PALISADES, N.Y. - As banks attempt to remove the walls between their businesses, International Business Machines Corp. is moving to retrain its employees to offer a greater breadth of expertise.
In what was billed as her first public appearance since joining the technology consulting giant three months ago, Bridget van Kralingen, the financial services sector leader in its business consulting unit, said consultants who can offer experience in multiple areas are rare.
"The rarest and hardest skill" for consultants is the ability to "really traverse business and technology," Ms. van Kralingen said at an analyst conference hosted by IBM at its conference center in Palisades. Only 20% of consultants have that skill, she said.
Mark Greene, IBM's general manager for global business, said it used to send several consultants - often at different times - to address a bank's concerns in various operations.
But bank clients are increasingly unsatisfied with this approach, because they are deciding their organizations must function more as a coherent whole, he said.
Consultants at the Armonk, N.Y., company are now being trained to be flexible and to grow beyond their specific areas, Mr. Greene said. "Our customers expect some new joint set of expertise from us. We have to understand business and technology."
The business consulting services unit was created in October 2002, when IBM bought PwC Consulting from PricewaterhouseCoopers for $3.5 billion in cash and stock. Ms. van Kralingen said she is encouraging her staff to "move within IBM" and to request leadership roles outside their specialties.
Combining technology with business strategy is becoming more significant at a time when many of a bank's interactions with customers are handled entirely by computer, Ms. van Kralingen said. Automated teller machines and Web banking are more than tools - they represent the bank, she said. "Customer service is not just a human interaction thing. It's understanding what people buy and what channels they like to use."
Cutting expenses by reducing tech spending has "pretty much been maxed out," and banks are now considering technology needs when they make operational cost cuts, Ms. van Kralingen said.
Mr. Greene said banks could use technology that has proved its worth in other retail environments, including the self-service check-out, which lets one retail cashier oversee several aisles while customers scan products. "Banks can now have a teller assisting four self-serve kiosks. Tellers "mostly do data entry that can be done by the customer."
Though cost cuts and revenue growth "are fundamentally business concerns," they are closely connected to technology, he said; that is why banks are looking for advisers that offer expertise in both.
Michael Haney, a senior analyst at Celent Communications LLC in Boston, said IBM has an advantage over competitors attempting a similar strategy. "The difference is you're actually bringing in expertise from IBM's hardware and software business lines that have deep, deep technological knowledge."
The approach also helps IBM spotlight more than just its technology, Mr. Haney said. "IBM is still struggling with a certain image in the industry" as a provider of technology - specifically hardware - and it is "trying to get over that."
Applying that approach to financial services is "very much a fit," he said. IBM can help banks with their own makeovers to show customers that they are "not just these cold, conservative places" with tellers behind bars and bulletproof glass.
Ms. van Kralingen said that the next wave of bank cost-cutting will come with the removal of barriers between silos, and that technology introduced in one business can be applied in other units.
Mr. Greene said the process will not be accomplished overnight.
"It's not practical with most banks to take away their silos" immediately, he said. But paying more attention to the connections between business and technology decisions is the key to IBM's success in financial services.
"That's where our growth is," Mr. Greene said. "That's where our future is."
