2019 Vision of Interface Design in the Office

From The Future of Interface Design

Match brand values with human values

I've talked a lot in the past about creating human connections (by being respectful, contextual and simple), and of course when you create a brand, it too needs to create strong connections with your employees and customers.

What are the brand values your business tries to live by - are they things we can relate to not just an organisation, but as individuals as well?

Are they words like solutions, strategic, integrated, institutional;

Or are they words like open, friendly, honest, quality?

Are you expecting your people to take organisational attributes and try to relate them to their everyday lives?

Look to create brand and organisational values that your people can recite without notice, understand how they can be used everyday, and even aspire to being themselves.

This will build internal and external advocacy.

A different way to describe your bank - Part 2 - The Answers

As a close to the previous post, here are the sources of the list of slogans that you could apply to your bank -

• Isn't it nice when things just work? - the famous Honda Ad
• Connecting people - Nokia
  
• The Real Thing - Coke
  
• Where do you want to go today? - Microsoft
  
• Just Do It - Nike
  
• Keep walking - Johnnie Walker
  
• Think different - Apple
  
• Never Follow - Audi
  
• The power of all of us - eBay
  
• The relentless pursuit of perfection - Lexus
  
• Lifes good - LG
  
• Because you're worth it - L'Oreal
  
• Live unboring - IKEA
  
• For Life - Volvo
  
• Expect more. Pay less. - Target
  
• See what the future has in store - Future Shop
  
• Lowest prices are just the beginning - Bunnings
  
• We're number two, we try harder - Avis

My favourite - 'Keep Walking' - something many customers feel banks say to them too often.

A different way to describe your bank - Part 1 - The Challenge

Inspired by some of Jeffreys great work at The Financial Brand, I thought we could have a little fun. Slogans and taglines are such great ways to try to declare the essence of a company, sometimes they're as hard as the name of a company itself to create and live with. But what if we took the slogans from other companies, and indsutries, and then imagined if they were the slogan our customers and employees read in our advertising and collateral.

Read below, and then imagine each one of these is your banks slogan - think hard, and imagine if thats what your company was famous for. Also, tell if you know all the owners of these slogans ... answers coming soon.

• Isn't it nice when things just work?
• Connecting people
• The Real Thing
• Where do you want to go today?
• Just Do It
• Keep walking
• Think different
• Never Follow
• The power of all of us
• The relentless pursuit of perfection
  
• Lifes good
• Because you're worth it
• Live unboring
• For Life
• Expect more. Pay less.
  
• See what the future has in store
• Lowest prices are just the beginning
• We're number two, we try harder

Who's bold enough to apply these to a financial services company? Or who can see the irony if they were your banks slogans?

What other slogans can you think of from other industries that might be added above? Need some inspiration?

Guest Post - Intel knows their customers & what the future holds

A guest post from colleague and all round tech/gadget geek Veronique Whitaker - welcome V to The Bank Channel.

A few weeks ago I attended a presentation from Dr. Genevieve Bell, the Director of User Experience at Intel, on the future of devices. I was expecting this to be a very techy presentation given the title, but instead it was more about what people are like now, and will be in the future, and how devices are likely to evolve to meet future people needs. This impressed me because it follows one of the basic rules of futurology and foresight – looking at how trends will impact and shape people to predict the future of products and services, rather than how the trends will shape future products and services themselves.

Dr. Genevieve Bell is an anthropologist who’s worked at Intel for over 10 years. Genevieve runs a team of social scientists, human factor engineers and interaction designers at Intel. Her team works to answer three very important questions that drive Intel’s future product development:

1. What do customers do in their daily lives
2. What will they do in the future?
3. How can Intel help customers in their current and future daily lives?

Through in-depth customer research Genevieve and her team have formed a view of likely future of devices based on future customer needs. But before I get into that, I want to share with you some of the steps the team has taken to create that view because I think Banks can really learn a lot from the innovative and insightful process Intel uses.

KYC (know your customer) on steroids

1. What do customers do in their daily lives?

To get an in depth and real understanding of what customers do in their daily lives, Genevieve’s team will do a variety of things, including interaction analysis (eg. mapping where in a household the most arguments occur – not surprisingly it’s at power points or shared electrical appliances), giving people diaries and cameras to photograph aspects of their daily lives and write down what they’re thinking and feeling at a given time (eg. photograph and describe a place you like to visit when you’re alone), and lives with people. That’s right, members of Genevieve’s team will move in with a family for a period of time to observe them and understand what they really do.

