BoB moves agricultural, digital banking and HR functions to Baroda

Forges alliance with IBM, Accenture for IT, data analytics

Public sector lender Bank of Baroda (BoB) is moving key functions like rural and agriculture banking, digital banking, financial inclusion, and Human Resources to Baroda in Gujarat as part of its organisational transformation. Also, it will shift much of the information technology (IT) activity to Hyderabad, where it is building a data centre.  

As a consequence of this decision, over 500 people will relocate to Baroda and Hyderabad. The work for shifting functions and people is being spread over three months.

Elaborating on the rationale for the decision, P B Jayakumar, managing director and chief executive, said it is a continuing process and a part of premise management.

The cost-efficiency, though an outcome of the exercise, is not a major purpose for the move. “The whole objective is if you are building a back office and there is no customer front line work for them, they (part of workforce) have to be progressively moved to places like Baroda,” said Jayakumar.

BoB maintains corporate headquarters in Mumbai, the financial capital of country, while its head office is in Baroda.  

Much of the IT-linked work will move to Hyderabad, where the public sector lender is building a data centre in the capital of Telangana. 

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Meanwhile, BoB, India’s second-largest public sector bank, has set up two centres of excellence (CoEs) with global technology majors, IBM and Accenture. IBM will collaborate for IT centre of excellence (ITCoE) and Accenture will forge an alliance for analytics centre of excellence (ACoE).

The twin centres of excellence form part of the comprehensive digital road map laid out by the bank to further enhance the quality of business growth, portfolio diversification, and fee income using digitisation.

The endeavour will be to execute the twin mandates of improving business efficiency and taking new use-cases to the market at speeds to deliver a differentiated and world-class customer experience.

SHIFT GEARS

 

• · Relocation decision driven by cost efficiency
• · Organisational recast is part of transformation
•   Digital banking, agri banking and Human Resources, etc to move to Baroda
•   IT Projects division to shift to Hyderabad
•   Over 500 employees would be affected by decision

 

Importantly, the alliance is indicative of the bank’s support for the government’s steadfast focus on growing technology opportunities through initiatives such as Digital India and meet ease of banking directive.

Becoming a true digital bank requires transformation of the entire organisation and is not restricted to one function. ITCoE aims to create a market leading technology differentiation driving business outcomes.

ITCoE, under the wholly-owned subsidiary of the bank, will bring together a wide variety of leading skills sets for digitisation agenda such as design thinking, mobility, agile IT delivery, and emerging technologies like blockchain, robotics process automation, open application programming interface banking, and business process management.

ACoE will work with the bank’s business units and functions to identify and realise new value-creation opportunities, and build the bank’s capability in leveraging analytics to increase revenue, reduce costs, and improve risk profile. 

Immediate opportunity areas are increasing average product holding, improving collections efficiency, preventing frauds and enabling more robust monitoring and tracking of business operations across the management hierarchy, BoB said.