proposed new cybersecurity requirements for registered advisors and funds. Codifying previous guidance into non-negotiable rules, these requirements will cover every aspect of the security lifecycle and the specific processes a firm implements, encompassing written policies and procedures, transparent governance records, and the timely disclosure of all material cybersecurity incidents to regulators and investors. Failure to comply with the rules could carry significant financial, legal, and national security implications.
The proposed SEC rules are expected to come into force in the coming months, following a notice and comment period. However, businesses should not drag their feet in making the necessary adjustments – the SEC has also introduced an extensive lookback period preceding the implementation of the rules, meaning that organisations should already be proving they are meeting these heightened demands.
For investment firms, regulatory developments such as these will help boost cyber resilience and client confidence in the safety of investments. However, with a clear expectation that firms should be well aligned to the requirements already, many will need to proactively step up their security oversight and strengthen their technologies, policies, end-user education, and incident response procedures. So, how can organisations prepare for enforcement and maintain compliance in a shifting regulatory landscape?
Changing demands
In today’s complex, fast-changing, and interconnected business environment, the alternative investment sector must continually take account of its evolving risk profile. Additionally, as more and more organisations shift towards more distributed and flexible ways of working, traditional protection perimeters are dissolving, rendering firms more vulnerable to cyber-attack.
As such, the new SEC rules provide firms with additional instruction around very specific prescriptive requirements. Organisations need to implement and maintain robust written policies and procedures that closely align with ground-level security issues and industry best practices, such as the NIST Cybersecurity framework. Firms must also be ready to gather and present evidence that proves they are following these watertight policies and procedures on a day-to-day basis. With much less room for ambiguity or assumption, the SEC will scrutinise security policies for detail on how a firm is dealing with cyber risks. Documentation must therefore include comprehensive coverage for business continuity planning and incident response.
As cyber risk management comes increasingly under the spotlight, firms need to ensure it is fully incorporated as a ‘business as usual’ process. This involves the continual tracking and categorisation of evolving vulnerabilities – not just from a technology perspective, but also from an administrative and physical standpoint. Regular risk assessments must include real-time threat and vulnerability management to detect, mitigate, and remediate cybersecurity risks.
Another crucial aspect of the new rules is the need to report any ‘material’ cybersecurity incidents to investors and regulators within a 48-hour timeframe – a small window for busy investment firms. Meeting this tight deadline will require firms to quickly pull data from many different sources, as the SEC will demand to know what happened, how the incident was addressed, and its specific impacts. Teams will need to be assembled well in advance, working together seamlessly to record, process, summarise, and report key information in a squeezed timeframe.
Funds and advisors will also need to provide prospective and current investors with updated disclosures on previously disclosed cybersecurity incidents over the past two fiscal years. With security leaders increasingly being held to account over lack of disclosure, failure to report incidents at board level could even be considered an act of fraud.
Keeping pace
Organisations must now take proactive steps to prepare and respond effectively to these upcoming regulatory changes. Cybersecurity policies, incident response, and continuity plans need to be written up and closely aligned with business objectives. These policies and procedures should be backed up with robust evidence that shows organisations are actually following the documentation – firms need to prove it, not just say it. Carefully thought-out policies will also provide the foundation for organisations to evolve their posture as cyber threats escalate and regulatory demands change.
Robust cybersecurity risk assessments and continuous vulnerability management must also be in place. The first stage of mitigating a cyber risk is understanding the threat – and this requires in-depth real-time insights on how the attack surface is changing. Internal and external systems should be regularly scanned, and firms must integrate third-party and vendor risk assessments to identify any potential supply chain weaknesses.
Network and cloud penetration testing is another key tenet of compliance. By imitating how an attacker would exploit a vantage point, organisations can check for any weak spots in their strategy before malicious actors attempt to gain an advantage. Due to the rise of ransomware, phishing, and other sophisticated cyber threats, social engineering testing should be conducted alongside conventional penetration testing to cover every attack vector.
It must also be remembered that security and compliance is the responsibility of every person in the organisation. End-user education is a necessity as regulations evolve, as is multi-layered training exercises. This means bringing in immersive simulations, tabletop exercises and real-world examples of security incidents to inform employees of the potential risks and the role they play in protecting the company.
To successfully navigate the SEC cybersecurity rules – and prepare for future regulatory changes – alternative investment firms must ensure that security is woven into every part of the business. They can do this by establishing robust written policies and adhesion, conducting regular penetration testing and vulnerability scanning, and ensuring the ongoing education and training of employees.
