AI and Modernisation: Workforce Evolution, Change Champions and Customer Experience

0:07 - Hi, my name is Andrea Deal and I'm with Protiviti.

0:10 - Today I'm sitting with Melissa Desjardins, who's had more than 25 years of experience in financial services supporting companies in their technology modernisation journey.

0:19 - We're here for a history lesson on technology modernisation as an evolution.

0:25 - Melissa, help me talk through the journey that AI has taken kind of more recently.

0:31 - And what I mean by that, you know, I hear firms talk about 70% of the workforce is going to be replaced by AI or 50% of the workforce will be replaced by AI.

0:41 - And truthfully that that strikes fear, that strikes fear in hearing those numbers.

0:48 - Can you talk me through your perspective on, you know, has this happened before in different ways and, and, and how.

0:54 - Yeah, it's a great question.

0:56 - So having worked with many organisations throughout the years on modernisation and advancing technology, what I can tell you is there have been similar moments in time where there has been fear.

1:10 - Will these new technology evolutions take away my job or alter my career path?

1:16 - And what I'll say is I don't think that AI will take away our jobs.

1:20 - I think it will change the jobs that we have or the jobs that are out there.

1:24 - And I'll give an example from my own career.

1:27 - The job that I first had coming out of College in technology consulting 25 plus years ago no longer exists.

1:36 - I was part of a team that was modernising a system, a financial management system for Y2K at the turn of the century.

1:44 - And my job at that time was to help the security administrator of the organisation we were working with and help them to set up the security for the system.

1:54 - It was a very manually intensive process.

1:57 - I sat with thousands of sheets of paper, each piece of paper representing 1 user and showing the requirements for the user in the system.

2:07 - And I had to data enter those requirements into this new financial management system.

2:12 - And as you can imagine, it was very time consuming and very manually intensive.

2:16 - And so that job is no longer in existence because those types of systems aren't set up like that anymore.

2:23 - It's more of a click of a button.

2:25 - So again, I mean, certainly we've had other moments in time where technology has evolved.

2:32 - I don't think it's gotten rid of jobs altogether, but it's changed the types of jobs that we do.

2:38 - I think that the people who are knowledgeable in AI and understand AI will do better with respect to their career advancement versus those who don't understand those tools and technologies.

2:51 - So I understand the fear.

2:52 - I understand the concerns.

2:54 - However, I do think it's it's just going to change the way that we do our work.

2:59 - Yeah.

2:59 - And I think your your example absolutely resonates when I think about the jobs we're talking about replacing with AII think that example that you gave really resonates.

3:11 - You know, when I think about the jobs that are being replaced by AI, it seems to be those that are considered highly manual or highly repetitive.

3:23 - And I do think that there is a a caution around are we going to lose the human element in these roles that we still desire?

3:30 - But what I'm hearing from you is it's less about replacement and it's more finding roles that these individuals, these resources are still adding value in.

3:42 - It's just different than the role that they're in today.

3:45 - But it's not removing that role from the organisation, right?

3:49 - And it's also helping companies and organisations to provide better services to their constituents and to their customers.

3:57 - I think back to one client I worked with that implemented at the time of state-of-the-art data sharing system for detecting fraud.

4:06 - Before they implemented that system, their process for detecting fraud was extremely manual, but for the first time, they were able to share data with other entities to be able to catch fraudulent activity.

4:19 - And that was really groundbreaking and it freed up a lot of time for the individuals that previously were doing this work manually.

4:26 - And they were able to focus on other things that were of priority to that organisation.

4:31 - So I think we're going to see a lot of that as well.

4:33 - And I think it's going to happen at a very fast pace, but it's not all together different from some of the things we've seen in the past.

4:40 - Melissa, can you talk us through what are some strategies that you've seen to modernise technology or just strategies for modernisation that have worked well that we can learn from as we think about the next evolution?

