Jim's Journal

I’ve been exploring the world of mobile technology a lot more lately. Both the development of mobile apps or online applications and the deployment and security around these interactions.  After considering how my friends in the financial services industry have been deploying cash management, online banking and mobile banking solutions to their members and customers – it occurred to me how this could be turned on its head if someone would simply consider it more from the outside in.

What I mean here is from the end user’s point of view.  And that point of view is changing rapidly because people’s behavior and the people doing the using are changing rapidly.  Considering that most end users are going to be millennials and younger from now on and the way we all use devices and computers is changing too.  When we pioneered online banking in the internet age back in the mid 90’s it was all about re-deploying the old way using new networks, hardware and software. That continues today – we just keep doing it again and again.  But people don’t think that way about their devices anymore – they multi-task, use multiple devices and mediums – apply data and insights across many problems.  In fact – the next generation (our kids) want to be constantly connected and available in a way even their older siblings don’t quite get. This in combination with the very real development in their brains called continuous partial attention – its just not possible to sell them on the way we did it in the past

So I recently tweeted: #Bankers – would you consider building custom #apps for your customers? #Cloud deployment with trusted third parties? This was in reference to an article in Forbes about how Banks are turning to cloud-based operations for business agility. Clearly some bankers are – and companies like Microstrategy are enabling it. But even forward thinking mobile app developers like Malauzai are still thinking pretty far inside the box.  If you think about how profitable a good business banking customer is, and especially the ones that really rely on you for insight, funds, cash management – why not deliver something wonderfully custom to what they need as an app on their phone or tablet.  But more importantly – why not leverage all communication methods to do this – both hardware and software, desktop and cloud.  The possibilities are daunting and traditional bank operations isn’t really conducive to it.  Regulations get in the way, hackers and thieves make it dangerous – but that shouldn’t stop us.  When you meet with a customer – you adjust, you pivot, you ask questions, you think of new ideas together.  Do the same with SMS messages, interactive Apps, Tweets, phone calls, and yes – face to face interactions (Skype?) but Digitally via the tools they use.

There is technology out there from companies like AirWatch and MobileIron to secure the deployment of these ideas through mobile device management and applications wrapping.  Apple has built out a service called the volume purchase program for business to deploy custom apps, why not make customers your extended team? There are people doing it without you at smart companies like PayPal and Square.  For example this article in Macworld on building and deploying custom Apps. So get the conversation going and think differently! And let me know if I can help you get the word out.