In Conversation With Sarv Girn

In Conversation with

Sarv Girn Group General Manager,

Enterprise Technology Services Westpac

“Technology Leadership to drive transformation

during intense business change”

November 2011

Technology Leadership to drive transformation during intense business change Page 1

Introduction

Welcome to the latest in the, “In Conversation with” series of White Papers. Firstly we would

like to introduce and thank our guest speaker Sarv Girn from Westpac.

Sarv is the Group General Manager for the Enterprise Technology Services function across

The Westpac Group, one of Australia's leading banks with operations across Australia, New

Zealand and the broader Asia region.

As part of this accountability, Sarv leads a team of CIOs across a multi-brand business model

supporting the retail, wealth and institutional banking divisions, as well as managing group

level IT services covering Governance, Commercial Sourcing, Security, and CTO (Strategy,

Architecture and Engineering).

Sarv has held a range of roles over a 25 year technology career that has specialised in the

financial services industry across the UK and now Australia.

His experience in the early years focussed on project delivery roles that have driven

implementation of a number of systems across banking, insurance and investment

management platforms.

Over recent period Sarv has held senior leadership positions that have entailed providing

direction to align technology to business strategies, and driving initiatives to improve cost,

growth and customer service objectives.

Prior to joining Westpac in October 2008, Sarv held executive roles at the Commonwealth

Bank, firstly as Chief Technology Officer from 2001, and then Chief Information Security

Officer from 2005.

Setting the scene

In thinking about pulling the topic together for discussion we wanted to focus on the theme of

Leadership and draw on Sarv’s personal experiences in this space. Taking that principle Sarv

felt there was a real opportunity in the current climate to talk about leadership in abnormal (at

last in terms of historical data) times. To put this into context; in times of great change, cost

pressures, Merger and Acquisition activity and the current effects of globalisation on volatility

that is apparent in our daily economic cycle.

Leadership in our world – Technology – is no longer about RUN; this should be a given for all

leaders in the technology space. RUN is merely your ticket to the game. For example at

Westpac 75% of transaction and possibly more have no human touch, the interface between

the business and IT is symbiotic and much more complex than in days gone by.

We think it is true to say and has been for the last few years in talking about banks and other

complex financial institutions that we are a technology company with lots of regulation.

In reaching this conclusion Sarv has pulled together 5 key learning’s/focus areas to share the

experience and put forward the new Technology Leadership Proposition.


The five Focus areas for discussion were:

Strategy, Governance, Delivery, People and Partners

1) Strategy

Clarity in Business & IT strategy – are these understood by the Business and IT ?

Organisation vision & values – does the culture support the change agenda ?

Where to win, how to win – are focus areas in the business strategy articulated ?

A “good” IT strategy – how do you know you have the right IT strategy ?

Do we really understand the business and do they really understand the technology strategy –

it has to be a two way street. From a leadership perspective the importance of alignment

cannot be under valued.

Sarv Girn – For us the litmus test as to get your key leaders and sponsors on the business

side to talk about the IT strategy, why what and the benefits. When we first talked about this

within the IT lead team at Westpac; although we all agreed it was the right direction we also

felt we were embarking on a journey that was fraught with risk, by allowing non IT people to

articulate the IT strategy.

One of the other obstacles we came across in areas of the business was the constant reply

when asking for a description or copy of the business strategy was that they didn’t have one. I

would say to you there always is one you; just have to capture it in words if there is no hard

copy to review.

Does the culture of your organisation reflect what you want to and in some cases need to

achieve from an IT leadership and strategy perspective. We found that you need to get the

right people to support and champion your change agenda.

Arno Franz – In response Arno talked about TPI’s experience in that there is often a huge gap

between the business and IT and the aforementioned presupposes a general alignment

between the business and IT in the first place. In his experience that was not often the case

and that more often than not there was a great deal of division between the different business

units in companies. How do you effectively close those gaps regardless of whether the exec

and even the CEO were supportive and had sent the message down from on high?