Why does Intel go to all this trouble? Why not just ask people questions in surveys and focus groups, the way Banks do? Well, it turns out that there’s often a big difference between what people say they do, and what they really do. Sometimes it’s accidental (they forget, or don’t think something’s important enough to mention), other times it’s on purpose (they’ll tell us what they think they’re expected to say, or deliberately hold information back for privacy, status or other reasons).

So to overcome this difference, Genevieve and her team “go to the places where meaning is being made”. This brings whole new meaning to KYC (know your customer).

2. What will customers do in the future?

To answer this question, Intel will look at key trends shaping consumers in the future such as socio-demographic trends, economic trends, environmental trends, and of course, technology trends. But as much as they focus on what will change, they also focus on what is likely to stay the same – those cultural practices and values that endure over time, including:

·     The desire for social connection (family, friends and community). This explains the success of recent social media services such as facebook, twitter, etc.

·     The desire for meta-meaning making and participation (the belief in a higher power such as spirituality, religion).

·     Creative acts and gifting (such as making, sharing, creating experiences/objects/content)

·     A good story (a point of view). This is why TV persists despite the proliferation of the web and other technologies – TV is still one of the most effective mediums to tell a good story and engage people.

·     A sense of identity. We use our “stuff” such as houses, car, clothes, mobiles and behaviours etc to talk about who we are and who we want to be.

·     Keeping secrets and telling lies (keeping some information out of circulation both in a physical and digital world).

These cultural practices / values obviously differ in their application across different cultures and regions of the world, so it’s important to map these generic values to consumer values within your target country and create consumer value propositions that enable one/some of the above values.

Intel believes that “understanding cultural persistences is they key to successful technology innovation”.

3. How can Intel help customers in their current and future daily lives?

Based on these insights Genevieve’s team is able to identify key ways that Intel can help customers in their current and future daily lives. The team creates and regularly updates customer usage and experience roadmaps depicting near term, mid term and long term technology enabled customer experiences across a range of areas (eg home, gaming, media, etc). The team then works with other areas within Intel to feed these future customer experiences into future product development and design roadmaps. The rest, as they say is history, or in this case, the future.

The future of devices

So based on these insights, how does Intel see the future shaping up around devices and their usage?

1. Re-inventing the internet

The nature of the web is transforming. The internet has gone feral – it’s on everything – mobile phones, TV’s, fridges, gaming consoles, GPS’s, cameras etc. And it’s unwieldy – information is everywhere, fragmented, un-connected and it’s hard to find relevant information.

Intel believes this “buffet-style” internet is a thing of the past. We need a bounded experience where people can get what they need. We’ll move back to lists of text for some things and realise we don’t need rich media for everything. User experience and design will become more important that ever and the tenants of access, simplicity, relevancy and consistency will become the norm. To me, that’s good news. I’ve been an avid internet user for more than 10 years and half the time I can’t find what I need!

Intel also believes that control, surveillance and censorship will shape the future of the internet to help protect various community groups (especially children) as well make it easier to use.

2. It’s not all about convergence

Intel believes that while we’ll continue to see convergence of devices, services and infrastructure, not everything will converge. It many cases it’s not practical to have everything in the one device (I want a small device for web surfing, communicating and navigation when I’m out and about, but a big screen when I’m in the office or at home). It’s the integration between our various non-converged devices that’s the key to helping people manage their increasingly complex multi-device, multi-networked world. Managing devices, networks, content and communication is becoming a full time job.

Integration between customer’s various devices, communication networks and content will become imperative, particularly in a world where everything is internet enabled and data stored all over the place. We’re already starting to see this with Apple’s Mobile Me but we have a long way to go.

3. New experiences and interfaces

Connected devices (and services / applications) will be increasingly integrated into a range of spaces eg. our homes, cars, offices, health, romance, religion. And we’re moving to new ways of interacting with devices (and people and organisations) through voice, gesture, touch and virtual interactivity, which will change our personal and social experiences. This doesn’t mean we’ll see the end of the keyboard or mouse any time soon – they’ll still play an important role in inputting text for documents etc, but will be augmented by these new interfaces so consumers will be able to interact with devices in the way that’s most comfortable for them. But we need to make sure we don’t overcomplicate things by introducing too many interfaces and options.

