More Highlights from Lift07 #2 Colin Henderson

By Thomas Purves on February 14, 2007 | | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

Speaking of Colin Henderson and Bankwatch, another person it was a pleasure to meet at LIFT was Colin Henderson. He gave a great talk titled “Bankers Can be Bloggers Too” (a subject close to my heart) and in fact you can find the presentation on the official lift presentation download page here.

What stuck with me from Colin’s talk is his idea that banks still don’t “get” the internet. They are using it as a commodotized delivery channel, they are barely using it internally. What they don’t seem to get yet is there vulnerability to better community-connected service providers. Are banks going to relegated to low margin commodity wholesale business and every one from community focused credit-unions to disintermediating payment services like paypal or p2p lenders (or Colin: think also of the mobile telco’s) on one hand a) either soaking up the rich magins of having the direct touch with consumers or b) flattening the whole industry by tearing out the cozy credit spreads banks have gotten so comfortable with?

much to think about.

1) are the big banks capable with keeping up with the social web and the coming changes in the consumer landscape?
2) are the big banks capable of embracing enterprise social media on the inside? (most are yet to allow wifi internally, let alone IM or more advanced E20 tools)

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Topics: Business
  • Bryce ... I would like to take a crack some points you raise .. valuable points.
    Q. employees are almost by definition transactional workers
    A. Not so ... majority of employees are required to discuss, review, analyse, and keep happy - customers. Tellers are down to less than 20% of Branch employees now in aggregate.

    On a more general note, bank employees, even transactional ones, must talk to many customers daily. You are obviosly Canadian. Imagine trusting your financial affairs, including transactions to the Post Office? I suggest its essential we think of all employees as knowledge workers. Where they might differ is at the edge, but this is their core mission. Thats why Bank loyalty is lacking. How many people feel their banker is nice, helpful, tries hard .... what about, pro-active, understands me, keeps me up to date, and the coupe de grace - "sold me on online banking".
  • One of the great concerns with information systems within banks (in canada anyway) is to get effect information finding to their front line retail employees (CRS, Tellers, Telephone Banking, Advisors). Effective Information retrieval can be valuble in multiple ways.

    CSRs with up-to-date information will be more effective with their customers. Calculating ROI of finding information faster is easier when you are talking about Front line staff because they have the task templates in place and there is more of them then anyone else in a bank.

    I am having a hard time seeing how E2.0 will be embraced by the banks as the majority of their employees are almost by definition transactional workers that just need to consume information. Social bookmarking comes to mind as a possible benefit but I'm not sure about other aspects.

    There are many areas of the banks where E2.0 totally makes sense. I see the functional units that support the various lines of business as an ideal environment for E2.0
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