4:54 - Yeah, I actually think there's some fundamentals that are going to continue to apply and they're actually more people focused versus technology focused.

5:03 - One example that I'll bring is I worked with a large global bank that was working on a modernisation project.

5:11 - Their first attempt at that project actually failed because they were were taking a very much a top down approach.

5:18 - It was an IT driven project and really not involving the ecosystem of the organisation and, and they failed with the project for the first time around, but then they tried it again and their second attempt involved a cross disciplinary team where they brought in not just the IT organisation, but others.

5:39 - So you know, it then involved the CFO, the legal department, the compliance department, all these groups working together to communicate the importance of this modernisation project and it did much better.

5:53 - So I often see this with clients that we work with when they bring in different aspects of the organisation to have a voice in the technology modernisation, it's usually more successful.

6:04 - The other thing that I find interesting is this idea of an it's actually an idea champion.

6:09 - And we've used that a lot in modernisation projects through the years.

6:12 - Because in any instance where you're modernising, you're going to have people in the organisation who are going to be resistant.

6:20 - People may have been doing things a certain way for 10:20 however many years and it's hard to change.

6:27 - But what I've seen work well is you find idea champions in the different user groups that are on board that are excited about the technology, excited about the change, excited about the opportunity and the benefits of the organisation.

6:40 - And having those champions really help with the communication to the users, help with the communication around processes and changes.

6:49 - That really does help and I think helps to really achieve the metrics of the modernisation.

6:54 - So again, I mean, I actually think it comes down to people.

6:59 - A lot of projects fail because the people aren't, you know, vested in it.

7:04 - So it's a key point.

7:05 - Yeah.

7:05 - Yeah, I see that in, you know, it brings me back to childhood when you would play this game of telephone, right?

7:11 - And so you'd sit around a table and one person would have the message and then you'd whispered into the next person's ear.

7:16 -They'd hear said message.

7:17 - Then they'd whispered into the next ear.

7:19 - And you'd go all the way around and you'd get to the end and you'd ask, So what was the message?

7:23 - And almost every time when I played as a as a child, it was wrong.

7:27 - It was not at all close to the message that had started.

7:30 - And when you think about these siloed teams that aren't all hearing the same information at the same time, it truly is a literal game of telephone.

7:40 - And so the message can never be the same.

7:42 - It won't ever be exactly the way it was meant at the end because we're not all hearing the same information.

7:49 - And so I can see how in in that successful example you gave, it was because all these teams came together and they were listening to the message at the same time to solve the same problem.

8:00 - Like it sounds so logical when you say it.

8:03 - You really think, I mean, we work so much in silos, but that's not how we can ever be successful.

8:09 - You're right.

8:09 - And it's breaking down those silos that's so important.

8:12 - It's also communicating often and sometimes it's really over communicating, telling the same message in different rooms, but consistently across the organisation that ultimately leads to success for technology projects.

8:25 - So the technologies have changed through the years and you know, we talk about looking back over the past 25 years and, and how many things have evolved.

8:32 - I've worked with clients who implemented their first mobile app or just went online on the Internet for the very first time.

8:40 - And all of these changes were big at the time, taking really manual, paper intensive processes and making them automatic in the click of a button.

8:51 - But the ones that were most successful were the ones where the communication was there, the organisational change management was there.

8:57 - And that's really important.

8:58 - And I think those lessons are still going to be important as we move ahead in the age of AI.

9:03 - Yeah, One thing that I, I can see as a deterrent or a an obstacle is the languages that are spoken in an organisation.

9:13 - And, and what I mean by that, it's less different languages literally or accents, but it's more, you know, the tech team speaks in a tech way, the finance team speaks in ROI and returns.

9:26 - You know, how, how does that play a role in transformation in your mind?

9:31 - That's such a great question.

9:32 - I'm drawing from my own experience.

9:34 - When I first started in the technology consulting world, I did not have a technical background in undergrad.

