Learn how BNY Mellon activated its tech team to keep employees and operations running smoothly through COVID-19.
Transcription:
I tell you what, Audrey, we are wrapping up the show in complete style. Today, we have our friends from BNY Mellon hanging out with us. And I've been learning a little bit about their response to the whole COVID thing. And it's pretty amazing amount of work that had to happen. And we're going to hear that tale today. I'm pretty pumped up about I think it's cool stuff.
That's great. Thanks for being here. I think it's called Blind Melon. And to see how Jonathan comes from the old days, right? Yeah, I keep we got to keep telling him that that's not what it's called anymore. That's right. It's cool to have you on the show. So let's so let's jump in and introduce everyone who's gonna talk and what the roles are. We have our own investor on the phone. Not old. He's just a long time.
Exactly. Thanks, Audrey. Great to be here. Yep. Dave Sylvester. I'm the Chief Operating Officer for one of our technology divisions.
Hi, I'm Jeff manual. I'm the Chief Operating Officer for our technology production services organization. Great.
And Hi, I'm Trey Randall and I'm the global technology campus leader.
Wow, we got the Like I said, I do the whole cast and crew comes to all things can get them remote and operating and just keeping things moving smoothly. So I can't wait to hear your story, dad. A good boy.
So you want to kick it off Dave and set the stage?
Yeah, absolutely. So that that'd be great. You know, I think all of us looking back at the last few months of COVID. You know, certainly that has impacted all of us on a very personal level. But of course, we can't forget about the impact to the economy. And since BMI Mellon is such a big part of world financial markets, you know, managing trillions of dollars and many, many transactions every single day. The response to this was really important that for us to get it right. And I think it is a really interesting story. A great story of technology leadership, a collaboration with all of the different groups around the organization. You know, we're we're a firm that really focuses on resiliency. The world financial markets demanded of us, the our clients, expected of us. And so it's probably no surprise that in early March, we had been watching the virus, we had already started a pretty small scale pilot of sending some business critical folks home working remotely. And, you know, as things started to really heat up quickly, we realized we had to completely pivot and turn that into a large scale exercise with just about all of our 50,000 employees around the globe working remotely. 50.
Going remote, and you're talking about trillions of dollars of transactions happening every day.
Yep. So yeah, very China. Look, looking back on it now and thinking about, you know, I don't think we could have really paused to think too much about it. Had we had it, we really thought about it in those terms. But, you know, we we had to mobilize very fast. And as I said it was a an effort across the organization. So technology plus our enterprise resiliency office, plus operations, and a lot of things had to happen in short order. So some things that, you know, as a technology organization, we that's what we are, we're not a necessarily a supply chain organization. But we became one very quickly trying to figure out how to move equipment around the world. And I we're going to share a few stories with you about how we did that some pretty interesting things that occurred. And, you know, really just marshaling everybody that we had around the globe, but you know, in particular, all of us being very involved in the Pittsburgh effort, just an amazing show of collaboration and spirit from everyone. I remember those couple of weeks in March when we were still in the office, a lot of us still all together around a conference table trying to figure this out. Definitely not social distance. So Looking back, we probably should have done that a little bit differently. But, but it all worked out. And, you know, I think just you've got probably some stories to tell for sure about how we got started.
Yeah, so I'll call it the first Friday. It was that Friday, right before St. Patrick's Day. We were in the midst of making that pivot, as Dave said, and it was 330 on a Friday afternoon. And we realized, you know, we got the first call to action to say we have a ton of laptops that in Pittsburgh that need to be unboxed received into our asset management system and image and be ready to go by Monday. So to get that kind of ask on a 330 it was like, you know, a big inhale but an all honestly, what I would consider true Pittsburgh fashion, I put an email out to my network and by four o'clock had about 15 people ready to give up their weekend to do whatever it was going to take. And these were folks that this is not the Our day job. There were everyone from all of our organizations, not technologists, they were different types of roles but they were ready to do what it whatever it took to get it done. And it was so nice to see like that. The perceive silos just immediately went away very early on at this. So yeah, that was a that was like the moment that we knew that this was gonna be like, it was a good thing. The parade was canceled that weekend, so you have plenty of time. Hey, honey, it's so funny. Listen to you talk about St. Patrick's Day. I'm like, does that even happened? Yeah, it did not. Let me tell you how we celebrate St. Patrick's Day. So as just said, you know, we started on Boxing and imaging and getting all those laptops ready. We had laptops, we had monitors. We had so much equipment that we had to get out of Pittsburgh to a lot of other locations. We and and you know, the other interesting thing was so many of the commercial shippers were just crushed. So we were just Trying to see if we could get, you know, the typical shippers to come in and help us and, and nobody was available. Everybody was just crushed. So just as one example, St. Patrick's day morning, we contracted with a busing company. We got party buses, a coach bus, and a bunch of us showed up at the loading dock at 430. That morning, oh my god, we spent the next several hours loading hundreds and hundreds of monitors into these buses to get them to where they needed to go. And that coach bus was making three stops, stops at three different northeast locations with a stop in the New York metro area where the bus was met with a fleet of private drivers who unloaded a bunch of those monitors and took them to other locations including a lot of employees houses. So it was just one of those examples of you know, doing whatever it takes to get the job done. It was just just really pretty amazing to watch and to be a part of for sure.
