« March 2012 | Main | May 2012 »
The wireless world of connectivity we live in has risks, and the greatest risk has to be infection of technology.
Technology viruses like trojans and man-in-the-middle look mild today, when you see the tsunami of malware that’s out there.
Just a year ago, I was saying that banks should offer advice to consumer about security and privacy policies related to the use of social media and mobile media.
Now it’s ten times worse, with the names of the day being the honey for the pot.
So last year’s “Justin Bieber gets a boner” becomes this year’s “Justin Bieber stabbed by a crazed fan”.
In fact, facebook is the most scammy site in the world, with all of the ideas from fictional news stories - “OMG! Mother went to jail!” scam; to fictional information you would be desperate to know if you’re a fan – “Justin Bieber’s cell phone number” scam; to the “guess who’s been viewing your facebook profile” scam.
Scam upon scam upon scam.
And it’s far easier to trick someone in this socially connected world into a viral malware than ever before.
Think about it.
Some things you get used to.
You are locked out of your PayPal account. It is urgent that you re-enter your details or your account will be deleted by close of business Friday.
I am Unga Bunga, the grandson of Great Unga Bunga, who died leaving $5,236,456,123.05 in his estate. Please help me get it out ..
OMG, have you seen what they have been saying about you over here?
I get used to all of these as a heavy social mobile net user.
But some are more tricky.
For example, Lauren Vis is the Managing Director of KAS Bank and will be speaking at the Financial Services Club in June.
When looking for his profile details, I found this scam email:
Re: From L. Vis
KAS BANK. Suite 560 Salisbury House
London Wall Broadgate London
EC2M 5NU,United Kingdom
Tel: +447011137826
Dear Friend,
Dear Friend
I am Mr. Lauren Vis I work with KAS Bank here in London. In my department, being the Private Banking Manager (Greater London Regional Office), I discovered an abandoned sum of £19,500,000 GBP (Nineteen million five hundred thousand pounds) in an account that belongs to one of our foreign customers …
Nothing too clever about the Nigerian 419 scam here, except that the name and address details for the bank are all correct and bona fide. Slightly more intelligent.
Or take the one that had me click the other day.
Doing the usual stuff on the iPhone a note came through that a FEDEX parcel could not be delivered and to click on the order details.
Now I was expecting a FEDEX order and so I clicked … and immediately had a computer infection.
Source: Activeresponse.org
These days, regular airline bookings and related orders come through and I just ignore them, but many wouldn’t.
Or not for the first time.
For these reasons, consumers may rightly fear being compromised in their online dealings.
For example, 63% of webmasters whose websites get hacked don't know how the compromise occurred, and only six percent detect the compromise themselves.
Twenty percent of all households have at least one bot-infected computer, and 5% of all enterprise 'assets' are infected.
And typically, every other computer has some sort of infection.
Yes every other computer.
1 in 2.
And don’t think that by being a smug MAC user, you escape notice.
A recent malware infected over 600,000 MACs, mostly in the US, and 75% of all MACs are now believed to be susceptible to malware attacks.
And mobile is making this worse.
Source: Patrickwagner.com
A recent study conducted by Websense, and the Ponemon Institute found that 53 percent of organizations experience data breaches due to insecure mobile devices.
No wonder another study by the US Federal Reserve found that, among users of mobile phones who haven’t yet adopted mobile banking, about half said they were “concerned” about security.
And rightly so, you may feel, as 70% of mobile banking apps are not secure according to a study by myprivatebanking.
Add on to this that cybercrooks have worked out how to get around OTP and other mobile bank security systems and, in a more luddite Skinner moment, I’m thinking about going back to using cheques, branches and cash only in the future.
We seemingly spend all of our time bashing banks these days, me included.
They’re either slow, unresponsive and ignorant of change, or they’re greedy, arrogant and screwing the economy.
You can’t win.
That’s why my new book was going to be called: “don’t tell my mum I work for a bank … she thinks I’m a piano player in a whorehouse”, but that title’s already taken.
Now however, there is some good news.
There is one UK mainstream bank that is leading the pack.
They’re innovating on the high street, in their card operations and in their mainstream banking services.
Which bank?
Barclays.
It’s hard to praise Barclays when they are 1000% tax-evasive, but when you see innovative bank services you have to fez up and applaud.
