The Future Report Dr Jörg Raaymann - Steria

The Future Report
Leadership Perspectives
Dr Jörg Raaymann
CIO of Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen Girozentrale
With 5,900 employees and a balance sheet total of
€166.5 billion (30.06.2012), the Helaba Group is one
of Germany’s leading ‘Landesbanken’ or regional state
banks. It operates two central offices in Frankfurt am
Main and Erfurt, as well as branches, holdings and a
presence in many of the world’s major financial centres.
Chief Information Officer, Dr Jörg Raaymann, outlines how
key trends highlighted in the Future Report will impact
on two important areas of focus for the Helaba Group:
“Technology is of great interest to us as an integrated universal bank
with a strong regional focus. One internal challenge we currently face is
the reorganisation of our staff. Our main headquarters are in Frankfurt
and Erfurt, with two national locations in Kassel and in Düsseldorf.
Our presence in Düsseldorf is a result of our recent takeover of part of
the Westdeutsche Landesbank. We also have an international presence
in London, New York, Dublin, Madrid, Paris, Shanghai and Moscow.
Our IT staff are placed in Offenbach near Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Kassel,
London, Dublin and New York. As far as our work processes and
workplace design are concerned, technological developments make
a huge difference to us at a time like this.
The second area of significance for me is how trends like demographic
change will impact our employees. Ageing populations, and
other changes to society, will affect what our employees
demand of us. Consequently, we will also have to invest
in the education and development of young
employees as well as the development
of our mature staff to maintain our
capability to meet the needs of
our business departments.”

Technology/Outsourcing
Working in the cloud for a grounded future
“Together with our data-centre provider, we have tried out and
implemented various cloud-based approaches. For example, our
entire SAP architecture is virtualised in a private cloud. This trend
towards virtualisation will continue. We are giving more and more
space to virtualisation technology within our IT infrastructure
and aim to extensively move away from physical servers. In terms
of applications, I can see us increasing our use of ASP models
and we’ll find providers to operate and develop these for us. As
far as commodity applications go, the market is already there
and I predict that business applications will go this way too.
Our aim is to ensure that our IT applications can be quickly
adapted in line with changes in our marketplace – and that we
retain an attractive relationship between cost and benefit.”
Business Models
Collaborative tools for effective teamwork
“The use of collaborative networking tools is an important theme for
us. This provides immense opportunities for efficient and meaningful
collaboration between our decentralised staff teams. At the moment,
we are conducting a study on the use of Sharepoint. We are also
examining the use of unified communications and videoconferencing
from the workplace. These systems will continue to change the
working life of every one of us.
Of course, you have to ask the question, “Does this just look good or
is it actually benefitting the bank?” My response is that collaborative
networking and unified communication will certainly be playing
a major role in the modernisation of our ICT infrastructure.”
Population
Staying ahead of the demographic curve
“At Helaba, the widest part of our demographic pyramid in terms of
IT use is made up of middle-aged staff – the average age in our IT
division being around 44. It is our aim to train young people in our
organisation to achieve a balance between these and our mature
staff. So, we’ve established a scheme for young professionals and
those who show the necessary potential are assisted and educated.
Three years ago, we also introduced skill management in this area
and maintain a catalogue of 40 different roles and 250 types of
skills. Roles are distinguished as primary or secondary, with skills
being defined as ‘those who know it’, ‘those who can do it’ and
‘those who are experts in it’. Each person assesses his or her own
abilities and the outcome is then discussed in their appraisal.
I believe we are sitting on a veritable gold mine with this strategy!
The qualification requirements that can be derived from this will
allow us to attune skillsets to our exact requirements. We have a
catalogue of training modules which are designed to meet future
needs. From this, our staff can select which training activities
they get involved in, depending on their requirements and the
profile of their jobs. This will help our older employees to keep
their knowledge up to date and remain employable. At the same
time we will develop the expertise we need for the future.”