Sarv Girn – Acknowledged that yes this is the case especially at the business division layer

but talked back to culture. Westpac certainly had issues around stability when Sarv moved


into the role, particular severity 1’s, which clearly was not a great place to start relations

between IT and the business.

They way they went about resolving issues and setting up relationships going forwards was to

get the Business GM’s to share the issues around stability and the benefits of getting them

resolved. The only way to do this was to affect their bonus’s based on fixing the stability

issues.

2) Governance

Executive oversight – does this start with the Board, CEO or CIO ?

Accountability for Business Case and Delivery – is this a committee ?

Solution Quality – who looks at this and does this matter ?

Benefits tracking – do soft benefits matter ?

The first question we asked ourselves in sitting up the governance was who chairs it.

At Westpac we wanted to go to the highest level so we have a sub committee on the Westpac

board that overseas IT governance. If you anchor yourself at the board level it really helps you

cut through the silos and breakdown the fiefdoms.

Who is measuring quality? In our world, and mine in particular, the CTO certifies every quarter

and reports to the board on certification of releases to ensure what we are releasing is

acceptable to meet the banks requirements.

We have to go out to the business and get acceptance to take to the board – this is a very

powerful tool.

Gideon Lupton – Bearing Point – who measures the business benefit – Sarv – the business

GM has this responsibility and again it is tied to their bonus structure.

Glen Mason – NRMA – How do you align the test specifications and reporting on quality and

where do the test team sit to enable this?

Sarv Girn – 2.5 years ago the test teams were very poor performers so we invested in a

central testing environment. The environment remains separated from the project areas so

this allows the test team and the leaders within that area to call out bad behaviour.

To reinforce our drive for quality, measurement and control, we drove a new strategy where

quarterly certification was key- so every vendor and supplier had to send me their certification.


There are always exceptions that you have to let go; but by putting in place this governance

and rigour we are extremely well informed. A good example was the Teller Platform, where

we opted for a point to point platform. The business was contemplating an upgrade and a

consolidation simultaneously, the risk was just too great for us and the business hence it did

not go ahead.

Darrin Webb – Has the rigour that you have put in around the governance piece stifled

innovation, Sarv – yes to degree but innovation has not been our goal at this stage.

3) Delivery

Enterprise Master Schedule – does this include only IT change ?

Centres of Excellence – are common needs delivered by each programme ?

Release Schedule – do you allocate take off and landing slots for projects ?

Change Management – are your customers and staff ready ?

Really in the context of the environment we have at Westpac – an enormous transformation

agenda, and not dissimilar to what I did previously with CBA

To try and address the enormity of the task at hand and deliver the best outcomes for the

business we came up with the notion of “Runways”. When are projects taking off and when are

they landing. We built an enterprise wide master document where the schedule was

collaboration between the business and IT. This immediately allowed us to pullout of, or

withdraw completely, from a range of programs that were out of scope. Secondly we moved to

a quarterly release schedule, moving away from moving targets and unrealistic demands for

upgrades.

To enable us to stay on this delivery schedule and complete we required a huge cultural shift,

but we also realised that it would work well in some areas and not be appropriate in others, for

instance in WIB it was never going to fly whereas in retail banking it was highly appropriate

and this was jst down to the nature and operational processes in the two very different areas.

Andrew Goth – Does this create additional risk for you on the day that those quarterly

releases land?

Yes it does but we felt that on balance this was the right strategy for us and bear in mind this

type of enterprise wide initiative takes time.

Peter Wright – Melbourne IT – This is a bigger issue on the customer side and the real

creation of value to the end customer.


Shane Martin – you need a really good fact base to make this type of relationship with the

business work, but it does ensure that every one gets skin in the game and it is not just the

loudest voice that gets heard.

Peter Wright – have you found that there is enough investment and enough of the right

information at the right time.

Shane Martin – You need a straight fact base to ensure a shared and aligned view.

Sarv Girn – The change management piece really helped us. A good example gain was

working with the business where they wanted to change the online branding while also

sending out a new software release in the contact centre, for us this was a pragmatic

conversation and we drove the communication and highlighted the risk

Glenn Mason – Business people with IT KPI’s is a great idea but does it work both ways, did

you KPI the IT guys on business outcomes?

