Key to Success

This chapter builds on previous chapters and brings together the technical, managerial and social issues discussed in this book so far, to offer practical solutions to the e-banking related problems. We have also included two detailed e-banking case studies of medium sized banks to illustrate our propositions. The chapter covers a number of practical dimensions such as common tools used to evaluate e-banking initiatives, real reasons for banks to implement e-banking, factors which led to their success as well as the ones which caused considerable problems.

E-Banking

This last chapter is a summary of previous chapters. Whereas previous chapters focused on specific issues in e-banking, this chapter presents a summarised full picture along with recommendations about good practice in the domain. We defined e-banking as provision of information about a bank and its services via a home page on the World Wide Web (WWW). More sophisticated e-banking services provide customers access to accounts, the ability to move their money between different accounts, and making payments or applying for financial products via e-Channels.

Problematic Issues in E-Banking Management

Building on the previous chapters, this chapter will discuss some of the most common problematic issues in e-banking implementation and management. The main focus will be on those issues which pose considerable risks to e-banking projects and may prevent banks from achieving their desired e-banking relatedgoals. These include: traditional structures which some banks still have and which are unable to respond to agility required for e-banking, resistance from employees, legacy systems which are an obstacle to the integration of systems, security issues, new and complex regulatory issues, and project management problems.

Systems Thinking and Knowledge Management for E-Banking

As has been shown to be the case with information systems, it can be argued that the perception of knowledge seen as either a purely technical or purely social phenomenon is insufficient. This argument will be developed within this chapter, the aim being to answer the question: ‘what kind of system is an e-banking system, when seen from a knowledge management perspective?’

Strategy Development for E-Banking

This chapter focuses predominantly on the development of a toolset for e-banking strategic planning. But before moving on to this, the following section briefly outlines some of the relevant issues drawn from the domain of corporate strategy.

E-Banking Project Management

Project management is an important concept in business development. Often, the development of information technology or managing change will be run as projects, and managed using various well established project management techniques and tools. E-banking is often treated like a large scale project and broken into several small scale projects to manage various different aspects (called project portfolios), ranging from BPR to make the organization ready for online operations, to actual implementation of e-banking technologies.

Human Involvement and E-Banking

The aim of this chapter is to offer the reader a means by which human involvement in e-banking may be evaluated and improved. At the heart of this problem lies a need to characterise human involvement, since, once the issues are clear, the specific e-banking factors can be related to them in the form of a model.

Delivery of Retail Banking Services

The purpose of this chapter is to outline the online revolution which occurred in the banking sector, mainly in the developed world. It will briefly cover the history of banking and how it evolved through the centuries into a service which touches many aspects of our life on a daily basis.

E-Banking Management

This chapter is an introduction to the themes covered in the book. It sets the background, defines the context and provides a basis for the material covered inthe subsequent chapters.

A Managerial View of E-Banking

As discussed in the Chapter IV, e-banking is different from other forms of technological projects. It brings a different set of challenges for managers which are discussed in Section one of this chapter. It is widely acknowledged that complexityin the managerial environment has increased because e-services often require decisions that focus on integration of internal/external systems, adoption of new business models and frequent restructuring of existing business processes and structures. This chapter discusses some of those challenges and ways in which they can be met.