In Search of the IM “Killer” Application -- June 26, 2006
Earlier this week I was speaking with Webster, a regional EVP in one of the nations largest integrated retail banks. Representing an organization with substantial assets in consumer and mortgage products and services, we chatted about global impacts, HELOC’s, exotic mortgages, credit fraud, house-holding, cross-selling, and decreasing consumer credit worthiness. While other competitors are downsizing and conducting realignments to reign in costs and excess product “production,” Webster’s task is to add several hundred field level personnel this year in an effort to capture market share while materially increasing top-line revenues in four key states.
The conversation was routine until we started talking about competitive, consumer, and business intelligence, and the use of this information by field personnel in near real-time delivery. After all, if you have access to greater integrated information, you empower corporate employees and brokers to make value-based decisions that have less risk and greater profitability. My shock came with Webster’s pronouncement that technology for their efforts was ubiquitous for them and the industry, and the true challenge was people and process simplification. I repeated to him, “Technology is ubiquitous?” “Yes” he confirmed, “every bank or mortgage firm has access to nearly identical applications and information regardless of what the consultants say. Our ability to leverage these standard offerings is not about advancements in this technology, it truly resides with the back office and our ability to service and retain our current and growing base of customers.”
For technologists and IT personnel, I’m sure there would be resounding choruses of “no way,” “he’s wrong,” and “another executive discounting all infrastructure needed to conduct business,” not to mention the other sayings and refrains I cannot print here. However, if we look beyond this statement at its face value, we can uncover the real challenge, implications, and constraints facing evolving solution sets like enterprise instant messaging (EIM) for industries like FSI.
First, he’s not saying technology has no place or differentiation for their market expansion. For a business person, technology must have a definitive payback for the product or service as a competitor can easily implement a similar solution (e.g., SAP, Oracle, or IBM). The real value of deployment comes with a clear understanding of how it quantitatively benefits the employee base or customers directly. No guesses or “new-age” projections, but real numbers and measurements.
Second, there must be standard offerings for industry issues rather than the historical mentality of using technology to improve a process with the hope that as first-adopters, we got it right (translation, let’s write everything from “scratch”). Therefore, point-based solutions and bots that offer limited functionality may be useful if they are transitory to a greater set of offerings. The idea of utilizing a release level of features, functions, and costs to assist business goals will be the norm as a direct linkage must be defined and adhered to (as compared to the old method of doing it at the beginning and hoping that the projections came true).
Third, the idea of technology for process enablement and organizational productivity is no longer assumed to be the only method to achieve rapid results. Furthermore, the complete life-cycle of adoption and productivity improvement must be modeled, and it must be implemented iteratively with continuous improvement in mind. For EIM, this is an ideal situation due to an ever-increasing baseline of technology improvements and industry solutions that can be compartmentalized and enhanced. The problem is that the immaturity of EIM development and vendors coupled with exuberant industry promotion is creating expectations that cannot be met let alone redirected to today’s reality.
Bottom line, EIM will need to move from the bot mentality to an iterative base of process compartmentalized solutions. If EIM is to have a “killer app” is must be more than entertainment, two-way communication, and as an email extension or replacement. EIM must move rapidly towards an off-the-shelf set of modules and solutions that are industry centric and integrated with known productivity and industry vertical applications. Executives will be eager to embrace new customer contact solutions, niche product delivery, and as extensions of varied channel management if and only if we can develop the metrics and baselines of value and profit.
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