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Vincent Eggen (Pictet Technologies): agile acceleration

According to Vincent Eggen, Managing Director, agile management and the freedom to take initiatives enable Pictet Technologies to act as a technological catalyst in order to meet the needs of the Pictet Group and its clients. Interview.

 

Can you present Pictet Technologies in a few words?

 

Created in 2016, Pictet Technologies is the Pictet Group's software factory. As such, it is first and foremost a team of software engineering experts. But it is also a laboratory. Not only a technological laboratory, but above all a laboratory for cutting-edge models and practices on work organization and modern management techniques. The structure of Pictet Technologies is inspired by models of liberated companies or of organisations which put the emphasis on freedom of initiative, self-organization and the emotional security of its employees revolving around agile processes. With close to a hundred employees currently, this model packs its full punch, as not only are we proud to be an important link in the IT strategy of a prestigious group, but we have also been rewarded with three Great Place to Work awards, including a first place we took recently, and an APSI Flagship Award we received in 2019.

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“We act as a sounding board for alternative work organization practices and engineering processes..”

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How does Pictet Technologies deploy its know-how within the Group and its clients?

 

Although Pictet Technologies is fully independent, both in terms of its infrastructure and its resource management policy, it works in perfect harmony with the Group's IT teams on development projects. All of our teams are made up of specialists from both entities. Our processes, and the supporting tools, are fully integrated and extremely automated. Pictet Technologies is based on a 100% Cloud infrastructure, and works completely outside of the highly regulated and secure environment of the Group's entities. This places certain limitations on the quality of the data we work with. But on the other hand, it gives us a freedom of expression and execution that an ultra-secure environment would not allow us. In that respect, Pictet Technologies acts as an accelerator for the Group, while enabling the Pictet fortress to deliver its full value to our clients. 

In addition to our technological know-how, Pictet Technologies enables the entities of the Group to draw inspiration from our organizational model. We do not claim to directly influence the organization of a group as vast and diverse as the Pictet Group, but we do act as a sounding board for alternative work organization practices and engineering processes. We regularly share our approaches, which are sometimes clearly innovative. And we are available for our colleagues in order to guide them through their own experiences.

 

What opportunities and challenges do you identify for fintech in the next five years?

 

At this stage of the health and financial crisis and in view of what the international situation is telling us, it is probably very risky to plan ahead with regards to the economic situation. But it is clear that the current crisis will consolidate the Fintech sector, with the most robust and mature companies probably being better able to weather the crisis through damage limitation. As will the most agile companies, because the ability to adapt and react will be decisive in the coming months. The full-digital trend has speeded up considerably in the last quarter. And we could well see some traditional players emerge stronger after the crisis. The boom in working from home, and the demonstration that infrastructures were generally capable of absorbing the sudden overload of data flows, has pushed CIOs to bet on full-digital at a speed we have never seen before. The last technological and cognitive limitations have finally been lifted. It is therefore a safe bet that with full-digital, the full-cloud will follow, even in traditionally very cautious sectors. For example, Fintechs which are active in the data security, IoT and KYC segments, or in providing B2C services such as call centres, are likely to receive renewed attention. But we will have to wait until the end of the crisis and an assessment of the extent of the coming recession to properly measure the real impact on the fintech ecosystem.

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