Sarv Girn – Absolutely. The senior IT Leaders have 40% of their KPI based on business

outcomes, it had to be both ways if we were to get this innovative strategy over the line.

4) People

Right people in the right roles – are these for the specific needs of the organisation ?

Career development – are project roles seen as less senior or less attractive ?

Capability and Capacity – which skills, how many, and how much will its cost ?

Retention – who do you need during and beyond the transformation ?

The context for Westpac is really about having huge demand for people in the organisation for

a limited time window as we drive transformation. When we started this journey 3 years ago

we needed some deep engineering capability and some detailed design and build skills in the

DC space for a defined and short period of time. You will all know that Bob hired Randy

Fennel in as our Chief Engineer; he has completed his work and is now heading back to the

US.

The issue we are still struggling with is the understanding that a project based career is

attractive and one people want to pursue; at the moment the line roles still tend to be the

sexier roles people see from a career perspective.

How do you build a career PM role for people and move them from project to project?


Peter Wright – Do you have to separate them, can’t you have your best and brightest people

moving between line management and project management roles

Sarv Girn – I am not sure we get it right, not just Westpac but the grater IT leadership piece –

we need our A team people on the business critical programs of work and the projects; but

can’t always pull them out of their stable line careers.

Darrin Webb – In our experience at Telstra this environment is dominated by contract

resource, it is just the nature of the beast.

Sarv Girn – we have been very successful in converting a lot of our key contract resource to

permanent positions, largely due to the challenging work we have to offer. In addition to which

we have made great use of offshore SI’s.

Arno Franz – In our experience we have found it difficult to marry up the governance process

with the use of contractors ad the associated risk, if you look at Qantas for example all of their

PM’s come from IBM and not the A team guys as they are not available and not cost effective.

Glen Mason – What happens when your actions can potentially effect the profits of a business

uni, division or indeed the company?

Sarv Girn – good question and never a straight forward one, you have to make a business

decision and if that effects profit then so be it, but we make the decision based on all the facts

from both parties.

Glenn Mason – The key learning in my experience is that regular, timely software releases

work and the business does get used to it over time. You have to be ruthless on the 1st release

and go with minimal change requests.

Sarv Girn - Getting back to the people piece – it comes down to capability capacity and cost,

this to us a very cyclical activity. We had to ask ourselves at the start can we go on the

transformation journey and do it ourselves or do we need help? The answer was clearly no, so

we set about setting up a panel to look at a best sourcing model so we could augment our own

resources with external capability and capacity. The last three years progress would not have

been possible without those external partners.

Finally in regard to the people piece in times of transformation – who do you keep beyond the

project lifecycle and in what capacity? Who you need going forwards is often very different to

what we had in the past as we move out of transformation into BAU, not to mention the

restructures a company like Westpac has been through?


5) Partners

Sourcing strategy – you are accountable, do you have the right oversight ?

Shared account plans – do you have one ?

Joint KPIs – how do you set common goals ?

Clarity in accountability – does your contract create a „shadow‟ organisation ?

It can be very easy for corporates, especially the large corporates, who can use their muscle

to blame external parties when things go wrong. From our perspective at Westpac we wanted

to make sure as an IT lead team that we were accountable; for example when consolidating

and moving the DC operations the technical lead i.e. the CTO is accountable and responsible

for the success or failure of that program of work.

The way we have approached our partners is fresh and innovative and looks at shared

account plans and the realisation that both parties have skin in the game, costs versus

revenue depending on which side of the fence you sit. We extended this to try and truly

understand what the suppliers strategic plans in the region were, how they wanted to grow,

with which areas and which customers and for us to help them where possible and build a true

partnership.

i.e. IBM were looking to do more business in Australia from a global percentage share

perspective and the importance of the relationship to the two companies was essential so we

both worked hard to turn around what had gone before to create a win win scenario.

