Towards a data-driven technology roadmap for the bank of the future: Exploring big data analytics to support technology roadmapping

Abstract

The South African banking industry has evolved from simply plugging technologies into its systems to a data-intensive domain. With data disrupting every known market, there is a significant need to take advantage of the magnitude and detail of data captured by the enterprise to augment traditional technology roadmapping. With banks seeking more ways to exploit product trends, market dynamics, customer behaviour and emerging technologies using analytics, this study provides insights to developing a data-driven technology roadmap (TRM) for the bank of the future by harnessing big data analytics (BDA) tools and techniques. The study accentuates the significance of banks’ response to advancing digital and data disruptions by continuously scanning and searching their internal and external environments to respond to modern-day challenges of planning and understanding innovation pathways of emerging technologies. The study used non-probability sampling, specifically snowball sampling, to choose and collect data. The study results confirmed that principles of roadmapping for the bank of the future based on the proposed framework include data literacy, data governance and culture as fundamentals to being data-led or data-driven. In addition, these principles include synthesising expert knowledge to teach or correct data models and remove bias. • A technology roadmap is a technique to understand and visualise innovation pathways. • Data literacy forms a foundation for being data-driven. • Expert knowledge aids in removing bias, correct machines and promoting responsible use of algorithms for data-driven decision-making. • Value creation and innovative analytics can be obtained by processing and analysing large datasets from big data. • The bank of the future delivers utility through coopetition.