The Financial Services Mobile Mind Shift

Yesterday I attended the Wall Street Technology Association Mobility Seminar. Here’s a snapshot of some of the speaking sessions that really resonated with the audience and myself.

Forrester analyst, Peter Burris, talked about the mobile imperative and how financial organizations need to use mobility to serve customers and employees. In doing so, he questioned what mobility means to the CIO. The answer he suggested was that this is the age of the customer and mobility is at the heart of that. Quoting Sy Syms he said, “An educated consumer is your best customer.” So for CIOs, mobility is a disruptive technology that is affecting and impacting business process change. The outcome:

You need to understand and serve your customers better.

Financial service organizations, at whatever mobile development stage they are at, need to transform the customer experience because of the mobile mind shift. We want any service, available at any moment. To quote Burris, he said:

The mobile mind shift is “the expectation that any desired information or service is available on any appropriate device in context at your moment of need.”

Consumers expect speed, simplicity and context. This all equals convenience for the end user. When you think about trading customers, the simpler an app, in the right context, quickly will translate into better financial results. That might have been a leap from convenience to financial results, but a good app will impact your business positively.

During my session, I talked to this point about what makes a good app and what makes a bad app. The “Google-effect” (as one speaker put it) means we need instant information on our mobile regardless of connectively, location or device. And because mobile is the primary point of contact for bank/customer relationships (one speaker said monthly mobile interactions average 20-30 per user), it needs to be a good app. So what makes a good app?

• 81% of end users we surveyed said ease of use
• 71% said fast load times
• 68% said accurate information

The main issues with an app (and with app development) is load times, speed, quality of service (i.e. the app crashing) and not meeting users’ needs. How do we overcome these issues? At the heart of an app is data. If you can control data intelligently, you’ll overcome app issues and deliver speed, scale, efficiency all while guaranteeing a high user experience.

What else did we hear from speakers yesterday?

• Today’s customers (business and consumers) want to carry their bank — fully secured — in their pocket.
• Within financial services the impact of the mobile age is profound and disruptive, creating unprecedented change as the industry reinvents how it engages with customers, manages risks and delivers services.
• Banking is no longer somewhere you go, it is something you do.
• Delivering mobility in financial institutions is about equipping employees to be more effective and successful at their jobs by capitalizing on familiarity, usability and availability to boost adoption by employees.
• The traditional approach to creating software applications has not yet caught up with the explosion of mobile devices. Software apps are still designed with a computer as the primary interface and mobile “apps” with limited functionality…