Andrew Groth – I have seen various flavours of this and specifically where you can open

dialogue on a long term strategic basis. At Infosys we like to try and measure this, you can

definitely see that the benefits are huge if you can get some genuine alignment in place and

form joint KPI’s with your partners.

Paul Rush – Whether it is driven locally, regionally or globally it will depend entirely upon the

people involved and their agenda’s. Specifically if there is a global relationship with some one

like IBM, the risk you face is doing a deal locally or regionally that is supported globally in the

first phase; then a new leadership team come into play globally and the good intent and time

invested can disappear overnight, regardless of the contract.

You have to have the right people supporting this initiative over the duration of the partnership.


Darrin Webb – At the end of the day it is all about intent, if you don’t have the right intent and

enter the discussions without transparency and the want to broker something strategic,

innovative and commercially viable it can’t work.

Peter Wright – What due diligence you go through when choosing that type of

partnership/relationship is key.

Shane Martin – You make a good point having worked on both sides of CBA and EDS, I had

3 interviews from CBA people before I was offered the job with EDS. This certainly sent the

right message to me about the state of the partnership and the intent on both sides of the

fence, and reaffirmed the clarity and accountability that EDS had for the CBA account.

Sarv Girn – If you are in a period of change and uncertainty the partnership and the intent

behind that partnership is really important because of the additional challenges that the

environment present to both parties. e.g. the IT department bagging the IT supplier and the

creation and notions of Shadow Teams – who is the design authority and the conscious

blurring of lines of responsibility can be extremely challenging and also damaging. Who

chooses and is responsible for investment in new technology; we have been very clear on the

lines of responsibility and that the bank is responsible for choosing new technology not the

supplier.

We have taken this a step further in regard to compliance and certification, so all of our

software suppliers have to send over their certification material. It is important that the bank

owns the process, tools and workflow; therefore we keep the shadows at bay!

6) Leadership

1. Strategy – let the Business present the IT strategy

2. Governance – the Board is the starting point, and quality does matter

3. Delivery – efficient, effective and modular – for an ever changing world

4. People – skill and capability needs vary for each wave of change

5. Vendors – get clarity in contracts, on who does what and when

Paul Rush – Taking us back to the start of the topic how have you and the IT lead team at

Westpac invested in leadership and development of your leaders and future leaders, if you

look at the investment Mike Heart made at CBA with MIT as an example?

Sarv Girn – We do this in a number of ways but are also cognisant that we have to lead from

the front and roll our sleeves up when necessary. Part of this is a program where 300 people


in IT go and work in a branch and take the flack and communication for the whole of IT at the

coalface. They also help to provide quick fixes in real time and show that we are actually

working for the good of the bank and want to help people at branch level. The motivation this

creates within IT for those people and beyond is enormous and the information that we get

back from the business is invaluable.

Paul Rush – Not dissimilar to McDonalds hiring policy, what ever level you enter the business

you spend the first two weeks working in a McDonald’s restaurant so you understand every

issue and touch point of the business at the coalface.

Andrew Growth – How do you set policy in the day to day operations that are feasible if you

have such a tight governance process?

Sarv Girn – A good question and I can give you a live example, we recently went to visit our

partners site in Singapore and had to leave our mobile phones at the desk as that was the

policy that we had put in place for security and intellectual property reasons. During that time

we had to call back to head office in Australia and part of the local policy was the phones on

site were not able to make international calls, again a policy we put in place ourselves.

Subsequently we reviewed the policy and change it to a more pragmatic solution.

In some cultures people will not talk about issues and you have to understand how to work

around those cultural nuances to ensure you get as much information as possible and the right

solutions in place.

Shane Martin – Where is benchmarking used in relation to Westpac’s ongoing governance of

large commercial contracts?

Arno Franz – In my experience benchmarking doesn’t work and often precludes people

getting on with framing a contract and getting started

Sarv Girn – We had a good look at this early on and opted for shorter contracts and therefore

the ability to renew and change the terms is much easier, especially in a changing

environment and market.

Andrew Groth – From experience we have not seen them be successful in terms of getting

the best outcome for both parties.

