On a new Voyager, tackling fraud and the intellectual challenge

Nationwide IT director Peter Stafford talks to silicon.com about business transformation, the importance of the CIO and the joys of working in IT.

The financial sector is facing one of the toughest periods in its history and as IT director of Nationwide, the UK's biggest building society, Peter Stafford has been juggling the demands of significant business transformation with more immediate economic concerns.

Stafford has had a varied career which has included roles in IT as well as general management in both retail and financial services. Immediately prior to joining Nationwide in 2007, Stafford was director of IT at the Bank of Ireland UK, and before that he held the same role with Debenhams before becoming director of development at then parent company, the Burton Group.

Stafford, who began his working life doing programming design and project management, is also a graduate of management sciences from Warwick University.

Stafford said his roles at the Bank of Ireland and Burton Group have provided him with experience of large systems replacement. "Joining Nationwide has given me the opportunity to build on the skills from my younger days around programme management, project management and the implementation of IT systems," he added.

During the current economic downturn, one of the biggest challenges for Nationwide has been delivering the right products to customers in such a low-interest-rate environment - something that calls for a flexible IT department, according to Stafford.

"We need to introduce a level of cost flexibility into our IT model, something we've not had in the past. We need to understand how we can reduce costs generally and how we move to a more variable cost model through effective partnering," he explained.

This flexibility allows the IT team to make systems changes that have helped Nationwide to launch products such as e-Savings Plus, an online-only high-interest savings account.

Stafford said resourcing is another concern specific to the recession: "To ensure we maintain the Society's position within the market, we've had to scale up quickly to deliver more projects. We've implemented some sourcing decisions for our desktop and network services and there is a strong focus on business transformation projects which extends to decommissioning our legacy systems."

As part of this effort, Nationwide signed a business process outsourcing deal with Unisys earlier this year. It's also examining alternative sourcing models to see how it can better cater to the changing demand for and development of IT systems.

Much of Stafford's energy is dedicated to Nationwide's Voyager business transformation project which, Stafford said, "will replace the core transaction and ledger systems in addition to other systems that support the back-end banking, mortgage and savings products".

Stafford added: "This will position Nationwide with the capabilities to launch products quickly with a service proposition supported by slick IT systems that will provide a competitive advantage."

The business has been working closely with IBM on the project which is the first time the SAP banking suite has been implemented in the UK.

The business has spent the past year working out the requirements of Voyager...

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