Have you walked into a retail store lately and seen someone use his or her phone to “scan” a product’s bar code to get immediate access to reviews from consumers who have bought the product? This customer might also (to the chagrin of retail store owners) be looking for cheaper prices offered online or in a physical store around the corner!
This is the new “omnichannel” reality that retailers have to face nowadays—one where virtual and physical channels come together to enable in-store access to web-based customer reviews and price comparisons, while also taking some physical store capabilities to the virtual channel (for example, Remote Deposit Capture in banking). Read More »
This week thousands of IT professionals will be attending Cisco Live in San Diego so they can learn of innovations that can help them leverage the power of the intelligent network.
We are excited to showcase a variety of solutions that enable financial services firms generate revenue, reduce expense and mitigate risk. Specifically, we will be showing and discussing how Remote Expert for Retail Banking helps enable banks to maximize the efficiency and productivity of financial services advisors so they can capture customer business at first contact and deliver the personalized customer service the customer desires. Read More »
Welcome to my first blog as Cisco Senior Director, Financial Services, Manufacturing, and Retail Marketing. On Monday, June 11th I will join thousands of our customers from across the world as we gather in San Diego to work and learn together at Cisco Live!
Many of our customers come to Cisco Live to learn about the latest IT and network innovations. This year, you can not only see the latest IT innovations around networking, data center, collaboration, video, and cloud, but you can also learn about, discuss and experience solutions purpose-built for industry based on those platforms. See how they can help you transform your business processes in ways you never managed to deliver greater productivity, operational efficiency, and customer service. Here’s a list of must-see industry-focused topics that you may want to join. I hope to see you there.
Rob Soderbery -- Senior Vice President, Enterprise Networking Group, Cisco
Join Rob Soderbery, SVP for Cisco’s Enterprise Networking Group, for a discussion about how Cisco is driving innovation across its core portfolio of Catalyst switching, access routing and wireless networking technologies that will help you navigate these transitions. Soderbery will demonstrate how Cisco solutions come together so you can deliver a secure and uncompromised user experience to your customers, partners and employees
Traditionally, customer satisfaction is driven by product availability and the ability of the staff to assist the shopper and complete the transaction. This model today is being broken by the modern consumer who is playing by different rules.
In a recent New York Times article on younger shoppers who prefer technology to staff assistance, retailers like Nordstrom are discovering that customers are using mobile applications not just in remote locations, but right in the store requiring them to improve their store’s Wi-Fi experience.
Earlier this week, I participated in the Financial Services CIO Summit, which brought together CIOs and other senior technology business leaders from global as well as regional financial services institutions to share insights on the industry’s evolution. The dialogue was rich, compelling, and creative. The leaders grasp the challenges before them and see solution pathways that will help their banks capture new opportunities. So what was on their minds?
Four main forces are driving change in the banking industry: 1) rapid technology development that is providing a new business reality; 2) increasing customer demands that require banks to rethink how they have historically approached customers; 3) heightened competition, not just among financial institutions, but from companies outside their industry; and 4) burgeoning regulation that will require banks to track and store data disseminated to customers, including text messages, emails, and other interactive forms of digital information.
Overwhelmingly, the CIOs agreed that their challenges are not about technology per se; they have a plethora of technology choices. Instead, the main challenge is how to apply technology to maximize business benefits. The role of the CIO is no longer to serve primarily as a transactional technology guru. Management now expects CIOs to identify business problems and apply the right technologies to drive new business and serve customers better—while at the same time helping the bank become more productive and cost efficient.
One of CIOs’ biggest challenges is serving new customer segments with tailored approaches. Banks want to appeal to the younger generation of customers in a more differentiated and adaptive way. Gen Y consumers expect banks to use the web, social media, interactive games, and ubiquitous mobility in their customer interactions. CIO Summit attendees agreed that they need to create greater brand presence in social media circles to stimulate conversations with this key customer segment regarding home ownership, retirement savings, and other personal finance issues.
For high-net-worth clients, CIO Summit attendees pondered two “virtual expert” scenarios based on two-way high-definition video: (1) utilizing virtual advisers in wealth management branches to broaden availability of subject-matter expertise; and (2) home-based solutions that enable clients to reach their financial advisers when it is most convenient.
The CIO Summit offered a glimpse at several great opportunities. To capture them, I think CIOs should consider three steps: 1) conduct research and analysis to identify and prioritize strategic options; 2) define the appropriate business architecture (business strategy, people, processes, and organizational structure); and 3) create the technology architecture that enables successful implementation.
Financial services CIOs face some interesting battles. However, they now have the opportunity to become even more business-critical to their organizations than ever before.
