The first capital financial company in the United States has many project offices, and one of the commercial technology projects is in the final sprint. In the office of eight employees of the project team, various charts are placed to record the tasks and deadlines in progress of the project. The most important one is the "Completion Chart", which records the number of remaining tasks of the project: their goal is to complete the remaining 400 work steps within 30 days. This project is about outsourcing a core business process. The project is very difficult, lasting more than 8 months and costing more than 3 million dollars. For Capital One, which ranks first in the English version of Information Weekly's "Top 500 American Business Technologies in 2005", the commercial value of the project far exceeds the cost. But this project is different, because it adopts agile programming method, and all relevant personnel and developers work together in the whole project. Agile programming method is published by Agile Alliance, a non-profit software developer organization, which emphasizes the decomposition of a project into small, manageable and reusable modules. Through this development method, the IT development productivity of Capital One Company has increased by 30%~40%.
The practice of this project and hundreds of other similar projects shows that this financial service enterprise is very good at skillfully obtaining the most important resources-information and personnel. Capital One is essentially an ordinary enterprise engaged in credit business. By providing employees with the tools needed for business operation and rewarding their outstanding performance, the company has achieved rapid development and presented a thriving scene. Although some other credit card competitors have been swallowed up by large financial institutions, Capital One has been actively expanding the scope of its products and services. John Gould, a partner of PrepaidAdvisory, a credit card industry consulting company, commented: "Capital One has done a good job in product diversification, breaking through the limitations of the credit card field and developing into a comprehensive financial service provider."
The reason why Capital One stands out among the "Top 500 American Business Technologies in 2005" lies in its information strategy, which combines all business areas of the company-market, credit, risk, operation and business technology-into a single and flexible decision-making structure.
Capital One was originally the credit card department of Virginia Stamp Bank. Since then, the company has been constantly seeking technological innovation, and today, it has developed into the sixth largest credit card issuer in the United States. In the past development, Capital One adhered to the diversification strategy and developed into a comprehensive service provider. So far, the company has 49 million accounts, 83 billion dollars in loans, and a wide range of products, including car loans, savings, housing loans, health care finance, insurance and small business financing.
In the increasingly competitive financial market field, Capital One keeps submitting one excellent financial report after another. In the second quarter of 2005, the company's after-tax net income reached $53,654.38 billion, up 30% from $407 million a year ago. In its core American credit card business, net income after tax in the second quarter was $432 million, compared with $384 million in the same period last year. CIO)Gregor Bailar, Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Capital One Company, attributed the company's success to the information strategy, which enabled IT managers to participate in the company's planning decisions. "Because everything we do is electronic, technology has become the focus of the company," Baylor said.
At Capital One, senior IT managers are often closely involved in the businesses they support. For example, Katherine Busser, chief information officer of the company's American credit card division, reports to Catherine West, president of the division, and Baylor, chief information officer of the company. "Many companies are currently discussing how to get IT staff to attend business meetings. And we are involved from beginning to end. " Bowser said.
This method ensures that IT and business personnel keep pace, and as a result, the company's productivity has been significantly improved. For example, in the second half of 2004, Capital One delivered more than 65,438+000 IT projects, 50% more than expected.
The intersection of IT and business talents is particularly prominent in the company's "Future of Work" project. By using wireless environment instead of traditional offices and cubicles, employees can choose any place and any way to work. Today, most employees of Capital One use telecommuting: although the company sent more than 65,438+0,000 IT employees to the company building in the 365,438+06 acre campus outside Richmond, Virginia, only 250-300 people used to work there, and the rest worked in other parts of the park through Wi-Fi and VoIP technology. Every floor of this building has a big red sign to mark the mobile office space, which is provided to employees on a first-come-first-served basis. A green sign indicates that these rooms are equipped with video conferencing facilities; In some creative spaces, such as conference rooms, sofas and rocking chairs are arranged, which are suitable for holding unexpected meetings or strategic meetings; Quiet rooms are suitable for work that requires concentration, so private rooms are set up for one-on-one private meetings; The closest thing to a traditional office setting is a fixed cubicle, which is mainly reserved for administrative assistants.