Why am I so effusive about Barclays?
Because they actually get it.
Barclaycard caught my attention some time ago.
First, there was the major campaign for contactless payments from waterslides to rollercoasters which was an integrated campaign with social media games via facebook and iPhone competitions.
They were the first bank to introduce mobile contactless in the UK, and they’re also running innovative programs around crowdsourcing customer views in the USA with Barclaycard Ring.
But it’s not just the card operations as there was also the Barclays branch of the future in Leicester Square, and more.
Now, there’s Pingit.
I saw the new ad for the first time yesterday:
It immediately made me download the app, and it’s pretty simple although they ask for a lot of upfront security processes which will put off a number of users.
The real power of Pingit is that it is a really simple idea – use Barclays to send mobile payments – and, more than this, that it’s a method of capturing the consumers’ and corporates’ attention.
The reason being that the app sits on your phone with Barclays branding all over it, whether you are a Barclays customer or not.
Simple but brilliant.
And if you don’t believe Barclays innovation strategy is working, here’s an email trail I received recently from an innovative friend:
From: Go Getter, innovator
To: Mrs. Y, Commercial Banking, ABC Bank
Hello Y
I was wondering why your bank reporting on the client account never shows transactions falling on a weekend? I believe under Faster Payments banks can clear payments during weekends. It looks like all the weekend transactions show up on the following Monday.
Is this a limitation within your bank or the type of account – and can it be changed?
Many thanks,
GG
From: Mr. X, Commercial Banking, ABC Bank
To: Go Getter, innovator
Dear GG
I work alongside Mrs. Y who passed on your query to me. I have spoken with our super helpful support desk people this morning who confirmed that even with Faster Payments they only clear the next business working day. They also advised that its not even anything to do with the type of account or their software and therefore cannot be amended. If you have any further questions or require technical assistance in the future then its best to call our super helpful support desk people on 0870 321 5432 (calls cost £85 per minute).
Regards, Mr. X
From: Go Getter, innovator
To: Entrepreneur, CEO
I’ve been thinking about our banking relationship with ABC Bank, and would like to seriously consider changing banking partner.
ABC do not strike me as interested in innovations for consumers or businesses. They’re also somewhat insipid. As an example: what Mr. X is telling me below is unhelpful, because Faster Payments is a 24/7 service and as a consumer I can both send and receive on a weekend – and whilst I followed up immediately, I suspect I won’t hear back from him any time soon.
I get the impression that of all the banks, Barclays are the ones with the most ‘innovation’ in terms of services and applications – they launched the PingIt app very recently, for example, and I also know from dealing with our BACS software suppliers that Barclays tend to do more for small-medium sized businesses. Both of our competitors are with Barclays, which in itself is interesting – perhaps they have a desire to take on innovative businesses as part of a drive to be the most forward-thinking.
It’s working.
For more on Barclays innovation strategy, read the interview with their COO Shaygan Kheradpir.
Postnote:
Jon Durant notes on his blog that Barclays has been an innovative bank for many years:
Barclays has a strong tradition of firsts and innovation: it launched the first credit card in the UK back in 1966, the first loyalty scheme in 1986, the first to accept bill payments via the internet in 1997 and the first to support contactless payments in Europe in 2011.
This reminded me of the innovative loyalty scheme they launched in 1995 called BarclaySquare.
I wrote a detailed research paper about industry alliances way back then, when the internet was still in its fledgling days. Here's a little more about this innovation for those who enjoy memory lane:
Another perspective of cross-industry operation is the virtual alliance, e.g. a joint venture within an electronic channel.
Banks are no longer islands of delivery - they are combining resources and efforts to leverage their position, specifically on the Internet.
This means that the more a bank can deliver in the consumer value chain - either through in-house delivery capability (e.g. managing consumer’s tax returns) or through joint venture alliances where the bank manages the partnership and extended value chain - the more they will do so.
Barclays Bank in the UK is an example of an early such alliance.
In the UK it is estimated that four million people have access to the Internet, but of those, only 1.5 million are using the Web on a regular basis. This seems a fairly limited audience, but that underestimates the value of this market. According to Money World, this audience is almost 100% ABC1, 80% male and 66% between ages 25-44, all segments financial services want to reach.
Barclays decided to differentiate their site by adding non-financial services to its Internet site.