4. Changing socio-technical concerns

Over the past decade, technology has been linked to a number of well known socio-technical concerns – privacy, trust, security, and risk and regulation. But the new range of devices, infrastructure and services becoming available are adding additional socio-technical concerns for consumers:

·     Reputation, authenticity and image are vital – lies about location, context, intent and identity are all possible with the internet.

·     The impact of new devices on health and wellbeing, sustainability, responsibility, surveillance / control and cultural health are also emerging consumer concerns.

5. Life’s overheads Vs vital signs

We’ll need to continue to balance the good and bad in technology usage. On the one hand technology helps us to connect, engage and be productive. But on the other, there are overheads – bills, contracts, services and devices all need to be checked and maintained. So we’ll continue to see convergence and bundling of service contracts and bills, and platforms to merge communications and content (eg. tweet deck) for social media.

Lessons for the Financial Industry

So at a very basic level, what can Banks learn from Intel’s foresight methodology and future device trends?

1.   Banks need to develop a truly “customer-in” view by doing more to understand what customers do in their daily lives, both now and in the future. Move beyond traditional surveys and focus groups by working directly with customers as well as collaborating with organisations and people outside financial services such as psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists etc to help us really understand our customers.

2.   Once banks have that indepth understanding of our customers then they consider the role that financial services can play in the current and future daily lives of our customers. This is not about “being the burger” – it’s about how we can help our customers live better. And again, collaboration with key external parties can help inject some fresh thinking into new customer offerings. Then we need develop customer experience roadmaps that outline the future customer banking experience in the near, mid and long term and feed these into our future product and service roadmaps.

3.   Banks need to improve the usability of our web sites, making it easier for customers to find relevant information, cutting down on the use of rich media unless it adds value, and augmenting the experience with new interfaces such as touch, voice and gesture control where it makes sense. And we need to do this while keeping in mind the customers will access our site for a range of purposes via a range of devices, and we need to make it easy for them to get what they want in all cases.

4.   Banks need to integrate the banking experience for our customers. This means providing a seamless, consistent multi-channel experience across all of the customer’s activities, products and services. We also need to think of ways where we can make banking more easily integratable to customers lives and goals eg. a mobile application that lets them get pre-approval for a home loan on the day of the house auction, etc.

5.   Banks need to address future customer concerns, going beyond the basics of privacy, trust and security, and look to proving our reputation and authenticity as a trusted party to help customers do the best with their money.

But that’s just the beginning – I’m sure there are many more opportunities for banks, so feel free to share your views and ideas in the comments section.

Microsoft 'Courier' Tablet

Not new but a nice demo ... prob gets Apple thinking

Microsoft "Courier" tablet from Nacer B on Vimeo.

Stick to the plan, Stan

Here's some interesting research for all you banks out there about to undergo or currently undergoing platform transformations -

"Core system renewal strategies at banks often create more problems than they solve, as firms ignore enterprise integration issues in favour of tactical one-off changes and quick-fix band aids, according to research conducted by Sterling Commerce" (see the full article at Finextra)

This is indicative of both large projects like core system upgrades and small projects like website refreshes. The short term, immediate or changing landscape creates change in scope, personnel, budgets or strategy. And sometimes, this is necessary.

But sometimes, its to the detriment of the project. The key here I think is not as much about do we have the right strategy, or made the right decision, sometimes its that we don't see things through, we don't keep the big picture in mind, and do what's right for the organisation in the long term.

Who's started a 2-3 year project and delivered the intended outcome (not the deliverable outcome, the intended benefit?)?

I presume its not often enough.

Necessity vs Luxury

 

Its been playing on my mind lately why banks and telcos can't shake this lack of real stickiness in the hearts and minds of customers. Of course, its related to the nature of the product - bank and telco products, despite the life changing benefits it can bring (a house, the internet, travel) - bank and telco products are boring, low engagement and generally painful to generate, administer and sever.

So its now upon me to make a spectrum that tends to determine how likely an industry is to become loved by customers (there are exceptions of course, made by some powerful brands themselves). 

An industry can either be a necessity in life - banks, telcos, insurance - or a luxury, or in between. Some industries, like travel, or automotive can be either extreme - incredibly pragmatic and utilitarian, or outrageously oppulent and ostentatious. And I would argue sometimes the margins of these industries competes or betters that of banks. Yet they're loved by customers.

Why?

