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Isidorio Fernandes

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Isidorio Fernandes

Sr. VP Technology

IIFL Wealth Management

Isidorio Fernandes is a member of:

- Expert

Briefly tell me about your company and the IT strategies you have in place.

IIFL Wealth Management is one of the Leading Wealth Management companies in India providing high end wealth management solutions to ultra HNI clients. We have recently won some of the prestigious awards in the finance space.
Our IT Strategies are clearly defined so as to ensure that all user are benefited along with the organization. We have ensured our hardware infrastructure is the best so as to make users adapt to the work challenges.

What do you think about new technologies like cloud and virtualization?

Cloud and Virtualization are the best thing to happen in the IT industry. With cloud the manageability and time to market has improved. Virtualization has also helped in bringing down the footprints in Data centre operations.

How do you keep yourself updated with latest technologies?

Its through the friends in the industry and Internet, I have been reading the latest happenings on the Web and subscriptions.

How big is your team?

We are around 10-12 people Technology Team managing infrastructure, applications and maintaining Quality and Testing.

What is your biggest pain point?

Data Security, Technology Selection and Business Continuity are some of the pain point for us in the fast changing technology work.

Will technology help to address those pain points?

Yes , A good software application or vendor will support a business decision. However, selecting a software application or vendor before knowing the design of your business is very risky. Most companies do not know their design and most IT solutions are considered to be a business failure for that reason.

Did IT innovation become more critical during the slowdown?

Yes, it is one of the key area we are evaluating to understand our processes and also areas we can improvise and gear up in times of good business.

What are the challenges in securing your information system or data base?

We have ensured role based access to our users on the servers and databases. However there are certain challenges in terms of monitoring usage and data theft which we need to adequately protect during our day to day operations.

How have you adopted cloud policy?

We currently use IAAS, however we are in the process of adopting Cloud strategy for some of our applications, though our parent organization has already gone ahead and implemented a few Cloud based applications successfully.

How cloud plays an important role in securing your information?

We are evaluating the various options available and in discussion with Service Providers.

What is the annual IT budget that you spent on IT systems?

In the range of $ 8-10 Million.

Do you have any plan of increasing your IT budget in your company?

Though we have our budgets in place, it depends on a case to case basis depending on the criticality of the project.

Should an IT leader be a manager first, or a technologist first?

In my opinion a person should be a Manager first with a very good understanding of Technology though may not be hands on and should have a clear view to know about the positive and negative trends before implementing any new strategy.

What is the ROI on the technological investment that you make?

We have to ensure important guidelines of ROI and KRAs on established deadlines are met along with the company’s well-being. Even a small time outage can cripple us for a long time in terms of revenues and client visibility.

What are the new technologies that you are looking forward for?

Content Management System, CRM, Data Warehousing.

How do you describe the relationship of CIO with the CEO’s?

In Modern parlance CIOs are considered the Pillars of the organization and has to drive the organization technologically and both CEO and CIO have to have vision to take the organization to the next level and drive ahead of Competition.

What is your advice/ suggestions to fellow CIOs in the industry?

Prove your leadership capabilities. Understand, and partner with the business.