Arno Franz – With a company we worked with where we were asked to do some

benchmarking, and on further exploration as to why they wanted to go this route, it became

clear they were not happy with their service provider and wanted to use this as an excuse to

fire/replace them

Darrin Webb – We have found in Telco it is pretty much the norm and our customers expect

to go through a rigorous benchmarking process both pre and post selection.


Peter Wright – With the shorter contracts you mentioned how are you managing the

amortisation of assets?

Arno Franz – Absolutely especially with multi sourcing and looking at final assets which has

been a big shift from the early 90’s, those days are gone.

Andrew Groth – We have seen significant pricing pressure added to which, deal levels have

gone down, people tend not to talk about the TVC (Total value of contract) of the deal but

more of an annualised view.

Arno Franz – Capability to manage the environment is becoming more important and we are

starting to see hybrid deals that are more complex and more international in nature.

Andrew Groth – Yes we are certainly not seeing any contracts that are10 – 12 years

anymore.

Shane Martin – With the advent of these partnerships the incentives for the sales people

doing the deals have changed significantly with much more based on outcomes and actual

delivery.

Andrew Groth – Yes we are seeing some contracts where there is a clause that talks about

being paid on performance.

Sarv Girn – Yes we are also seeing the rise of a lot of sub contracts especially in

infrastructure where you are looking at delivering infrastructure as a service where IBM might

be the lead and they partner with a range of other firms like EMC to get best of breed up and

down the stack.

IT is the case that the role of vendor manager within the enterprise is becoming an extremely

critical role; with strong commercial and negotiation experience but also the gravitas required

to pull off some of these mega deals. With IBM we have quarterly governance and

commercials meetings; to Paul’s point it is very much about the people and the leadership

displayed and by all parties concerned.

Glenn Mason – In a lot of cases it is often the technology leaders who can’t articulate at this

level and end up shooting themselves in the foot, as they can’t liaise at the right level to get

the win win solution that everyone aspires to, and also to gain the confidence from software

suppliers and other partners to enter into the partnership in the first place.

Flexibility in regard to sourcing

Paul Rush – We have started to see the uptake of true interim managers; not contractors or

permanent staff that fancy doing an interim piece of work but full time dedicated Interims. This

is certainly a solution that would work given your earlier thoughts on projects as a career.

Sarv Girn – It is a matter of weighing up risk with trust and really understanding who you and

the business can put your trust in, with Interims there is a clear lead time before that trust can


be built, where as if you take people from line roles and put them into senior project leadership

roles, the trust has already been earned.

Furthermore where it has not worked for us and I suspect other companies is where you bring

in a high profile person and they in turn bring in their own people on expensive long term

contracts; this doesn’t taste right and in the end you don’t get the same level of trust and

indeed deliverables.

Summary

In summary we were unanimous in our thinking that the importance of strong and appropriate

leadership in technology within times of wholesale change and transformation is imperative to

success. From this you need the right people in the right place at the right time, maybe we

should borrow a phrase from the technical evangelists’ of old, “Anytime and place any where

The Martini Effect replacing any with right!

You need to ensure executive level sponsorship, a strong governance process, an ability to

drive change at all levels and especially culturally; a modern view towards partnership and the

right tools for continuous improvement and self learning at the leadership end of town.

Attendees

Arno Franz TPI Partner and Regional President, Asia Pacific

Andrew Groth Infosys Vice President & General Manager, Financial Services

Gideon Lupton Bearing Point Senior Partner and co-owner

Shane Martin Consultant

Glenn Mason NRMA Chief Information Officer

Paul Rush Partner Robertson Executive Search

Darrin Webb Telstra Director, Enterprise Managed Services

Peter Wright Melbourne IT Executive General Manager

Apologies

Greg Booker ANZ Wealth Chief Information Officer

Tony Clasquin Stockland Interim Chief Executive Officer

Scott Farquhar Lend Lease Group Chief Information Officer

Sharon Kennedy Ausgrid Chief Information Officer

Richard Marrison KPMG Senior Partner, Management Consulting

Peter Merrick CSC Consulting, GBS

Documents

In Conversation With Sarv Girn