Its because these industries touch the emotions that keep people coming back, and feeling good. 

Its because they pride themselves on either consistent quality at the bottom end (a corolla made today will almost exactly be the same quality as one made next week), or over the top quality at the top end.

Its because they've created something that customers value, and therefore pay for.

Can banks move from necessity towards the centre, or even the right of the spectrum?

I doubt it, but we can learn to perhaps at least pretend we're important to people.

Step 1 - Stop what you're doing

Wow its been a busy time lately hasn't it?

Whether the economy is tanking or surging forward, it means defensive or offensive activity in your bank and mine. And with this comes the potential to get caught up in the buzz of a long to do list and a range of initiatives across many areas.

But the one thing customers really want in this critical time is to know that their bank is there for them, and listens to what they're going through.

So, imagine there are a few steps to getting customer experience right - make sure the first and even second are simply listening to and talking with your customers, understand how they're feeling and what they want.

If thats the least you do as a customer experience professional, then that can be more than half your role taken care of.

The other projects might not matter as much as you think.

Quality + Service = Performance

Am currently watching an 'old' DVD of the terrific Gel Conference 2007. The keynote speaker is Danny Meyer, founder of one of NY's best loved group of restaurants. His businesses have topped customer and service ratings for years. Listening to him speak, you hear a man aware and obsessed about the human detail of the hospitality experience - in tune with customer, and the customer experience.

He talks of a simple formula -

Quality (of product) + Service (of experience) = Performance (of customer experience, and therefore business).

Companies that deliver on what they say they will do - the expectations are met or exceeded.

He talks about the challenge this formula has faced in the wake of the web and its commoditising habits, and even then his restuarants shine through. And he talks about the word hospitality, and how it doesn't just apply to restaurants. But he also talks about demistifying the reason why people 'feel' so good at his restaurants.

We can learn from the restaurant and hotel trade, and create our own 'experience economy'

The Human Experience Part 3 - Simple vs Complex

In the first 2 parts of this (very informal) series, I explored the following -

• Being human, and treating people, including customers, with respect, honesty and dignity, is critical to delivering good customer experience - plus its just the right thing to do
• Embracing local, small businesses helps businesses connect to loyal customers, and makes customers feel like they belong

Now I want to explore the third theme, which in some ways combines the first 2 -

• Simplicity is desired by customers, and difficult for large organisations to achieve - hence its a differentiator.

Its sound easy to say, and in some ways must be easy to achieve, but in actual fact, it is incredibly difficult to understand and create the level of simplicity that both resonates with customers, and allows your business to remain relevant, part of the conversation and financially productive.

Lets explore in a little detail.

First, what do customers want from information?

Its been well documented and researched that customers have an overwhelming choice of options when it comes to the products and services they buy and use. This is despite the power of the web to refine and filter or even word of mouth through social media from friends and family. The customer now wants a clear option to move forward, and increasingly expects a company to provide one (if their peers haven't done so already).

Take a typical financial services experience - choosing a health insurance plan. Already, this product, even industry, is behind the eight ball when it comes to customer involvement (this can also work in its favour sometimes) - most customers have low knowledge, care or engagement in health insurance products. And of course, the act of choosing a plan is difficult, cluttered with jargon and policy detail, and hard to relate to.

The providers who succeed here provide a maximum of 3 recommendations and options. This creates a simpler choice for customers, regardless in some ways if the product is right for them.

This is starting to replicate or create the Human Experience - a friend would not tell you all the options available, just the ones they chose or they think are right for you. They've filtered the information based on who you are.


Second, what do customers want from interaction?

In a world of increasing self-service, accessing a real person almost feels like a luxury when dealing with a bureaucratic organization like a bank - getting through tough phone systems, waiting in queue for a branch conversation, or days and days for an email response can make a customer feel as if they've been treated very impersonally.

The challenge is - how can we get our frontline people directly to our customers when they need them the most? The key steps here are -

1. make them available, commit to customer service from real people and see it as a differentiator 
2. give them and customers the tools to connect - why isn't click to chat the most powerful communication tool at the moment
3. Make the nature of the interaction easy, simple, clear, conversational

Third, what do businesses want?

Efficiency & Quality are words I hear a lot, and why wouldn't you want that? It makes for a business that is lean, easy to steer in a new direction and for staff to navigate. Delivering the experience to the customer in the most efficient manner makes the margin on this experience far more attractive.