Business
Gearing up for growth amid economic pressure: 10 top tips for maintaining control of IT costs

Source: Finance Derivative
By Dirk Martin, CEO and Founder of Serviceware
Three years on from the pandemic and economic pressure is continuing to mount more than ever. With the ongoing threat of a global recession looming, inflation rising, and supply chain disruption continuing to take its toll, cutting costs and optimizing budgets remains a top priority amongst the c-suite. Amid such turbulence, the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) stand firmly at the business’s helm, not only to steady the ship but to steer it into safer, more profitable waters. These vital roles have truly been pulled into the spotlight in recent years, with new hurdles and challenges being constantly thrown their way. This spring, for example, experts expect British businesses to face an energy-cost cliff edge as the winter support package set out by the government is replaced.
Whilst purse strings are being drawn ever tighter to overcome these obstacles, there is no denying that the digitalization and innovation spurred on by the pandemic are still gaining momentum. In fact, according to Gartner, four out of five CEOs are increasing digital technology investments to counter current economic pressures. Investing in a digital future, driven by technologies such as the Cloud, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blockchains and the Internet of Things (IoT), however, comes at a cost and to be able to do so – funds must be released through effective optimization of existing assets.
With that in mind, and with the deluge of cost and vendor data descending on businesses who adopt these technologies, never has it been more important for CIOs and CFOs to have a complete, detailed and transparent view of all IT costs. In doing so, business leaders can not only identify the right investment areas but increase the performance of existing systems and technology to tackle the impact of spiralling running costs.
Follow the below 10 steps to gain a comprehensive, detailed and transparent overview of all IT costs to boost business performance and enable your IT to reach the next level.
1: Develop an extensive IT service and product catalogue
The development of an IT service and product catalogue is the most effective way to kick-start your cost-optimization journey. This catalogue should act as a precise overview of all individual IT services and what they entail to directly link IT service costs to IT service performance and value. By offering a clear set of standards as to what services are available and comprised of, consumers can gain an understanding of the costs and values of the IT services they deploy.
2: Monitor IT costs closely
By mastering the value chain, a concept that aims to visualise the flow of IT costs from its most basic singular units through to realised business units and capabilities, businesses can keep track of where IT costs stem from. With the help of service catalogues, benchmarks, the use of a cost model focussing on digital value in IT Financial Management (ITFM) or what is often referred to as Technology Business Management (TBM) solutions, comprehensive access to this data can be guaranteed, creating a ‘cost-to-service flow’ that identifies and controls the availability of IT costs.
3: Determine IT budget management
Knowledge of IT cost allocation is a vital factor when making informed spending decisions and adjustments to existing budgets. There are, however, different approaches that can be taken to this including – centralized, decentralized and iterative. A centralized approach means that the budget is determined in advance and distributed to operating cost centres and projects in a top-down process, allowing for easy, tight budget allocation. A decentralized approach reverses this process – operating costs are precisely calculated before budgeting and projects are determined. Both approaches come with their own risks, for centralized overlooking projects that offer potential growth opportunities and for decentralized budget demands that might exceed available resources.
The iterative approach tries to unify both methods. Although the most lucrative approach, it also requires the most resources. So, the chosen approach is very much dependent on the available resources, and the enterprise’s structural organization.
4: Defining ‘run’ vs ‘grow’ costs
Before IT budget can be allocated, costs should be split into two distinct categories: running costs (i.e. operating costs) and costs for growing the business (i.e. products or services used to transform or grow the business). Once these categories have been defined, decisions should be made on how the budget should be split between them. A 70% run/30% grow split is fairly typical across most enterprises, but there is no one-size-fits-all approach, and this decision should be centred around the businesses’ overall strategies and end goals.
5: Ensuring investments result in a profit
By carrying out the aforementioned steps, complete transparency can be achieved over which products and services are offered, where IT costs stem from, and where budgets are allocated. From here, organizations can review how much of the IT budget is being used and where costs lead to profits and losses. By maintaining a positive profit margin, the controlling processes can be further optimized. If the profit margin is negative, appropriate, or timely, corrective measures can be initiated.
6: Staying on top of regulation
For a company that operates internationally (E.g. it markets IT products and services abroad), it is extremely important that it stays on top of country-specific compliance and adheres to varying international tax rules. To do so correctly it is necessary to provide correct transfer price documentation. This requires three factors:
- Transparent analysis and calculation of IT services based on the value chain
- Evaluation of the services used and the associated billing processes
- Access to the management of service contracts between providers and consumers as the legal basis for IT services.
7: Stay competitive
Closely linked to the profit mentioned in step five is the question of how to price IT services in order to stay competitive whilst avoiding losses. This begins with benchmark data which can be researched or determined using existing ITFM solutions that can automatically extract them from different – interconnected – databases. From there, a unit cost calculation can be used to define exactly and effectively what individual IT services – and their preliminary products – cost. This allows organizations to easily compare internal unit cost calculations with the benchmarks and competitor prices, before making pricing decisions.