9:41 - I was a management major with a marketing concentration and I applied for this job in technology consulting and I was hired and I think it was because I brought a different perspective.

9:52 - It was non-technical, but at the time what was important was that I was able to to be a liaison between the technology teams and our clients and be able to bridge that gap.

10:04 - I actually think that skill set will continue to be very important as we're looking at the advancement of technology in the age of AI and innovation.

10:14 - But.

10:14 - I think, yeah, I think it's, maybe it's having a broader skill set, maybe that's something that, you know, people need to be focused on.

10:21 - It's how do you speak the language of the business and translate that to what the technical requirements might be in order to make the most success on these modernisation projects.

10:32 - So, I mean, it's interesting because like I said, looking back and I played a lot of different roles over the course of my career in technology consulting.

10:40 - But fundamentally I, yeah, I, I did not do coding, for example, but I was able to bridge that gap and be that liaison and understand the business speak and then be able to, you know, you do have to understand the technology at a high level enough to be dangerous, I think they say.

10:58 - But really running with that I think has helped me in my career to be able to, to talk to different audiences across an organisation as well as talk to the technologists on our teams.

11:10 - That's helpful and, and hearing you speak about it, I mean, it sounds like there's a certain level of humility and understanding that I don't always have the right words to communicate this the way that you need to understand it.

11:21 - But I recognise that as a team, we have to come together and speak one common language.

11:26 - And I, I feel like that is shifting over time.

11:28 - You know, in, in technology, everyone has technology at their fingertips.

11:32 - And so it does feel like there's a sense of almost everyone feels like they're a technology expert.

11:37 - But then at the same time, as we go through these complex transformations or talk about true modernisation, do we all understand it at the same level?

11:45 - Likely not.

11:46 - But, you know, if we're coming to a trusted room, we know that we're communicating effectively and openly.

11:52 - You know, we can still get to the end target even when we don't speak exactly the same terms or have exactly the same understanding of what everything means.

12:00 - Yeah.

12:00 - Yeah.

12:01 - And appreciating the diversity of all the voices within an organisation.

12:05 - What ideas do different groups bring to the table from various departments within a company?

12:11 - And understanding the voice of the customer is really important to, you know, banks, for example, depending upon the size of the bank or the area focus, they'll have different priorities, but each bank needs to really understand who are the customers that they're serving.

12:26 - I was actually sharing just last night at dinner.

12:28 - In fact, a personal anecdote regarding my mom.

12:32 - She has always been the type of person that like going into the bank in person, doing her her banking, talking to the teller was part of her routine.

12:42 - During the pandemic, the bank that she worked with decided to go primarily all mobile, close a lot of their local branches and she was no longer to do able to do her banking in the way that she wanted to.

12:55 - So after decades of banking with that particular bank, she moved her accounts and went to a different one that was still offering more of that in person touch.

13:04 - So it's an example, you know, I'm sure there's a lot of different examples we could share about, you know, different perspectives, but you know, there may be people out there that are still looking for a bit of a hybrid approach when it comes to mobile banking versus some in person communication.

13:20 - And having that variety depending upon the customers that each bank serves could be an important aspect as well.

13:26 - I want to thank you, Melissa, for this conversation.

13:28 - What I've heard today, this era of change, this era of AI is not something to be cared of because it's brand new, but rather this is an evolutionary change.

13:38 - This is in essence something we have experienced before.

13:41 - It sounds like the important thing is to recognise you know the core of who you are and communicating, not only communicating effectively, but using a common language and coming to the table with humility and trust is extremely important to have the right conversations to move forward.

13:58 - And then always remembering at the end of the day, the customer experience, the customer voice is extremely important.

14:04 - And understanding your North Star, what are you really trying to achieve going forward?

14:09 - So thank you again for the insights.

14:10 - Thank you again for the history lesson.

14:12 - Yes, really appreciate it, Melissa.

14:13 - Absolutely.

14:14 - It's been my pleasure.

14:15 - Thank you so much.