Don't be too simple

There is a risk however of over-simplifying.

If your experience offering is too simple, you're asking the customer to do a lot of work that otherwise would have been covered by large complex systems.

If you're too complex, the experience and the business will wade through mud to get things done. This is not beneficial for either party.

Work out where your business can simplify

Remember the definition of good design is to take away until you can't take away any more for the process to still work. Try and remove and simplify in all ways you can.

So to create the Human Experience

1. Be Respectful
2. Be Contextual
3. Be Simple
   

Innovation round up - August 09

So first of all, sorry for the delay with this newsletter. Its been busy for all of you too I'm sure - its that time of (the financial) year.

As we seemingly exit the fog that is the GFC, to paraphrase the experts, its an opportunity too good to waste. Businesses have cut back hard, yet still producing reasonable numbers. In some sectors, businesses are rehiring after some bloody months of redundancies. Emerging markets are back exporting again. Demand in lead economies will vault forward. With this comes a bitter pill - potentially damaging inflation and rise in costs.

Nevertheless, the signs for banks are good. The Aus banks are included in some of the most secure in the world (I read a German bank was number 1, surprising given their exposure to EU meltdowns). The balance sheets are good, and the outlook promising. But at the same time, the Aus market has not grown in size by population, and so again we look for any market share gain we can get. This is where being smarter with cost effective ways of dealing with customers is critical - and following the trends customers set as they adopt one technology over another.

Whilst you may have been discussing it, your competitors are probably doing something about it.

Time to get moving!!

Want to know how?? This months special is on some of the 1,000,000s of books on the new business world - I guarantee these will cover many of your needs.

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FINANCIAL SERVICES INNOVATION

HOW WELLS FARGO KEEPS THEM SATISFIED - Wells frequently lands high on lists of Web functionality and consumer satisfaction, recently outranking Google, AT&T, Federal Express and Microsoft on a Brookings Institute ranking of 68 corporate Web sites

ING DIRECT AUS CREATES HOME LOAN CENTRE APP FOR IPHONE - Calculators to determine how much you can afford to borrow and what the payments would be; A call-me request form; Average home prices by area

AMBER AWARDS JUDGING AUS ONLINE BANKING - Complete the survey and vote on your online banking

6 INNOVATIVE BANKS THAT CHANGE ONLINE BANKING - USAA, ING, Ally, MoBank, SmartyPig, Wells Fargo ATMs all profiled

JYSKE BANK START A TV STATION ONLINE - Impressive collection of content and advice from this innovative Danish bank

ANZ TARGETS PRE-TEENS WITH MYSPACE PRE-PAID CARD - The re-loadable Visa card costs A$5.95 and is available to teenagers aged 13 and older with MySpace accounts.

BRANCH AUTOMATION IS ALIVE AGAIN - It seems branch automation applications have been around forever, but not defined properly, and little understood.

TAKE CHARGE - Listen to The Voices of Membership from AMEX

IF I COULD START A BANK - The creator of Wordpress gives an interesting description of his ideal bank

DISCOVER WESTPACS INTERNET BANKING - Immersive demo to new IB users

GE CAPITAL TO LAUNCH SPEECH RECOGNITION - Financial services company GE Capital will launch a pilot of its new open dialogue speech recognition platform next month. Also at that link - 20k complaints a month to telcos!

NOKIA ENTERS FINANCIAL SERVICES - The world's biggest handset manufacturer Nokia has teamed with Obopay to launch a mobile financial management and payments service targeted at unbanked people in developing countries.

PETER DALTON, ANZ INNOVATION GUY, TALKS TO FST - "Traditionally, banks have not been particularly innovative organisations.  But we believe that banks are very technology driven organisations, and particularly so now that customers are becoming more willing to embrace new ideas."

LLOYDS WANT YOU TO PAY FOR SECURITY - "You can get all this for 30-days for just £1 – then pay £6.99 a month for continued peace of mind."

USAA ASKS 'WHAT'S ON YOUR MIND' - A(nother) site to connect with others and share ideas. Nice idea, but takeup is always the issue

LIBERTY MUTUALS THE RESPONSIBILITY PROJECT' - "We thought, if one TV spot can get people thinking and talking about responsibility, imagine what could happen if we went a step further?"

GET THOSE SMILEY FACES OFF YOUR ONLINE BANKING WEBSITE - Your customers are waiting. And if you don’t answer them soon, I’m sure I’ll hear about it at the coffee shop this weekend. And so will you.