Through BarclaySquare, the UK Internet Site for the Bank, the bank has teamed with retailers to leverage the bank’s card base. As well as getting information on Barclays products and giving feedback, customers can go to the shops or buy airline or train tickets.
Barclays aim is through a virtual alliance to be the Internet Brand.
As Consumers remember that the site they shop at is called Barclaysquare from Barclays Bank, the shopping mall, brought together by the Bank, becomes the brand.
It is only once you go through the bank’s gateway that you find a florist - Interflora; a clothes shop, Debenhams; a catalogue merchant of durable goods, Argos; a Toy company, Toys ‘r’ Us; an insurance company, Sun Alliance; and a telecoms company, BT.
Launched in June 1995, BarclaySquare allows consumers to pay for a range of goods on the Web using Barclay’s own Visa or MasterCard.
The early results have been pretty good.
From June-November 1995, Barclaysquare had 100,000 visitors; 600,000 page requests; 400+ retailer enquiries; and 3,000 e-mail messages.
In December 1995, over 15,000 visitors used the system.
In 1996, it had 1.5 million page requests and the first quarter of 1997 created 500,000 hits, a 10% increase.
More than 20 retailers work with BarclaySquare including Sainsbury's, Victoria Wine, Interflora, Argos, Eurostar, British Telecom (BT), Toys 'R Us, Victoria Wines and the Airline Network.
"The Barclays (Bank) Web page is contained within BarclaySquare and some people browse at that as well on visits," said a Barclays spokeswoman. "It has proved very popular and is an innovative and pioneering way of Web site marketing."
Barclays is planning to boost the profile of the scheme by mailing its 3 million credit cardholders with a magazine promoting the scheme's advantages. "We are also encouraging more retailers to join," he said.
If you're wondering what happened to BarclaySquare (a pun on Berkeley Square), it didn't get the takeup as Barclays is not Amazon ... so it's up for sale.
Following an Easter Break, our biggest stories of the past fortnight are ...
Never mind the channels, here’s the b******s
Apologies but it’s that time of year where my nerve endings jangle with tension as I get into another crappy debate about multichannel strategies. “We’ve got our contact centre, then there’s our internet banking division and now we have to...
I’ve been thinking about how to build a bank for a while, and have been partly inspired by the examples of (bank)simple and movenbank. Both new bank startups began with a call to interested commentators to give their two-penneth worth...
This wirelessly connected planet
I was asked to chair a panel at the end of a one day conference on the future of payments. I therefore listened to every presentation carefully and, in opening the panel, was asked to give a ten minute summation...
It's 2012 and there's one UK bank that still does not offer internet or mobile bank services
Trust you all had a good Easter break. I did … full of chocolate. Ah well, back to the grindstone, and thought that it might be worth mentioning a little incident that annoyed and then amused me last week. I...
Tesco's QR codes - another cash killer?
I’m at a payments conference today – and so will finish off the TEDx Wall Street story tomorrow – but wanted to post a quick update for those who are looking at mobile versus proximity payments. Here are two stories....
Computing Case Study: Barclays Bank - Banking on Innovation
Enabling customer-facing staff to access bespoke financial services apps using tablet computers is just one of several ways in which COO Shaygan Kheradpir is transforming the retail banking experience at Barclays, writes Stuart Sumner.
Three articles providing a comprehensive summary of TEDxWallStreet 2012:
The Obsessive Compulsive Jim Cramer
I attended the first ever TEDx Wall Street last week, and a fine show it was. Speakers included: Alexa von Tobel, Founder and CEO of LearnVest.com David S. Rose, Founder of New York Angels and Associate Founder of Singularity University...
Three Principles for a New Wall Street
The second presentation that attracted my attention at TEDx Wall Street last week was Don Tapscott’s. Don is the author of many books, although his best known work is probably coining the phrase Wikinomics (note, this is now Marcowikinomics). His...
In wrapping up my TEDx Wall Street experience, there were a few other presenters who intrigued me. First was Rahaf Harfoush, who talked about the future of protest. Rahaf is an author and ‘innovation strategist’, whatever that is, and focused...
Speaking of conferences, and for those who are interested, there are a few other major conferences coming up this month.
