Bank ABC

Luca Piezzo, IT Operations Lead, Bank ABC

Luca Piezzo, IT Operations Lead at Bank ABC, embodies the dual responsibility of keeping operations secure and resilient while advancing transformation across the bank’s technology landscape. With experience spanning multiple industries, Piezzo brings a pragmatic, field-tested approach to navigating complexity, building adaptable teams and aligning IT with business strategy in a world where technology lifecycles are measured in years rather than decades.

Running Secure Operations and Driving Change

To be very brief, my team and I are constantly working to either Run the Bank–IT Operations activities with an eye on security, and Transform the Bank, supporting projects and continuously improving the way we work and how we use technologies.

“Complexity is something we can’t control, so let’s focus on principles that never fail—consolidation, simplification and it will align with business strategy almost immediately”

I like to think that the different perspectives I’ve gained in my career make me more unbiased when it comes to “market standards.” Diversity is always an asset, especially in IT where things change very fast and we can’t afford biased decisions backed by a “we always did it this way” culture.

Simplifying Complexity, Building Resilient Teams

Am I the only one noticing this is relatively new? Especially in the last decade, executives are often faced with competing narratives and hype around emerging technologies, which can make it challenging to distinguish long-term value from short-lived trends. Many tools promise to solve problems caused by other tools–all of this with a consistent threat of lock-in. I’ll get straight to the point: every decision taken is a lock-in, no matter what it is and how severe it might be. Avoiding this threat is causing paralysis and overengineering, which are the worst enemies of control, cost optimization and sometimes even innovation, since implementation takes longer than expected.

All of this is preventing IT from properly supporting the business with its strategy. My point of view is to bring back common sense in decision-making–complexity is something we can’t control, so let’s focus on principles that will never fail (consolidation, simplification, etc.) and you’ll see how ITOM will be aligned to business strategy almost immediately.

It’s clear that in today’s IT world, people no longer have a comfort zone. Nothing lasts more than a few years. Teams must embrace this culture; it’s a never-ending game of uncertainty where things happen very fast, reshaping our future. The challenge is to cope with this uncertainty in an environment constantly exposed to new threats and one that needs to adapt quickly to any change. How to do it? Don’t get attached to perfect-looking blueprints or superdetailed internal guidelines. The longer you take to perfectly blueprint something, the sooner that blueprint becomes obsolete and this impacts competitiveness from a business standpoint. Cloud, automation and marketplace-like plugins are supporting this fast-changing world without sacrificing security and rigor.

Uniting Business and IT For the Future

My piece of advice is that there will no longer be an IT Operating Model. More than 95% of business decisions have direct impacts on IT systems–can we still say business and IT are somehow different? Digital transformation has demonstrated that IT and business are tightly coupled. Competitiveness and a unique user experience come from business working closely with IT through a comprehensive operating model which doesn’t belong exclusively to either side. Moreover, the best of AI is yet to come. Businesses that will still be here in the next decade are the ones embracing this massive change in thinking and working with datacentricity as a key principle. Let’s break down barriers with modern organizational structures that allow innovation to flow throughout the company, cooperating with startups as well to scale this model with an ecosystem-oriented approach.