8 GREAT IPHONE APPS TO MANAGE YOUR MONEY - Banks barely mentioned - these are independents beating us to it

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BOOK CLUB

Here are some books you may know to fill the Christmas stocking this December, and some I hope you don't know yet but are keen to read - the first 3 are particularly new and/or outstanding.

GLUT - Alex Wright, UX head at NYT, takes a 1000s year trip back in time to track our UX past in mastering information and knowledge - terrific.

INNOVATION AND THE FUTURE PROOF BANK - by thought leader James Gardner on how innovation CAN work in a bank

TRUST AGENTS - Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust, by Chris Brogan

THE NEXT 100 YEARS - Starting with the premises that "conventional political analysis suffers from a profound failure of imagination" and "common sense will be wrong," Friedman maps what he sees as the likeliest developments of the future

FUTURETAINMENT - Mike Walsh, futurist and social commentator, covers all areas of popular media and entertainment

HERE COMES EVERYBODY - Clay Shirky talks about people power, crowds, etc. Really good.

OUTLIERS - The ubiquitous Malcolm Gladwell book has to be here. He analyses what makes success.

DON'T MAKE ME THINK - A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability - bit of a classic I hear

GROWN UP DIGITAL - The bottom line is this: If you understand the Net Generation, you will understand the future.

GROUNDSWELL - Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, by ex Forrester experts Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

CHANGE BY DESIGN - By IDEO guru Tim Brown, on the power of Design Thinking (opinions mixed on this idea)

THE BACK OF THE NAPKIN - Solving problems and selling ideas with pictures
 

MADE TO STICK - Drawing extensively on psychosocial studies on memory, emotion and motivation, their study is couched in terms of "stickiness"—that is, the art of making ideas unforgettable

These are my favourites - What are your favourite books?

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INNOVATION

MONOPOLY CITY STREETS - Monopoly team with Google to create a real life Monopoly game

GOOGLE LAUNCHES INTERNET STATS - Across all spheres of the net including sales

WHAT'S THE REAL COST? - Fascinating site educating people on the real cost of healthcare

THINKING SPACE, FROM THE ECONOMIST - See peoples ideas in 3D

50 THINGS THAT ARE BEING KILLED BY THE INTERNET - Banks aren't there but Insurance companies are, along with dozens of really interesting things

SWISSCOM REBRAND VIDEO - Great animation on the rebrand of this Swiss telco. This one from a FIAT installation concept is also cool.

THE POWER OF LISTENING TO CUSTOMERS IN THE HOTEL BUSINESS - Great story of turning a business towards customer needs

IF ARCHITECTS HAD TO WORK LIKE WEB DESIGNERS - Pretty funny - "My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted."

TELSTRA CLOSES 'NOW WE ARE TALKING' SITE - "After a review of where we were headed with our online communications and how best to engage with important stakeholders like you, we have decided to close our nowwearetalking website and develop a new, more engaging, interactive site under the main telstra.com umbrella"

CHIEF MEANING OFFICER - How the new social power of marketing can transform business.

THE POWER OF SAMPLES - To take part, women register by mobile phone, supplying basic details about themselves such as their age, marital status and where they live. With every order of food or drinks, they receive an L Coin, which can be redeemed for free samples at the cafe's sample bar.

CONVERT YOUR FAVOURITE ONLINE ARTICLES INTO A MAGAZINE - Zinepal allows you to create printable PDFs from any link

HUMAN CENTRED DESIGN TOOLKIT - A free innovation guide for NGOs and Social Enterprises

HISTORY OF THE AUSTRALIAN WEB - From AIMIA, follows the trends up and down through time

PLANET FEEDBACK - Use templates to send letters to companies and organisations directly!

COLOURS IN CORPORATE BRANDING - Some banks mentioned here in this nice article on design, brand, and colour

BEIJING LOVES IKEA - but not for shopping ...

THE HISTORY OF FLIGHT - Nike and Michael Jordan .. so its good. Lovely flash site.

THE HEIRACHY OF DIGITAL DISTRACTIONS - So true ... I am attached to my iPhone 24/7

CUSTOMER SERVICE ATTRACTS LOYAL CUSTOMERS - Bruce gives a good argument on the power of customer service

THE FUTURE OF NEWS PRINT MEDIA - Is the Newspaper Industry Ready for a “Reset”? “Sharing” Is the New Advertising and “Content” Is the New Currency. Who Is the First to Press the “Reset” Button?

