In a recent blog post I raised research that indicated greater use of technology would yield improved financial results. Commonwealth Bank in Australia has recently announced record profit. Commonwealth Bank and its subsidiary ASB are regular “first users” of technology in the financial services space in both Australia and New Zealand.
As if to highlight that point, a recent interview with Westpac Chairman Lindsay Maxstead mentioned that future profit growth would come from innovation and productivity in the financial services space. Innovation in the financial services sense could be almost anything. One thing it certainly is however is using a digital strategy to lever competitive advantages. Digital strategy provides enormous scale opportunities for any organisation (financial or otherwise).
The extent to which Commonwealth’s record profit and market leading position is directly affected by its use of technology is somewhat hard to objectively judge. Increasingly however, I suspect it will become easier and easier to judge increased revenue and profitability on using digital strategy. Having said that, Commonwealth’s position as a leader in the use of customer focusing technology gives it a competitive and innovative boost. Commonwealth’s productivity cannot be but helped by this position. Anecdotally however the the evidence is hard to refute that innovative use of technology give organisations an edge compared with non users of comparative systems. Increasingly, people are demanding more access via digital channels. This is not likely to change anytime soon.
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