I'll be chairing MEFTEC in Dubai on April 25th and 26th; at the same time, the Asian Banker's Summit takes place in Bangkok from April 25th to 27th, and includes my friends from SWIFT, who are running Innotribe Bangkok on April 26th as part of the programme.
The major general news stories of the past fortnight include ...
Goldman Sachs and Sex Trafficking - The New York Times
THE biggest forum for sex trafficking of under-age girls in the United States appears to be a Web site called Backpage.com. Until now it has been unclear who the ultimate owners are. That mystery is solved.
Lloyd's of London treasured traditions lost at sea - The Telegraph
Lloyd's of London, the insurance market with its origins in shipping insurance, continues to abandon tradition.
Bob Diamond faces pay backlash - The Telegraph
Barclays is facing a major shareholder rebellion over Bob Diamond's £18m pay package, with more than 10pc of investors set to vote against the bank's remuneration report at its annual meeting.
Rainmaker: Barclays has a great deal to learn from HSBC on executive pay - The Telegraph
When, in late September 2010, rumours emerged that Mike Geoghegan, then chief executive of HSBC, and Stephen Green, then chairman, were about to depart, institutional shareholders rightly became concerned about who would replace them and what would happen next.
Bankers' association boss Angela Knight to leave - The Independent
The banking sector's chief advocate during a time of "extraordinary difficulty" for the industry is to step down after five years at the helm.
Sir Mervyn - come clean on the bank crisis - The Telegraph
To learn from any crisis, financial or otherwise, two essential things must happen. There must be a full and frank admission of what went wrong and there must be a fundamental change in the ways of behaving to ensure - as far as is possible in an imperfect world -
'Champagne' currency trader Alex Hope held in FSA investigation into unauthorised trading scheme - The Telegraph
Alex Hope, the foreign exchange trader who hit the headlines after reports claimed he spent £200,000 in one night on a bar bill, has been arrested on suspicion of unauthorised trading.
Centrally cleared derivatives: Clear and present danger - Economist
STOCK exchanges have not been lucky in love recently. Deutsche Börse’s proposed merger with NYSE Euronext was blocked by regulators in February. Romances between the exchanges of Singapore and Australia, and between the Toronto bourse and the London Stock Exchange (LSE), have also fizzled.Tired of such dalliances, the LSE has
City agrees to lead 'Day of Sorrow' over financial crisis - The Telegraph
Britain's leading banks have agreed to hold a day of "mass atonement" for the financial crisis after pressure from the Treasury for a "significant act of contrition" according to a series of leaked emails.
Eurozone must expand bailout fund or risk break-up, says leading banker - The Independent
Eurozone leaders risk reigniting the sovereign debt crisis unless they agree more funds for the so-called "firewall" designed to calm bond markets, the world's top banking group warned last night.
Shares tumble across world as eurozone fears return - The Independent
Stock markets around the world plummeted yesterday as the eurozone debt crisis came roaring back again and fresh doubts about the sustainability of the US recovery gripped investors.
Dutch boy tries to save the euro - BBC
An 11-year-old boy's plan to save the eurozone has been commended in a major competition that has attracted some of the world's top economists.
Most common tax avoidance schemes - BBC
Lifting the lid on how the wealthy avoid paying tax
Your credit rating questions answered - BBC
An expert answers your questions about credit ratings
If you like the Finanser, check out the books of the blog: the Complete Banker Series
The Financial Services Club is sponsored by:
For details of sponsorship email us.
Apologies but it’s that time of year where my nerve endings jangle with tension as I get into another crappy debate about multichannel strategies.
“We’ve got our contact centre, then there’s our internet banking division and now we have to integrate these mobile thingymyjigs. These channels are never-ending, wail, wail, sniff, sniff.”
Don’t you guys get it?
Mobile is NOT a channel.
Internet banking is NOT a channel.
Nothing is a channel.
Things have changed so wake up and smell the coffee.
Our planet is populated by people who have digital personas tightly integrated into their physical lives.
We walk the street texting, talking, surfing and interacting.
We geolocate our address and are smart navigated to our destination via our maps app.
We check what’s on TV whilst reading newspapers on digitised screens.
We transact with each other person-to-person face-to-face end-to-end.
In the very near future, every single person on the planet will be connected this way and, in the very near future, they will think differently.
In fact, we already do.