WHEN SECURITY GETS IN THE WAY - What's the tradeoff between usability and security?

VIDEO TO APPEAR IN PRINTED NEWSPAPER - A bit Harry Potter, but this is a reality! Videos on news-sheet!

IDEO LABS - Keep track of great ideas and innovations from this amazing company

ART & COPY - A new film about advertising and inspiration (and probably alcohol, given the other two rarely work without it)

JAMES DYSON AWARD - For product and idea innovation, this years winner solves a deadly problem

CHINA MOBILE LAUNCHES NEW OPERATING SYSTEM - Pretty powerful when a telco makes their own O/S

SELF ERASABLE PAPER - Xerox has invented paper that has a 24 hour 'ink' life span

MAKING INNOVATION WORK IN A DOWNTURN - In this latest podcast, we're talking with Carlos Dominguez, Senior Vice President in Cisco’s Office of the Chairman of the Board and CEO.

IDEA EXCHANGE - Basically a virtual suggestion box where users can publish their own suggestions, large or small, and browse ideas submitted by their colleagues

30 SECOND MBA - Fast Company taps into some great thinkers

TO MAKE A TREE - Great collaboration between FIAT and the City of Milan

The Disintermediation Matrix

As a follow up to a previous post showing a presentation I made a couple of weeks back on the Customer Is King, a couple of slides in that have resonated again in my mind. Slides 29 and 30 show the 4 dimensions of those businesses who have reacted well, poorly or not at all to this change. The matrix on slide 31 to me shows a model on where to plot your business:

 

 

I've defined the axes as follows:

Side Axis
How organisations embrace customers into their core way of business. The 2 dimensions I've explored here are

• Customer Centricity (business has ALWAYS been customer focussed). These are businesses or industries that are built on good service quality - retail and hospitality are the standouts
• Disintermediation on the Horizon (have always focussed on the returns to shareholders almost exclusively). Those industries (let alone companies) that are on the verge of disintermediation due to the web, despite any quality of customer service, because of their reluctance to change their business model to take advantage of new media, or simply have been side swiped (see PayPal v Banks).

Bottom Axis
How progressive have organisations been to understand and embrace the opportunities new media and technologies in their business models.

• Old Economy - Those businesses that have been born in the world before the rise of the internet, and have seemingly stayed there
• New Economy - Those businesses, new or old, that have embraced new technology as much as they can.

So lets, slowly, analyse the cross sections of the matrix and do some desktop analysis on the benefits of each here:

• Customer Centric Old Economy - good service will always be in vogue, despite the movement the web makes. But these businesses need to match customers preferences in the way they want to buy. Walmart, Nordstrom and Ritz Carlton are good examples of old brands retaining their unique service quality and using some new tools
• Customer Centric New Economy - the web has enabled some amazing uses of service delivery and technology, but at the heart is an ethos of customer centricity. Amazon, Zappos and Jet Blue have much history in this space.
• Disintermediated Old Economy - some industries and businesses to a large degree can be commoditised by the web - this is because their business models have been based on standardising and systemising the way they're run, which makes them replicable, and therefore vulnerable. Shareholder return only will spell the end of these companies - many newspapers are already feeling this pain, with banks, travel agents, real estate agents and telcos to follow.
• Disintermediated New Economy - there are many companies that using the web to make their old businesses move forward in really exciting new ways but without threatening their business models. Proctor & Gamble will always make the products they do (unless you have a sophisticated backyard setup) but they use social media to innovate and invent. Mercedes now use the web to create amazing brand experiences, but you'll still buy the physical embodiment of the brand, the cars, which only they can make.

So where do you want to be?

If your business is in the bottom right, you've got a great chance, as you've woken up to reality, and seen the opportunity

If your business is in the top half of the matrix, then you've got a great chance of being very successful indeed, as long as you're moving to the right.

If you're in the bottom left, whether your business model is being disintermediated or you just dont care that much, you need to make some quick decisions.

Those businesses that understand they need to move at least to the right of this matrix, if not top right where appropriate to their brand and business model, will be able to remain at pace with this change. Others will simply be swamped by the wave that independents, entrepreneurs, citizens, or importantly other organisations like theirs that do get it, are riding into this new world.