5 Building Blocks for Modernizing ITSM in Banking

Banking IT teams are on the frontlines of modernizing their industry. As digital transformation expectations climb and regulations grow more complex, banks are under pressure to deliver a stellar customer experience without risking compliance or stability.

Many leaders turn to new tools in hopes of a quick fix. But layering more technology onto outdated systems and processes rarely works: Research shows that 53% of financial institutions using legacy systems are struggling to scale their operations due to data silos and production bottlenecks.

Real progress comes from rethinking how teams work, not just what they work with. That’s why leading banks are taking a modern approach to IT service management (ITSM) with Atlassian—an integrated platform that supports everything from process redesign to AI-driven workflows—and its global network of solution partners who specialize in tailoring the platform to organizations of all sizes.

First, banks must focus on improving foundational processes and cleaning up data inputs, then they can layer on automation and AI in ways that make a real difference. In this post, we’ll introduce five building blocks successful banks follow to modernize IT operations.

Building Block #1: Start with Operational Reality

Banks use more than 60% of their overall tech spend on running existing applications and systems, leaving little room for innovation and even less margin for wasted investment.

To lay the groundwork for ITSM modernization, it’s critical to start with a clear understanding of how work gets done today and where you need to make improvements.

• How to get a clear picture of your operational reality:
• Document how work happens, step by step, to create a clear baseline before making changes.
• Map key IT processes end-to-end to uncover inefficiencies and potential automation opportunities across the business.

Assess risk at every stage of the process, identifying where changes could create gaps in control or visibility that would cause compliance issues later on.

For most organizations, this exercise produces a clear, visual map of the teams and workflows IT supports, from developers shipping code to HR onboarding new employees to customer service resolving issues.

“To get real value from AI—or any new solution—you need to look at your underlying operations in parallel. Tooling and transformation work best when they go hand in hand. Otherwise, you risk reinforcing the same inefficiencies you're trying to eliminate.”

         – Adam Jackson, Global Head of ESM Practice at Valiantys

Building Block #2: Strengthen the Foundation Before Scaling

Once IT has a clear picture of how work happens today, the next step is ensuring that critical systems and data are in a clean and optimized state. In highly regulated environments, modernization efforts are only as strong as the infrastructure beneath them.

That’s why a tidy, well-structured configuration management database (CMDB) is essential. It anchors ITSM operations by giving teams full visibility into their assets and dependencies, a must for managing risk and driving automation at scale.

With Atlassian, banks can use Jira Service Management’s native CMDB to transition away from legacy tools with minimal overhead. The platform makes it easy to stand up a centralized, structured view of configuration data and maintain it over time.

Best practices for building this foundation include:

• Establish defined roles for data owners and stewards to ensure CMDB accuracy and alignment with operational needs.
• Deploy or refine the CMDB in manageable phases tied to clear business goals (e.g., setting up the CMDB to track priority customer applications and their dependencies to lower incident resolution time).
• Leverage automated discovery tools to populate and update the CMDB, reducing manual errors and ensuring asset data stays up to date.

“Jira Service Management allows us to take advantage of the latest and greatest features, but our number one priority is to keep our core competency very focused on delivering value, experiences, and services for our customers.”

          – Daniel Broten, VP of Technology at EQ Bank (Atlassian Customer)

Building Block #3: Treat AI as a Design Principle, Not a Final Layer

With mounting pressure to “do more with less,” many banking IT teams are exploring AI to improve efficiency and scale service delivery without increasing headcount. Recent research indicates that 11% of financial institutions have implemented generative AI, and another 43% are actively working on it.

Successful AI implementation starts with intentional design, embedded into systems and processes from the beginning rather than tacked on as an afterthought. More than half (55%) of companies cite outdated systems and processes as their biggest barrier to AI, highlighting the need to build a strong AI foundation before bringing in new tools.

Best practices for AI-first thinking and design include:

• Start with process mapping (see Building Block #1) to understand where pain points exist and which handoffs are slowing things down.
• Use these friction areas to define targeted use cases for AI (e.g., defect detection, risk monitoring, sentiment analysis) tied to operational goals such as reducing incident volume or improving audit readiness.
• Connect AI to clean, centralized sources of information, such as well-maintained Confluence spaces (for documentation and knowledge sharing) or Jira Service Management records (for service and incident history), to deliver accurate outputs.
• That’s why savvy banks are turning to Atlassian partners, like Valiantys, who understand that AI is most effective when treated as a design feature of ITSM, not a standalone add-on.
  
  

“Most of our AI conversations start with process. Let’s see where you’ve tried to automate, let’s understand where you’ve already tried to improve, because that’s going to help us find the underlying issues that are causing you pain.”

          – Paul Spears, Head of AI at Valiantys

Building Block #4: Ensure Secure, Auditable Collaboration

As banks adopt more modern ways of working (e.g., hybrid teams, cloud platforms, AI tools), security and compliance must remain a priority across every facet of IT operations. This is especially critical as regulatory frameworks like the Digital Operations Resilience Act (DORA) push financial institutions to demonstrate control over operational risk, data governance, and third-party access.

Yet in the rush to modernize, many IT teams are finding that visibility and control have become fragmented across tools and departments, creating risk and making audits more difficult. Facilitating security and compliance requires environments that are structured, traceable, and built for automation.

Best practices for promoting secure and auditable collaboration include:

• Use role-based access controls (RBAC) to restrict who can view, edit, or act on sensitive information.
• Maintain centralized records of all ITSM activity (e.g., incidents, changes, approvals) to ensure traceability for audits and internal reviews.
• Automate documentation and reporting where possible, so audit trails are generated continuously, not retroactively.