Just read Susan Greenfield’s book on identity in the 21st century or Nicholas Carr’s book “The Shallows” on how the internet is changing the way we think.
This is why we don’t think: “I’m on my mobile channel and I shall switch to my internet channel later”.
We don’t think: “now I’m doing digital stuff and, shortly, I’ll do some physical stuff”.
My digital stuff is my physical stuff.
It’s all tightly coupled into mine and everyone else’s life.
This is why we have to stop thinking of channels and multichannels.
It’s a fundamental flaw in bank thinking.
There are no channels.
Just everyday lives that are highly digitised for the 21st century.
‘Nuff said, rant over.
Back to the Sex Pistols …
Things we're reading today include ...
Data wars: Unlocking the information goldmine
BBC
Friday the 13th superstitions date back to the Knights Templar and the creation of the Swiss banking system. Click here for more.
I’ve been thinking about how to build a bank for a while, and have been partly inspired by the examples of (bank)simple and movenbank.
Both new bank startups began with a call to interested commentators to give their two-penneth worth of input about how a bank should operate. I never saw results of this input but assume that the simple startups demo gives us a few clues:
The theme of crowdsourcing expands further as we see new startups like CivilisedMoney's launch in the UK, with all of its funding from crowdsourced channels and all of its offer based upon crowdsourcing peers.
Launched in October 2011, CivilisedMoney’s goal is to make it easy “for people to invest, donate, lend, borrow and transact money with each other directly at fair and transparent rates” without the involvement of banks.
Sounds good in principle but with only £100,000 of funding to start with, all from crowdfunding, it may struggle.
And it doesn’t necessarily have to be a new startup as many incumbents are using crowdsourcing of customer views to grow business.
A good example is Barclaycard Ring, which I blogged about recently.
The Ring MasterCard is run by a virtual cardmember community, where cardmembers have visibility into the card's financial profit and loss statements, as well as an online framework that gives them the ability to influence decisions about how the card is managed and serviced.
Using social media, the community will also provide a forum where cardmembers can exchange ideas, share knowledge and provide direct feedback to Barclaycard US to help determine future features of the product.
There’s the First Direct Lab, where HSBC’s UK remote bank has tried crowdsourcing customer ideas to see if they can improve their offer.
It’s quite nice because you can see customer suggestions including:
“It would be great if you could give your accounts in Internet Banking a descriptive name (e.g. if you have more than one of the same account)” from Henry on 11th April, and
“Not so breaking news (but everyone seems to know it except FD): Android market share exceeds that of the iPhone. In the UK, between Jan 2011 & Jan 2012, Android had a 36.9% share while Apple's iPhone had 28.5%. And the Android share is only going 1 way - up! Why don't you have an Android app? Surely it'll be a cinch to develop & launch compared to the obsessive compulsively controlled iPhone.” from toonarmy on 10th April.
It’s also nice to see that First Direct respond to such suggestions too.
For example, flipshot laments: “When will you start offering Contactless cards, you changed your terms and conditions to state you would be offering them from December 2011. However your customer services still state they are not available yet.”
And First Direct immediately replied: “we did change our terms and conditions in December 2011 to include information regarding contactless cards. This was done in preparation for contactless cards being introduced in the future. We have no timescales for the release of these cards at the moment, but we will update our customers before their introduction.”
Nice, and all completely transparent and open.
Commonwealth Bank in Australia implemented a similar approach with IdeaBank.
… as has Danske Bank although, as can be seen in the latter case, the suggestion box approach has a limited timeline.
Then there’s the call from Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit to crowdsource risk management. Writing in the Financial Times in January, Vikram says:
Regulators should create a “benchmark” portfolio and require all financial institutions, not just banks, to measure risk against that. The benchmark portfolio would not actually exist on the balance sheet of any one institution. Rather, it would be a collection of real investments that stand in for the kinds of assets that most financial institutions actually hold at the time. What is more, its contents would be 100 per cent public.
Institutions would be required to produce, on a quarterly basis for that benchmark portfolio, a hypothetical loan/loss reserve level, value at risk, stress-test results and risk-weighted assets. Right now these measures are run only against an institution’s actual portfolio and only a limited number of the results are disclosed. Worse, those results have no common frame of reference. The benchmark portfolio would supply that needed frame of reference.
