Bank One Boosts In-House IT

At a time when companies are laying off large numbers of employees, Bank One Corp., the nation's sixth-largest bank, wants to hire about 600 IT workers in the Chicago and Columbus, Ohio, areas over the next three months.

Bank One plans to add systems and client-server engineers, development systems architects, and Web developers to its IT workforce of 4,000. Bank One needs IT expertise as it begins an extensive systems upgrade and integration project that will bolster its customer-service initiatives, CIO Austin Adams says. Bank One is also consolidating the services of its Firstusa .com and Wingspan.com Internet properties into one site that's accessible via Bankone.com.

Bank One, which has grown through acquisitions, is converting the customer information and deposit systems used in its Illinois and Michigan branches to a single system through which all company branches operate. Having all branches operate from a single system will make it much easier for a Bank One customer in Detroit to conduct transactions with the bank while traveling in Chicago, Adams says. "Once the systems are converted," he adds, "you can do business with us as if you were anywhere in the franchise, which isn't as easy to do today."

Bank One, which outsources systems-integration to AT&T and IBM, is expanding its in-house workforce and reducing its dependence on contract employees. "It's about $10 to $30 per hour cheaper to have full-time employees, and it helps us to build expertise and experience," Adams says.

The bank holding company, which spends about $2 billion per year on technology, has also tripled its IT recruiting staff from three or four recruiters to 10 to 12.

"The systems integration and E-commerce projects seem to be mission-critical to Bank One, so it doesn't surprise me that Bank One made this move to invest in its IT staff," Meta Group analyst Maria Schafer says.

The dot-com shakeout has given Bank One the opportunity to improve the quality of its IT staff, Adams says. "With the problems in the Internet environment, this is the best time in a decade to hire tech talent."