Abstract:

The organization of budgeting processes for ITProjects in Swiss banks is a subject, which is almost unexplored. To gather different budgeting methods and identify actual challenges banks are facing, a thorough literature review was carried out. To find out how the individual budgeting processes of the banks support the ability to react to fast changing market conditions, how they differ from each other as well as to identify the main problems of the budgeting process in place, an interview with five banks have been conducted. As a result, the Swiss banks are mostly prepared for fast changing markets even though a strong relation between IT project budget processes could not be confirmed. Furthermore, Swiss banks use traditional budgeting methods in combination with better budgeting methods. Regarding the main problems of current budgeting processes different areas have been identified, like the accuracy of the plan and the real implementation or the business IT alignment.