This informal atmosphere helps to overcome the traditional barriers between IT and business people. "They're not just here to write Java code." When talking about IT personnel, Baylor said, "They are here to understand the current situation of enterprise users and customers."
Because technology and business departments work closely together, it is often difficult to distinguish them. "Our goal is to have at least one person from the business department come here to work with us every day." Mark Mushinsky, the project leader of BPO, said. Muschinski, who was first exposed to agile programming, said that he would never return to the traditional programming method. "Agile methods recognize that requirements will change during the project and allow these changes to happen in a controlled way." He said. Muschinski is in charge of a large project. He has two main teams and an expansion team. One of the main teams has 12 members and is responsible for building and testing the components needed to send customer data to third-party processors. Another team with 10 members works in Atlanta, where the processor is located. Its purpose is to build, test and upgrade the system and process the data received from Capital One. Another expansion team consists of 20 workers, who are required to provide professional skills services when needed.
One of the important factors for the success of Capital One Company is its ability to quickly absorb the merged business. For example, in June, 5438+October, 2005 10, it acquired Onyx Acceptance Corp (hereinafter referred to as "Onyx Company"), a California auto loan company. After the merger, the company quickly integrated its business with the auto finance business of Capital, and the integration was completed at the end of 10. After the integration, all Onyx systems and business processes have been transferred to Capital One's auto finance platform.
In order to reduce the system transplant, Capital One Company adopted an effective solution: modular design. The company deployed PeopleSoft's enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform, which includes various modules such as bookkeeping, purchasing, travel and entertainment, asset management and human resources, and the company deliberately kept the characteristics of simplicity and easy maintenance: only 4% of the platforms adopted customized solutions. This simple and practical approach can not only reduce the maintenance cost, but also add new functions such as self-service module, which also enables the company to effectively save the required resources.
Capital One entered the auto finance business by acquiring Summit Acceptance Corp through 1998, and then made several other acquisitions, including the acquisition of Onyx Company, which later became the auto finance department of Capital One. This business has developed very rapidly, and the growth of the business has gradually increased the demand for IT departments. They should not only provide information services within the auto finance department, but also serve the whole company. Dick Daniels, CIO of the auto finance department, said that the company very much hopes to have a unified vision and comprehensive understanding of customer data throughout the company. This means that the auto finance department can not only access the data of credit card business, but also vice versa. Capital One has an expanded data warehouse to help create suitable products for future customers, and the company is also expanding the data warehouse to provide an integrated perspective for multi-account customers. Capital One not only focuses on the growth of auto loan business, but also aims to build a talent pool that can be shared throughout the company. The career of Bowser, CIO of this department, has made the most vivid interpretation of this strategy. Bowser has joined the First Capital Company/KLOC-0 since it was founded 0/0 years ago. In the first 8 years, Bowser engaged in the market and analysis of credit marketing business. Then she is responsible for managing the business strategy of venture operation. Later, she managed the credit business and took up her current position two years ago. "We break the boundaries between positions with an open mind, which has become the competitive advantage of our company." She said.
Summing up the success of Capital One, Baylor quoted the experience he learned from his early work at Hewlett-Packard Company (HP): "If you can make employees have fun at work, they will become dazzling."
Gregor Bailar, CIO of Capital One Financial Corp, believes that cooperation with suppliers is not only a science, but also an art.. Suppliers, like employees, must be motivated to provide better products.
The relationship between enterprises and suppliers seems to be a cycle. In the era of internet prosperity, Capital One company is surrounded by various promotional activities; After the bubble burst, the promotion frenzy also subsided, so that Capital One had to take the initiative to propose a supplier-based solution. "You must give advice to suppliers and encourage them to innovate." Baylor said.