Moving forward, RIA technologies will be used to enhance or even replace traditional enterprise portals and Microsoft Office as front ends; as per Forrester's research .
So what does it mean for the user of Internet world? Does it add any value to the customer?
Will every desktop in the world will be RIA enabled? e.g. RIA enabled MS office or actually replace office with new enriched competing versions?
What is RIA anyway? (RIA is interpreted differently by different people as they perceive)
*Rich Internet Applications is aimed to give more control to user, where he can customize his looks of website he browses *RIAs optimizes the use of front end client and web servers using asynchronous
mechanism to give quick, predictive results (system predicting what will be next move of users and presenting it quickly e.g. Google maps is a good example)
*RIA drives quick, detailed contents on-the-fly experience only based on the cursor movement. This is only a beginning for RIA and application integration can drive major changes in the life cycle for any transactions esp in the next generation RIA suite.
*RIA is being watched with interest for it's refresh-less environment improving front-end performance in static as well as dynamic environment. (Browser need not communicate back and forth every-time, and only when user click on any item)
*RIA is expected to incrementally support low-bandwidth environment and boost user experience for trillions of people across globe shall improve due to inherent capabilities in static as well dynamic environment.
Will it change scene in Banking?
*RIA can bring massive change in customer's expectation, as users will expect goal driven / easy navigating / content-rich / predictive web banking experience.
*Banks will be forced to innovate in customer experience and for laggards - Competition will ensure that they wake up within time.
*RIA will enable banks to gain some untapped agendas to enhance / tune their offerings in supply chain horizon.
* CRM / SCM application can be based used or complemented to bring about the enriched experience. *Some customers may attempt their own look for a portal / website (Watch out
for Gen Y) *Financial advisor community or even employees in a bank demanding for RIA enabled workstation.
Is it "everything alright, no hiccups?"
*RIA richness and agility is dependent on the comprehensive technology horizon due to some level of dependencies on server-based applications.
*SEO world will take some time to comprehensively provide support to the concept and may be true vice versa as-well.
*Efficiency of technology architecture and capabilities of infrastructure will determine the efficiency of RIA in bank A Vs bank B.
*Mere RIA may not guarantee "Customer experience Framework". IT needs to be all-round support by organization, in line with user expectation created at the front-end.
*Users have to worry about "disbled active Scripting" in some cases
Is there a motherhood statement?
*For the Channel Strategist - better be late than never for RIA; irrespective of multiple industry debates of ROI on web 2.0 /3.0. Level, depth, content, flexibility of RIA will always differ from one bank to another and finally it will be user who will determine
the success or failure.
Some demonstrative examples can be useful
Nasdaq Demo
silverlight from Microsoft
Adobe Demo
Nagakola
For understanding RIA to begin with, try BBC website where user can choose color, contents in the web real estate based pre-defined options.
Online Banking Related blogs : -
Internet Banking - Scene of last decade and some learnings
Bankers, are you ready for next wave? Wake up now for GEN Y.
Note: - Opinions expressed here are my personal views and do not in any way reflect views of my employers.