That's what I'm talking about private bus is showing up in your face. So, what's the future? Now? What do you what do you all think about the future?
Well, you know, let's get there in a second. But I just wanted to cap this off with a couple stats just to kind of show you just how big this effort was. So almost just shy of 10,000 devices, laptops, desktops and Chromebooks that we put together and got out in our employees hands, just shy of 6000 monitors, just to give you an idea, and there's some other things I think we want to come back to that we're really proud of a couple moments that occurred during the midst of the crisis that we wanted to mention to you, but I think, you know, the current state, of course, just like all of us, just like Pittsburgh Technology Council, and, you know, all of your listeners, likely most of us are all, you know, working remotely working via video conference, you know, obviously a very different environment. But, you know, we had to sort of punctuate the the never ending days of zoom meetings with yet more zoom meetings. Right. So we we had to make sure that people were feeling connected. So we hosted a number of all Pittsburgh technology, open mic sessions, so that we could all get together and hear what was happening and make sure we were all connected and still, you know, obviously, want to make sure people were safe and healthy, but also working as best we could. We did I think one of the earliest virtual happy hours that I can remember people talking about, right, at this point, people are tired of those. I know, but, but we did one of those. So and, and, you know, we're also we've been hiring throughout this process, including, you know, new college graduates and summer interns, right. And just imagine trying to pull that off in a completely virtual setting and Trey was really leading the charge on that so she's probably sounds like obviously that became pretty crazy for you but was up with
that. It did. I mean, when I when we got to June, we had to get 124 interns across the US and in Europe, virtually all On boarded into our company, and we have another class starting in just about two weeks 133 in India and 96 more in the United States. So we're getting everybody on the ground running their laptops. I mean, they have to be there before they start, which is a feat as you could hear from Dave and Jesse already. We have to jump right into WebEx based training because they're new, they need to learn all about the systems we use and learn how to navigate being why Mellon, we also sent them some welcome packages, which was really great. I think they've really appreciated them. They're like pens, notebooks, glasses, cups, mugs, and even some like wireless headphones. So they could, you know, be a little more comfortable with their time at home. I think the best part is though, is the kind of virtual, you know, happy hours they've talked about. We didn't just do happy hours. We were you know, doing the normal bi weekly check ins. Everybody has those office hours, but we're starting trivia night with these interns. Ask Me Anything with some CIOs and leadership across technology lunch and learns with these thought leaders and executives and they are really enjoying this networking opportunity that we're giving them virtually that we didn't expect to be able to give them.
Well, how did you? How are you able? I mean, first of all, that's amazing. And you should sell that as a service. How did you able to rally everyone around, do all those different kinds of tasks because they're more intense.
They are more intense and it took a lot of build up. I mean, for the interns alone, we have a great team and I honestly could never have done it alone. That would have been a daunting task. But we have really energetic program managers that work with every group within our technology organization. And they've reached out to these leaders. I mean, Nancy Rita, one of our leaders, she was right in there giving them welcome sessions. We have different individuals giving new Java training that hasn't been even given before. So everybody was really excited and we just wanted to pump everyone up for this. This is the biggest class you've ever had. And we want to keep having bigger and bigger classes. So we need to show our girth with this. We need to make everybody is excited.
I feel like I know we're running out of time. And I know I asked you about the future. But number one, I think there's a business model inside of here that other people can learn from. Absolutely, there's some way to capture a use case. In terms of your work. I don't want to add more work to you. But I think they get the word out, actually did not give up on interns, your staff rallied around, got yourself operational, you kept yourself creative with a lot of good outcomes. Jonathan, and I could tell you the amount of companies that even wrestled with thinking about bringing three interns on exactly, you guys are amazing. Like it is such a cool story
all about leadership. It's all about leadership. And I can see it from the three of you here that we're doing the zoom podcast with.
Yeah, I think it's leadership. And I think it's also the spirit of the folks on the team. I mean, everybody just did what they needed to do. And if you think about it, you know, those late days of March that was a month and quarter end for us, the markets were going Crazy so much volatility, record transaction volumes and we didn't miss a beat and that's all a credit to our great team. It was really amazing.
What a cool story. I'm so glad you guys got to stop by and tell us a little bit of it just people everyone out there knows that DNI Nolan. As I say Bank of New York Mellon really kicks butt man simple like great. Yeah. Great. What a great was great to visit with you.
Absolutely. so much. Thanks for having us. And thanks, everybody for tuning into tech by radio tonight. It's always a pleasure bringing you these awesome kick butt stories on Pittsburgh's tech sector. This has been Jonathan Kersting. And this is Audrey Russo. Learn more about the tech council by going to PGH tech.org. Got a brand new website. Check it out.
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