8: Identify and maintain key cost drivers
Another aspect of IT cost control that is streamlined via the comprehensive assessment of the cost-to-service flow is the identification and management of main IT cost drivers. A properly modelled value chain makes it clear which IT services or associated preliminary products and cost centres incur the greatest costs and why. This analysis allows for concise adjustment to expenditure and helps to avoid misunderstandings about cost drivers. Using this as a basis, strategies can be developed to reduce IT costs effectively and determine a better use of expensive resources.
9: Showback/Chargeback IT costs
By controlling IT costs using the value chain, efficient usage-based billing and invoicing of IT services and products can be achieved. If IT costs are visualized transparently, they can easily be assigned to IT customers, therefore increasing the clarity of the billing process, and providing opportunities to analyze the value of IT in more detail. When informing managers and users about their consumption there are two options: either through the ‘showback’ process – highlighting the costs generated and how they are incurred – or through the ‘chargeback’ process, in which costs incurred are sent directly to customers and subcontractors.
10: Analyse supply vs. demand
By following the processes above, transparency regarding IT cost control is further extended and discussions around the value of IT services are made possible across the organization. A more holistic analysis of IT service consumption allows conclusions to be drawn promptly to enable the optimization of supply and demand for IT services in various business areas. This, in turn, will enable a more comprehensive value analysis and optimization of IT service utilization.
Following these 10 cost management steps, a secure, transparent, and sustainable IT cost control environment can be developed, resulting in fully optimized budgets and in turn – significant cost savings. Cost-cutting aside, automating the financial management process in such an environment can boost productivity substantially freeing up time to focus on valuable work, thus leading to overall business growth.
The business and economic landscape is full of uncertainty right now, but business leaders can regain control via cost management, not only to weather current storms but to set themselves up for success beyond today’s turbulence.
Business
Mortgage digitalization: How mortgage lenders are automating the lending process

Source: Finance Derivative
By Fernando Zandona, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Mambu
The mortgage market has a long history, but its future is digital. As tech capabilities grow and consumer expectations evolve, mortgage providers are increasingly turning to digital solutions to attract and retain customers and streamline the lending process. According to research from the 2022 Celent Origination Study, over half of banks and 75% of building societies expect to make significant changes to their mortgage origination systems within 24 months. So, how is the mortgage industry transforming and what must lenders do to future-proof their business?
The acceleration of digitalisation in mortgage lending
There are several factors that have accelerated the digitalisation of mortgage lending. One is changes to consumer behaviour: customers have come to expect smooth digital experiences across all areas of their life (accelerated by the pandemic). As such, they seek similar ease, speed and efficiency when it comes to home buying.
Then there’s the arrival of fintechs. Newer fintechs are beginning to enter the mortgage sector – often through acquisitions, such as Starling Bank’s acquisition of Fleet Mortgage or Zoopla acquiring YourKeys. They are also bringing with them innovative digital solutions, which raise the bar for the whole industry. At the same time, regulatory changes are helping accelerate and facilitate digitalisation, such as the Bank of England’s decision to withdraw its affordability test recommendation and cut some of the red tape around mortgage lending, and HM Land Registry’s acceptance of electronic signatures. The combination of these forces have played a significant role in accelerating the lending process and making it more efficient.
Today’s financial institutions are offering a wide range of digital options, through online and mobile platforms, to their mortgage customers. Services include easier ways for customers to access and manage their mortgages, schedule a session with a mortgage advisor, find personalised recommendations, and access improved security measures to protect sensitive customer information.
That’s not to mention the embrace of open banking has enabled seamless integration of customer data into the lending process. This innovation is helping reduce the number of steps needed to collect data and resulting in faster processing times, less rekeying of information and lower origination costs. Offering faster, cheaper loan decisions is a crucial advantage in an increasingly-crowded mortgage market and automated processes reduce teams’ manual work and eliminate costly human errors.
Digitalising in the right way
The success of these new products and processes relies on the way mortgage lenders introduce and configure them. Agility is key – lenders need to prioritise configurability and scalability when building new products and choosing technology partners, as they must be able to quickly launch new features or make adjustments, in line with evolving customer expectations, emerging trends and changing industry regulations. The use of software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms and application programming interface (API) integrations helps with this, allowing for faster feature launches and less internal friction.
APIs are just part of future-proofing the mortgage market. According to Forbes, 55% of senior executives in the US mortgage industry think that AI will make their firm, and the industry overall, more competitive. AI and machine learning can assist lenders in analysing data more quickly, leading to more efficient decision-making and forecasting, although as with all AI applications, providers must be vigilant about encoded bias that can radically increase discrimination.
The mortgage landscape is transforming through digitalisation, and this is bound to continue. Lenders who want to keep up the pace with this change – and reap the benefits of faster, smoother processes as well as keep satisfied, loyal customers – will be future-proofing their processes through lending automation and putting customer ease at the centre of their offering.

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