July 2007 - Page 2 of 2 - dancingmango

Hey CIOs, call me a cynic…

Wednesday, 11 July, 2007
By: marc

So, “Although there’s some dispute as to the average life span of a CIO, it’s generally held to be in the neighborhood of 21 to 24 months. [pdf]”. Think about that tenure. That’s just enough time for the new CIO to get through the first 100 days of viewing the landscape, seeing the mistakes of his predesessor, deciding on a new direction, getting a new bunch of vendors / integration partners in and seeing a major project be delivered.

Delivered? Well probably not delivered to the full satisfaction of all stakeholders, but it is a “delivery” all the same. And it’ll be recorded as a success on his resume.

Onwards and upwards the CIO goes (to repeat his experience at a slightly larger and more prestigious firm). He’d been there almost two years – good time to leave actually. Just before it starts to become clear that the project has not really delivered the benefits the business was expecting and actually there are a whole bunch of issues outstanding. That stuff is left for the next CIO to embark on his 100 days of viewing the landscape, seeing the mistakes of his predecessor, deciding on a new direction, getting a new bunch of vendors / integration partners in…

Compel me to continue

Tuesday, 10 July, 2007
By: marc

Web site registration is usually more stick than carrot. The worst sites are those that require you to register before providing any indication of the benefits that will be accrued from entering yet another username and another password. (Bring on OpenID and single sign-on).

Geni.com breaks that rule of not placing a registration barrier before customers can interact with your site, but they get away with it. How? Registration is hardly a barrier – it is only a request for an email. The first page you view visually articulates the proposition, compelling you to continue. To add an email is hardly an onerous task. There’s no request for password, no T’s and C’s. The password is covered by the email they send you, and do we really need the small print that no-one reads anyway… Besides, logging in is only relevant the next time you visit the site, by which time you will probably already be committed. Not only is proposition itself is really compelling, the execution is excellent. The guys behind this have obviously spent some time thinking about the design and the usability. They could easily have jumped on the community site bandwagon and built something to obtain VC investment. But they’ve gone one step further and built something that engages not only on content, but also on interaction.

How to loose your customers

Monday, 9 July, 2007
By: marc

Last year, Barclays offered a fairly compelling home insurance proposition. They beat your current deal by £50. A friend took advantage of this offer. A year later they sent the renewal documents through. Being a reasonably busy and disorganised guy, he never got round to renewing the insurance until six weeks after it had expired. He rang the call centre explaining that he wanted to renew; yes, he had been without insurance for the past six weeks, but wanted to take advantage of the premium they had quoted. But Barclays refused to honour the renewal quotation. They told him that as the policy was not continuous he would be treated as a new customer. The policy he was now being quoted was significantly more than on the renewal letter. He asked to speak to a manager and was again told the renewal quote was no longer available.

So he went to Money Supermarket and got a competitive deal from Halifax. Indeed it was much more competitive; five times cheaper than the Barclays call centre was offering.

So despite all the cost of acquisition, Barclays were quite happy to loose an otherwise loyal customer who was prepared to pay their original quotation. They then gave him good reason to shop around and have now lost him for good.

If there is a moral in this story, it is when developing new products, propositions or supporting technology, play out all potential scenarios. Customers are not always rational beings, they don’t always behave in the way you assume they will. Don’t just design for the “happy path”, but challenge your thinking with “what if” scenarios for what happens in the real world outside your idealised customer model.

Buy my bus to learn about community!

Thursday, 5 July, 2007
By: marc

When VW beetles, kombi vans, or any Volkswagen air-cooled motor pass each other, their owner’s wave. There’s an unofficial community around the product. How cool is that to have people passionate about product?

Do your customers wave each other? Do your products inspire a bond, knowingness amongst their owners, a community?

Maybe you’d like to experience that VW passion. Look no further than the baddest bus in town; my head-turning 15 window is for sale on ebay!

Banking hasn’t moved on

Monday, 2 July, 2007
By: marc

My Great grandfather worked in a bank. He probably witnessed the introduction of the adding machine. Even then his work life would have revolved around the quill and ink; double entry book keeping, maintaining the accounts in journals and ledgers. In those days they were real journals and ledgers. And in balancing the books he would be reconciling data from one paper record to another.

Almost 100 years later and I recently found myself working for a bank… And I’m talking to people whose work lives, like my Great Grandfather’s, revolve around journals and ledgers. Only now their adding machines and the books have been replaced by systems.

Yet 100 years later their jobs remain similar to my Great Grandfathers. They are still reconciling data from one paper record to another. But it is no longer the journals themselves they are reconciling; now they are reconciling printouts of excel spreadsheets.

If IT was supposed to automate banking processes, take away “human error” and do away with reconciliation differences, IT professionals have failed to deliver on the promise. Indeed they’ve made things worse. The books may balance in one system, but add a few more systems, across the globe then things go a bit 1910. Manual reconciliation is still someone’s day job. It’s a sad fact that banking hasn’t really moved on in all that time.