"The nirvana is a scalable platform," Cash said. "Organizations are looking at different things to achieve cost reduction like multiple processing centers, offshoring, and collaborative use of information, but by and large industry is looking at it from an incremental perspective. For example, a lot of organizations have been slow to move with electronic document management."

Cash said enabling BPM with SOA is the first step where information can be managed end to end using "the power of technology".

"The ability that organizations like FileNet (owned by IBM) bring with process orchestration really starts to generate opportunities for businesses that run large processing operations for compliance and cost. Automation all of a sudden becomes much more palatable," he said.

"When I started this journey within ANZ organizations weren't adopting SAO to do a lot of the work you have staff for. Ultimately you need customer service offices but you don't need people making decisions when you can codify the basis in which they are executing those activities."

Cash said all of the banks are in the same position because the information is just not held electronically to be able to be presented back to customers.