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considered by organizations in order to successfully implement an IG
strategy. The practical relevance of the factors considered on the proposed
IGF is illustrated in the context of the banking industry experience. To
understand the current situation of IG inside banks and the possibilities
of an IGF, 16 executives of 13 banks in Brazil, Hong Kong, and the United
States were interviewed.
THE GAP BETWEEN BUSINESS AND IT
The widespread use of rapidly evolving information technology (IT) for
business process improvement has completely transformed the banking
industry to its core in the past 60 years. Since the era of punch card machines
in the 1950s, followed by the introduction of mainframes in the 1960s,
banks have tried to improve their overall system performance, cut labor
costs, and speed up the business processes in a competitive environment.
Indeed, IT has opened new markets, products, services, and delivery
channels for the banking industry. Furthermore, IT transforms not only
products and processes, but even the nature of competition itself, and
it does this in three different ways: (1) by creating a lever with which to
achieve competitive advantage, (2) by generating completely new business,
and (3) by changing the structure of the industry (Beccalli, 2007). For
example, in recent years, the banking industry has experienced signifi-
cant improvements in their ability to enable their customer timely access
to their services and information through ATMs, online, and mobile
applications. The relationship between banks and customers has changed
drastically as a consequence of these improvements. Furthermore, the
widespread use of Internet banking and phone banking has permitted
banks to offer a variety of new products and services to customers.
The result of this stunning evolution is that IT is pushing and changing
business in established organizational structures everywhere. The trend is
likely to continue, as organizations around the globe continue to invest heav-
ily in IT. According to Gartner's estimates for 2012 (IDG, 2012), IT spending
will reach US$3.8 trillion, which represents an increase of 3.7% compared to
2011 figures. For comparison, if considering only the banking industry, the
global spending expectation was US$363.8 billion in 2011 (CELENT, 2011).
However, despite the technology investments, keeping up with the
fast-paced business process changes triggered by them inside organizations
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