In other words, rather than using credit ratings or self-determined risk metrics through Basel III, use a regulatory driven database of bank sourced knowledge to assess and view risk.
This is exactly what Dan Tapscott has called for on numerous occasions, and seems such a no-brainer I don’t know why it’s not here (yet).
With so many bright people discussing the idea, it’s time will come however (obviously).
After all, if we don’t do it, then customers will work out how to crowdsource a robbery:
In perhaps one of the most ingenious uses of crime-sourcing seen to date, a bank robber in Seattle utilized Craigslist to recruit a crowd of unwitting participants to facilitate his escape. In the days leading up to the robbery, the perpetrator placed an ad on Craigslist seeking workers for a purported road-maintenance project paying $28.50 an hour. He instructed his “contractors” to show up at a street location at the exact place and time an armoured car was to be delivering cash to a local Bank of America.
The robber instructed all those showing up for the promise of work to wear their own yellow vest, safety goggles, respirator mask and blue shirt — the criminal’s exact outfit the day of the robbery. After overpowering the armoured car driver with pepper spray, the suspect grabbed a duffel bag filled with cash, ran past a dozen or so similarly dressed innocents and made his escape 100 yards away to a local creek where he floated away in a pre-positioned inner tube. 911 calls reporting the robbery described the suspect as being a construction worker in a yellow vest. When police arrived on seen, they had numerous robbery suspects from which to choose.
Postscript: this post is not about crowdfunding which is why it does not delve deep into crowdfunding sites such as ArtistShare, Sellaband, Hyper Funding, IndieGoGo, Pledge Music, Kickstarter, Sponsume, Viper Funding, Funding4Learning, Fondomat, RocketHub …
This week's UK Computing magazine has an interesting interview with Barclays retail COO Shaygan Kheradpir. In a pure scrape of the entire article, I thought it worth reproducing here:
Enabling customer-facing staff to access bespoke financial services apps using tablet computers is just one of several ways in which COO Shaygan Kheradpir is transforming the retail banking experience at Barclays, writes Stuart Sumner.
Banks are traditionally thought of as risk-averse companies rather than agile innovators, but Barclays Retail COO Shaygan Kheradpir is drawing on his knowledge and experience as a former CIO to try to change that.
His vision of the banking business is one in which end users and developers freely mingle, sharing ideas and feedback. He wants to increase staff mobility and flexibility by enabling tablet use in the office, with a Barclays app cloud providing everything staff need to work and communicate.
According to Kheradpir, this vision will become reality later this year.
Enabling mobility
“We have a saying; crawl, walk, run. We did the crawl last year until we were all comfortable, working out where tablets will work and where they are less appropriate. Now we’re in the walk mode.
“Eventually you will see these devices in the customer-facing front line at Barclays.”
To illustrate how tablet devices could benefit staff, Kheradpir cites the camera on the iPad 2.
“In the old way of doing things you scan a written form or meeting notes and upload them to the network.
“But why do it that way? The camera on the iPad 2 is better than most scanners. It can upload the file directly to the internal cloud. You can secure it and tag it and off it goes. Why have paper and a scanner?”
In Kheradpir’s view, tablet devices are more secure than PCs, partly because their software requires less regular patching, but also because the IT department can restrict how and where the device is allowed to connect to networks.
“Tablets have context, they know who and where you are. You can leverage that information to build a more secure ecosystem.
“My iPad is fully secure. We deployed with Mobile Iron and there is heavy mobile device management on it. It knows where it is, and what networks it is allowed to attach to.
“We also use encryption from Good Technology, which we deploy as an app.”
Creating an internal app store
Enabling the deployment of this app and others will be the Barclays app store, which staff will use to download software that will let them carry out core business functions and network with one another.
“It’s for business-focused apps that employees need for their daily activities, but also for internal social networking and collaboration,” he says.
The app store will also be used by various layers of the organisation, including customer-facing staff.
“Many of the tasks that happen in the front line of the bank are app-oriented. They are specialised tasks like applying for a mortgage or a credit card,” he says.
“And what are apps? They are deep and narrow. They’re not like PC applications, which are broad and shallow. You want apps to do one, often complex, task.”
Kheradpir says the bank will not upload the apps to Google’s or Apple’s existing app stores due to security concerns.
