Agility; rapidly adapting to change

From a series of interviews by CVL – with senior execs from Allianz to News International and from Barclays to O2 – the summary is that ‘agile service development’ is all about getting the right product to market faster.

The aim of the survey was to find out how UK business is adopting and implementing smarter ways of getting new services to market. the conclusion was that ‘agility creates both immediate and lasting benefits to business bringing new products to market’.

- agile approaches are difficult to implement but worth the effort as they improve success rates, reduce risk & lead to better quality in a shorter time

- overall efficiency has been improved by those who have made the change, with quality assurance being introduced earlier in the process

Download the report here

Leave your wallet at home, use your mobile

There’s been a long trail of activity in Mobile Banking & Payments over recent years and some banks would seem to be on the 2nd launch of mobile banking now – there is an upswell of focus on the mobile phone as a serious tool for payments and banking, with SMS and NFC featuring as the popular technologies.

That’s not so surprising when you remember 1) Mobile phones are poised to become the world’s first ubiquitous technology and 2) The cost to acquire customers means banks* are searching for the edge over the competition. But knowing there’s an opportunity and exploiting that opportunity successfully are two different things altogether.

In this wave of Mobile Banking initiatives I’m intrigued to see how the strategies of Banks, Mobile Operators and Retailers will unfold. I’m sure we will see more announcements like this one in the year ahead – I look forward to the fun of the game – who will be the key players and what tactics will they use to get ahead?

But I will close with two little warnings a)don’t lose sight of the fact that the internet is going mobile and so all your online investment can and should be leveraged not ignored when you get seduced by new technology standards for mobiles; b)mobile is one channel and in the customer’s mind it matters how you link that with your other channels so think that through before you get carried away in any one channel.

*Note: Not just banks, all consumer businesses are looking for an edge & many are competing with banks for the consumer relationship (by which they mean money)

Facebook, the fun side of Web 2.0

I’m reliably informed that the term Web 2.0 was first coined at an O’Reilly Media conference in the States in 2004. According to Wikipedia Web 2.0 “attempts to define a perceived second generation of web-based communities and hosted services such as social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies….which aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users.”

In 2006 “You” was awarded Time Magazine Person of the Year, in praise of the accelerating success of on-line collaboration and interaction by millions of users around the world. Wikipedia was the first particular Web 2.0 service mentioned, followed by YouTube and MySpace. Over the last few months Facebook has become the No.1 social networking tool in the UK. Latest stats from Alexa (www.alexa.com) show that the site is now second only to Google, and in the last few days Microsoft invested $240m for a 1.6% stake, valuing the firm at $15bn. What next for Facebook? Who knows really? But let’s remember the root of its success is that Facebook is for fun. It was created by and for college kids, and now it has extended to those of us who didn’t grow up with the Internet.

Have a go – it’s easy to set yourself up with an account. Just go to www.facebook.com and click on ‘Sign Up’. If you haven’t yet tried it and you want to practice by adding a ‘friend’, feel free to search on Bill James and give me a ‘poke’ (don’t worry, it’s a Facebook term for attracting someone’s attention). Now even as an older, business-minded generation sign up, I continue to insist this is a network for fun and I like to use it to joke with, and keep in touch with friends. If you feel you want to mix work and pleasure there are some business-related tools amongst all the goofy comments and photos available to members. For example, Facebook makes it easy for anyone to start their own group on whatever topic they like, so businesses can create a company events board, staff intranets, recruitment forums and even customer feedback areas. For a small fee, users can post surveys on any topic and make them available to the Facebook network of their choice – a great market research tool for companies targeting the Facebook demographic of 25-40 year olds. Users can also post events free of charge, invite all their friends, and publicise them within their network and groups. As well as creating a company group with recruitment functionality, companies can also use Facebook to headhunt. Looking for a C# Web Developer in Belgium? Go into the Belgian network and search with C# in the ‘job’ field, and see what you can find. And what about LinkedIn and Myspace? Well not only is Facebook overtaking Myspace but my kids tell me that never really worked for them as teenagers anyway. As for Linkedin, well it is a great business network and useful for making professional contacts – I use it a lot and find it really useful but it doesn’t keep me engaged when I visit the site. The reason for that is that it’s very functional but really quite boring – and who wants that even in business?

Ten things you didn’t know about Facebook:

1. Oxford University proctors have used it to monitor the activity of their students

2. There are over 34 million Facebook users worldwide – the largest group is in London

3. It is the second most visited site in the UK

4. A recent survey found that 43% of UK employers block access to Facebook

5. A court ruling in September ‘07 means that members’ profiles could soon be available to search engines

6. 41% of Facebook users are willing to divulge personal information to strangers

7. Facebook holds over 1.7 billion photographs

8. Miss New Jersey was blackmailed by someone using photographs she had posted to Facebook (involving pumpkins)

9. A university in Pennsylvania denied a teaching degree to a student for allegedly promoting under-age drinking on her Facebook profile

10. Facebook has only been available to the general public for 13 months

Banking on the future

I had the pleasure of organising, hosting and facilitating a breakfast briefing session recently for senior online strategy people from the world of Retail Banking – most of the big banks were represented. What a fascinating online and multi-channel strategy session it turned out to be!

The theme was designing & delivering success online and the emphasis on learning from other sectors and new business models with case studies/opinions shared by two high achievers who’ve “been there done that” – James Alexander (Egg & Zopa) and Indira Thambiah (Argos).

My view of the opportunity for banks to design and deliver success has been fueled by the discussion on the day, the great thing is that there is loads of enthusiasm from within – that things can be improved and that the online channel must be viewed within the context of the multi-channel service offering – everyone attending said they found it thought provoking so hopefully new/improved services will follow.

I for one want to be a part of making that happen!