Industry news

With more than half a billion iPhones in circulation and in excess of 1.5 billion apps downloaded from the Apple App Store, there is no denying the interest in this touchscreen interface-based technology. Its popularity has grown drastically over the past two years, with enhanced user experience being a key driver.

Most tier one banks are currently considering use of tablets, with iPads gaining the most traction – research from Good Technology found that 37 per cent of all iPads in enterprise are used by financial services companies.

Given the current economic climate, there is a greater need for banks to grow revenues and provide better customer service. iPads, and other similar tablets, have the potential to transform banks’ working practices to become more collaborative and dynamic. Typically tablet users have greater access to information with better graphics and analytics to support decision making that can be built into a business process workflow.

The ability to expand the screen with your fingertips makes data easier to review, digest and analyse more quickly. At the same time, that information can be instantly corroborated with external data points. As more retail banks embrace mobile banking as a service to customers, tablets offer an enhanced experience with graphical interfaces and easily accessible information.

As the price of tablets fall, in certain markets such as Asia, Africa and the Middle East, tier one banks have the opportunity to expand their mobile banking offerings from mobile devices to tablets. In many cases consumers can enjoy a more personalised customer experience to help improve relationship management, and help banks form a closer bond with the customer.

Tablets can help support complex critical applications for banks. Support can be simplified because the precise details of an event can be emailed through to an iPhone and, in the case of an iPad, there’s the potential to provide additional information to help analyse and fix an issue more efficiently.

Tablet usage in commercial environment is driven by the desire to make analytical information more easily available, in real-time, to help decision-making and provide greater support. Retail banks use the iPad in this way, enabling staff to provide a better customer experience – from the ability to show credit card and mortgage analytics to accessing account balances quickly.

In investment banking, tablets can add value in areas from foreign exchange trading, risk management to pricing analysis. The iPad has a full set of features and rich functionalities, from data down to the models and trading, that’s viewable anywhere at any time.

Many banks are already embracing the concept of the ‘app store’ to provide enterprise-wide access to corporate solutions. Fuelled by the success of Apple, several are downloading their own in-house applications, securely encrypted according to the banks’ regulations.

Another global financial services firm unveiled an application allowing its clients to access the bank’s research on mobile phones. Another firm followed with its own equity and fixed-income research application, and a leading asset management and securities services company developed a custody application to provide reports and instruction authorisation to institutional clients via the iPad. Software applications can be approved, posted and potentially even monetised on a corporate-wide directory.

The introduction of tablets into a corporate banking environment poses a challenge because it creates another device to control and monitor. However, given that many banks have already embraced the iPhone, this needn’t be a major issue. Security of the iPad applications themselves, based on our experiences so far, does not throw up any major challenges.

The cost of introducing tablets to the workplace is also not especially prohibitive. The main challenge lies in the effort required to support the introduction of these devices into the banking environment - controlling the infrastructure, guaranteeing security and ensuring the working environment is ready.

The perceived benefit from the increased sales and productivity that can result from improved relationship management, or the creation of an enhanced user experience, has to be strong enough to absorb these challenges.

The iPad offers a potentially disruptive technology, offering a personalised, richer and more meaningful user experience than before. This is the ‘future of work’ in practice. Banks shouldn’t introduce iPads for the sake of technology alone, but only if it suits their business objectives.

The question to ask is ‘what do customers really want?’ Ultimately, they want to make fast decisions in an informed way, in a manner and at a time that suits them.

If you consider that innovation is a team sport, and that the most important players are your customers, then innovation requires new, robust forms of collaboration with your customers. It is about turning a company, and its entire value chain, over to the command and control of customers. This new reality demands a shift in our thinking about innovation. Winning companies will be so close to their customers, they will be able to anticipate their needs, even before their customers do, and then turn to open innovation to find compelling value to meet those needs. Because your customers are your only true asset in the new world of low‐cost suppliers, your business model will likely need to be expanded so that you can fulfil as many of your customers’ needs as possible.