“Obviously, you can’t stick it into Google’s store or Apple’s store, so you have to be able to deploy it where you want it, very securely. That’s the basis for an internal app store,” he explains.
The app store project will be deployed this year, following trials in 2011.
Fostering innovation
He says that these innovations are possible because of the structure of the teams he oversees; the operational and technical support teams need to be closely integrated.
“You need the front-line operational and the technical groups to be one team. Breakthrough delivery happens when you have mini start-ups fused with the reality of the marketplace and what customers want. You have to involve the end users at every level,” he says.
“Look at Twitter or Facebook, their teams don’t work in a segregated way. You have cohesive teams, some more operational, some more technical, but they’re together and they make interesting trick shots by working that way.”
He adds that this integration of teams means that problem solving and troubleshooting happen in real time, rather than over weeks as disparate teams slowly respond to emails and get through a backlog of tickets.
“What if you develop something that doesn’t work well? You can only change it quickly if you are tightly fused with your customers. Because who really knows what isn’t working? The customer knows, and your front-line colleague knows. They know it in real time.”
This also helps with understanding the nature of any issues – misunderstandings are less likely to occur when the development teams, and their customers who use their products each day, sit and work closely together.
“To the extent you can have technical teams in real-time fusion with operational teams, there’s no translation required. They see what’s going on and quickly jump on it and improve it.
“But when it’s segregated it becomes like a batch-oriented process where a bucket brigade has to hand off stuff. Then it’s slow, clunky and the delivery timescales are not commensurate with breakthrough technology.”
He argues that this is a vast improvement over more traditional organisational set-ups, with development teams kept separate from their end users.
“This is very different from the old model where you write a big fat requirements document then hand it over to some coder who has no context for what you’re trying to do.
“This was fine for the 20th century because typically you were taking something manual and automating it. But you’re not going to delight a customer with efficiency alone.”
He explains that the way his team is organised, everything is focused on the customer experience.
“In our way the team has context and has the tools and authority to implement their ideas. We focus them around customer experience because if you get that right, efficiency comes by default.”
Further reading
Computing - Insight for IT leaders Claim your free subscription today.
In wrapping up my TEDx Wall Street experience, there were a few other presenters who intrigued me.
First was Rahaf Harfoush, who talked about the future of protest.
Rahaf is an author and ‘innovation strategist’, whatever that is, and focused upon the Occupy Wall Street, Arab Spring, Molly Katchpole and similar movements in the Year of the Protester.
The core of her speech about protest is the fact that as we now have the interconnectedness of everyone on the planet – seven billion people tweeting, texting and typing P2P – it changes everything.
It’s a subject close to my heart and that I blog and present on regularly.
But the slide that jumped out of Rahaf’s presentation is the one that showed all the American Federal Authorities have been infiltrated by former leaders of Goldman Sachs.
That’s something that’s well-known if you read books like “Too Big To Fail” and it’s no shock, as most of Europe is run by former Goldman Sachs bankers.
This means that no matter how much we doth protest, we will find it very hard to change anything when finance and government are forever intertwined (and don't forget the muppets!).
Another session that intrigued me was Jeff Hoffman, founder of ColorJar, former CEO of Enable Holdings and co-founder of Priceline.com.
He talked about how to transform a business by thinking like a five year old.
This came about because he was looking after his grand-daughter one day who asked all the silly questions no-one knows how to answer:
… and more.
He took the wee girl into the office and she looked around for ten minutes, and then asked a load of difficult questions like:
… and more.
Jeff said that he sat listening and was going to ignore all she said … and then thought:
… and more.
He realised he had no answers and so asked folks to go find out. The result was a massive business improvement.
I guess that’s the key to transforming a business: ask the stupid questions as, quite often, you’ll find the answers aren’t what you think.
It’s also to do with the three ages of homo sapiens:
I use this quite often when looking at futurism, which is to look towards teens an children for future trends.
Children rush towards the future which is why they are 8 ½ and 13 ¾ … adults are trying to avoid the future which is why we’re forever 21 or 35 or whatever.
Children want the cheese to move, whilst adults don’t want anyone to move their cheese.
And that’s the key for trasnfomrtion – challenge everything and think outside-in.
