Tech Strategy for Capital Markets and Other

No outside consultants will know better the nuances of our company’s positioning, current capabilities and competitive landscape; no one else on the executive team is better positioned to understand what all the buzzwords flying around in newspapers and business journals really mean for our companies. But it’s critical to start from the right mindset in making these kinds of judgments.

For those of us in the 10 other GICS sectors, technology is a means to an end, not the end itself. Even Amazon cultivates a “customer obsession” mindset.

My experience in capital markets and commercial real estate has made this crystal clear to me. When individual acquisitions or capitalizations regularly exceed $100 million on assets, which are unique in important ways, with revenue streams, liabilities and market positioning different each time from any other asset in the world, the idea of having humans involved in that transaction is seen not as a nuisance or delay, but as a critical source of deep expertise and advice to ensure the best terms possible.

This is a nuance missed by the broad brush of tech pundits and consultants: capital markets advisory is known as a “relationship business” not because it hasn’t yet been automated to the extent of other industries, but because of the real importance of expertise, reputation, trust and professionalism in what we do. No doubt AI will continue to grow in power exponentially, but the size, complexity and uniqueness of transactions in capital markets is a key difference to the landscape.

As long as expert human insights remain even a few basis points better than the most advanced AI models, it will make strategic sense to keep people involved in what we do.

Does this mean technology has little to offer to firms full of knowledge workers like mine? Far from it. In fact, I think it makes our opportunity much more interesting and challenging than in an organization where the CIO’s mandate is to automate every human process they come across. We must tailor our IT strategy to bring the best tools, data, AI, analytics and process support to the fingertips of our experts, so they can add the value they’re uniquely qualified to add.

We leverage the rising power of digital technologies, artificial intelligence, data science, web and mobile interfaces to strengthen, not to replace, our core value proposition to our clients.

The impressive results of Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Airbnb and Uber are undeniable, but their strategies were designed to disrupt their specific niches. Most importantly, their success came not from how far they’ve gone in automation – that is a means to an end. They have succeeded and have become dominant for one basic reason, and it is a reason we should all have at the forefront of our strategies: they are better than their competitors at serving their customers.

See More: Top Capital Market Tech Solution Companies