“One thing most what companies do that we are trying to avoid is to allow technology to run a business. We have completely embedded technology,” says Pravir Vohra, General Manager and Chief Technology Officer of ICICI Bank.

While heading technology of the country’s largest private sector bank, Vohra imple-mented a radical new way of managing technology and business for a bank that adopted technology at its core. Instead of the usual single technology team integrated into the business, he created many technology teams for different business aspects to effectively manage and administrate banking operations. “I devised this model after inspecting all technologies that the other banks were built on which failed because such teams worked independently of what they were assigned,” he says.

With the bank running multiple operations across sectors including retail and corporate banking, ATMs, online trading, life and general insurance in India and worldwide, it required the bank to utilize technology that can oversee each of these businesses and network with each other. Naturally, as a technology savvy bank, ICICI entrusted Vohra to create unique software that can propel the bank into mega status in minimal time while remaining customer centric.

“Initially the costs of deploying technology could be expensive but gives a competitive advantage”. There are certain products enabled only with the use of technology while others can be completed manually. Many other banks currently adhere to the ICICI model for extracting maximum benefits for their investments on technology and Vohra is steadfast regarding this. Both provide the bank a competitive advantage. Initially, having technology helps the bank launch newer products and reduces transaction costs along with effective technology use.

Vohra believes that businesses should be used optimally efficient every day. The technology team’s job is to procure the highest available technology as it becomes more competent. Once the bank implements this model, the consultative process between business and technology has much improved, according to Vohra. “Because our model is heavily technology and 24/7 enabled, a large portion of our processing is completed at central sites that not only keeps costs at bay, but also helps the bank to attend to its needs”.

Creating all these technology teams could be a potential business nightmare, but not for Vohra. “I think putting such a system or structure in place can be challenging. Once it is accepted in the organization, I don’t see any cons”, says Vohra. These technology clusters, despite being independent units, share a common infrastructure not just shared by the bank but also by some closely held group companies.

Vohra understands well that IT plays a key role in meeting ICICI Bank’s business objectives. Besides initiating the bank’s separate technology teams, Vohra also heads their technology management group that oversees the technology needs of all the teams. Though each technology team has its own budget within the business group, they also approach the technology management group for greater business insight. While technology teams report directly to team leaders, they are under the control of business heads.

Most people working in the technology teams are a mixture of business analysts with a technology background and technologists who have a thorough business background. “It’s not that we have pure engineering skills, we also have bankers who have worked on technology side. It’s a good mix of business and technology professionals,” says Vohra.

With separate teams, the bank is helping to streamline functions across all its operations. Having begun with six branches and just one ATM, the bank realized early that the Internet was the medium that will become a major player and to preserve changes it adopted Internet banking, which attracted NRIs and corporate customers and increased its customer base many fold. Besides this the bank considered obtaining more ATMs when the average transaction was a mere fifty per day.

In 1999, the bank set up ICICI Infotech in Mumbai that oversaw the bank’s technology transformation. Today the bank’s IT transaction is 72 percent outside the branch, with most of it through ATM along with those which are phone and web-based. The bank is among the minority that sends SMS and email alerts to its customers after every single transaction, whether it be it retail or corporate customers.

Vohra claims implementing technology differentiates ICICI Bank in three ways. First, it helps the bank broaden geographically—today its presence encompasses all major cities in India and worldwide. Second, the bank was able to offer increased and superior products in the market including home and car loans, insurance services, and web trading. The final differentiator is that the bank can offer its services where it has no foundation through its web-based services.

Regarding the implementation of new technologies, ICICI Bank boasts Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and HP as their consultants and a core technology team that scans and prepares reports on the newly launched technologies. “At all points in time we are looking at adopting core technologies and also looking at solutions to see if can implement them as a group or as independent entity. “We let the independent team to evaluate the efficacy of technology”, says Vohra.

Having an efficient IT driven organization enabled Vohra to maintain all the bank’s IT- related work in-house. Vohra believes the bank has first mover advantage in business and by technology implementation it has first mover risk. Going forward, Vohra does have security concerns. “With the Internet becoming open, some tools becoming freely available. “Security is a big concern and we are now spending a lot of time and money in strengthening our business capability.”