Donnie Slavens, Vice President and Infrastructure Manager at First Financial Bank

Do you see any trade-off between innovation and standardization? Can you give me an example? 

“The young generation wants to do banking from their phones, rather than at a branch. We like that because it introduces new technology. Some drive-thru lines don’t have a live person at the window anymore. Instead they have an ‘interactive teller’ – a person on a video screen – who may not actually be at that building, but at a corporate office. It is very innovative, but the standardization behind it requires thinking about whether we have the right policies and procedures in place, the right security, even the right band width to support the video feed. Then there is cost, architecture, infrastructure and sometimes even new people. Now we have to have the right person who will be okay sitting in front of the camera, in a properly built room, with the right sound and lighting- there are a lot of things that go into just that aspect of it. We may not be driving innovation because we are not a big bank, but we realize that we must stay current with innovative practices. What we do offer our customers is that when we get there, it will safe and secure and it will be the right technology for our customer’s needs.”