Here’s the twitter stream from Jeff’s session:
Chris Skinner @Chris_Skinner: Jeff Hoffman of ColorJar and Priceline on stage now #TEDxWS
NYSE Money Sense @nysemoneysense: @ColorJar Founder Jeff Hoffman got totally schooled by a 5-year old. Only at #TEDxWS.
@Chris_Skinner: If you lose your child-like wonder because you're busy, you stop seeing things clearly. #JeffHoffman #TEDxWS #TEDxWallStreet
@nysemoneysense: I lost my childlike wonder, because I was busy. We see the same things every day, so we stop seeing them. -@ColorJar's Jeff Hoffman #TEDxWS
@Chris_Skinner: "You see the same things every day and, as a result, you stop seeing anything. Think like a five-year old." #JeffHoffman #TEDxWS
Mona Ahmed @MsMonaAhmed: How do we lose the ability to wonder? @ColorJar brings us to reality and makes us think like a child! #tedxws
@nysemoneysense: It is important to wonder about everything like a child does. Successful and innovative people do this. -@ColorJar's Jeff Hoffman #TEDxWS
EI digital @EIdigital: I want you to think like a child and question everything you do. #JeffHoffman #tedxws
@nysemoneysense: The world's most successful people remove all their filters and open their minds. -@ColorJar's Jeff Hoffman #TEDxWS
@Chris_Skinner: "Remove the filters from your mind" if you want to reinvent things #JeffHoffman #TEDxWS #TEDxWallStreet
@nysemoneysense: The world's most successful and innovative people don't just wonder about their own domain. -@ColorJar's Jeff Hoffman #TEDxWS
Stephane Guittet @sguittet: Let's do Info-Sponging = let your mind wander -Jeff Hoffman #TEDxWS #TEDxWallstreet
Ali O'Rourke @NYSEAli: Info-sponging. Hoffman spends first 20 min of day looking at stuff totally unrelated to his daily world. @colorjar #TEDxWS
@nysemoneysense: Infosponging: For 20 mins, leave your industy mentally and let your mind wander. -@ColorJar's Jeff Hoffman #TEDxWS
David Adler, BizBash @DavidAdler: Jeff Hoffman -Tedx talks abt Info-Sponging - Look out side yr domain. Gather Data & connect dots- innovative ppl do it..... #TEDxWS #bizbash
@nysemoneysense: There's a lot of data out there. How to decide what to pay attention to? -@ColorJar's Jeff Hoffman #tedxws
@Chris_Skinner: The key is to absorb all that information and connect the dots #JeffHoffman #TEDxWS #TEDxWallStreet
@Chris_Skinner: You have to filter out a data intense world. That's a lesson I learned from Sam Walton, founder of wal-mart #JeffHoffman #TEDxWS
@NYSEAli: Filter data by getting rid of the stuff that's not important to your customers. @colorjar #TEDxWS
Russell Fugett @JRussellFugett: #Infospunging -"Gather information from a world bigger then your own. Jot it down & #connectTheDots." - Jeff Hoffman #TEDxWS #TEDxWallStreet
@Chris_Skinner: Priceline has a $35bn valuation and was launched by connecting disparate pieces of information from many industries #JeffHoffman #TEDxWS
@Chris_Skinner: How can you design products for customers if you never live in their shoes? #JeffHoffman #TEDxWS #TEDxWallStreet
@NYSEAli: #jeffhoffman is my favorite speaker so far today. Lessons I can use. #TEDxWS
@Chris_Skinner: Great speech - key lessons are think like a five year old with a spirit of wonder #JeffHoffman #TEDxWS #TEDxWallStreet
Now there’s a happy thought for Easter.
Talking of which, there are many other sessions worth a full write-up if I had more time, but it’s Easter and so I’m going to go underground for a few days and grunge with chocolate till Tuesday.
Having said that, there is one other moment of worth.
Matt Gould and Griffin Matthews were, we all agreed, the most viral moment of TEDx Wall Street.
Matt and Griffin have written a musical opus called Witness Uganda, and performed some of this on stage.
They rocked the place.
We were all singing and clapping along to the final refrain of Bella Hosana, and all agreed that this would be the TEDx Wall Street video clip that would go viral as the message was that “if you think you can't change things, just try ... be the light”.
You can watch this clip if you like (16 minutes):
A nice way to leave for an Easter break.
Have a great holiday and see y’all next week.
Chris
Recent Comments