Banks

=**What is banking?**= In general terms, the business activity of accepting and safeguarding money owned by other individuals and entities, and then lending out this money in order to earn a profit.

=How is Banking related to IT?=







IT is central to banking. It has moved from being just a business enabler to being a business driver. In a manner the banking and financial services sector—being the early adopters of any new technology—defines the roadmap for future technology adoption. Banks were the first to use mainframes in the 1960s; many are still using the original applications because it is risky to swap them out. Over the years more and more systems have been slapped on. Banks were often profitable enough to afford big IT teams, writing programs themselves rather than buying off the shelf.As a result banks tend to operate lots of different databases producing conflicting numbers.Some banks, particularly the smaller ones, outsource their IT to providers such as Fiserv or use packaged software. Automation is the basic thing that banks need to have in place. It involves a combination of centralized networks, operations, and a core banking application. Core banking applications help provide complete front and backed automation of banks.

=Challenges & Opportunities to Banks with the use of IT=
 * **Take customer experience from 'universal' to 'unique' **With multi-channel convergence and mobility making transactions more convenient,
 * **To ** **enhancing revenues from service areas** like wealth and asset management, institutions can boost operational efficiency with portfolio rationalization
 * **Take data from 'information' to 'intelligence': ** Bringing data together with business intelligence and data visualization solutions breaks down silos with integrated reporting, and creates 'enterprise-wide data stores' for real-time insight.
 * **Provide 24-hour customer service **.

=IT management and Businesses=
 * Business process management (BPM) is a systematic approach to improving an organization's business processes
 * IT spending decisions are made based on the goals of the business and how new IT investments can add value to the organization, while the budgeting process allows CIOs to plan future investments in staff resources, technology initiatives and business programs.
 * CIO's looking to advance their careers should consider business and financial training as part of their growth plan
 * IT governance focuses on setting up formal practices that will ensure IT initiatives effectively align with business goals and add value to the organization.
 * CIO's use ITIL as a customizable framework of best practices to achieve quality service in the IT and business organizations.
 * IT project management and portfolio management are critical to CIOs and business leaders who need to ensure the success of new programs within the organization.
 * Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility over a network

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This article basically states how South Korea's supermarket is going even mroe technologically advanced, by installing a virtual supermarket. The article gives peoples opinions on this newly proposed technology.

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This video gives an outline about the future of the banking industry. It shows how technology has progressed and improved throughout the years.