This approach is indeed a major growth strategy in a world of declining margins and commoditisation. Now the question is; how do you get ever closer to your customers? One approach is the Voice of the Customer (VOC), which was all the rage in business circles back in the ‘90s, but got lost amidst the dot‐com boom, abundant cheap‐labour supply resources from Asia, and emerging markets as globalisation reached a fever pitch. VOC is a process discipline, a way for companies to gather customer insight to drive product and service requirements. Techniques for VOC include focus groups, individual interviews, contextual inquiry, ethnographic techniques, etc. Each technique involves a series of structured, in‐depth interviews that focus on the customers’ experiences with current products or alternatives within the category under consideration. Needs statements are then extracted, organised into a more usable hierarchy, and then prioritised by the customers.

Today, VOC is again moving front and centre, thanks to the many channels of dialog made possible by the Cloud. However, customers often do not know, or cannot effectively communicate their actual needs and requirements. Therefore businesses must find more creative methods of understanding customer requirements. Smart companies are now emphasising business intelligence everywhere and integrating Web 2.0 communications technologies. Leading companies are creating blogs and wikis, placing their avatars in Second Life and taking their businesses to Twitter. But you won’t want to just open up these new Web 2.0 channels of communication and turn up the volume. You’ll want to have business intelligence embedded throughout your process management systems, and forge meaningful collaborations using human interaction management systems (HIMS) and processes to tame the chaos and noise inherent in Web 2.0 technologies.

Today’s customers want it all, whether it is buying a PC, spare‐parts, engineering services, or life insurance, customers want complete care throughout the consumption life cycle—from discovery all the way through support after the sale or contract. Today, customers demand the best deal, the best service, and solution‐centred support that can only be optimised by true customer collaboration. Competing for the future is about the total customer experience.

Not only do companies need new means for listening to, and collaborating with customers, they also need to act on the information thus derived. To do this, they must hone the innovation process itself using the emerging principles of innovation management if they want to deliver ever more compelling value to their customers.

In addition to getting closer to your customers, businesses also need to get closer to suppliers and trading partners that make up the complete value delivery system and that operate against their own clocks. The days of the vertically integrated company or even captured supply chains that depends only on itself to deliver value to customers is long gone. Today it is multiple companies that collaborate in any given value chain, which can be a project manager’s nightmare unless roles and responsibilities can be delegated, distributed and managed across the value chain and all its contributors.

Delegation is an essential part of any innovation initiative, so identifying roles and responsibilities early in a project is important. Applying the RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed) model can help. As a leader of an innovation initiative it is important that you set the expectations of people (staff, customers, partners, suppliers) involved in your project from the outset.

Innovation initiatives require many people’s involvement across many companies, so businesses must do all possible to avoid a situation where people are struggling against one another to do a task. Equally difficult is dealing with a situation where nobody will take ownership and make a decision. How do people know their level of responsibility; when they should involve others, or when they should exercise their own judgment?

Without clearly defined roles and responsibilities it is easy for innovation initiatives to run into trouble. When people know exactly what is expected of them, it is easier for them to complete their work on time, within budget and to the right level of quality – or sometimes more importantly – know when things have gone astray and to whom to communicate.

Indeed, innovation is a team sport involving customers, suppliers and trading partners.

Capita shares lifted by over 4% as long-negoiated government contracts finally pop up on the balance sheet.

Capita increased revenues 7% to £2.93bn last year, while pre-tax profits fell £309.8m to £302.9m following £82.3m of write-downs pertaining to acquisitions made during the period.

Capita Chief Executive Paul Pindar, chief executive of Capita, said: "We overestimated the speed with which the government would act. In its first year the Coalition spent time on the low-hanging fruit, and met its savings targets very effectively with strong headcount control, but now it is looking more to outsourcing."

Capita has inked five new deals so far this year, including a major contract to train the Civil Service signed earlier this week. The company is currently shortlisted for £4.6bn of further work; a third of these contracts are tendered by UK government.

HP is launching an education programme to teaching IT skills to 20,000 UK students. The HP Institute will target college and university-level students. It will focus on job skills necessary for work as an IT professional, and feature hands-on labs, test preparation services and training on cloud platforms. The main aim of the course is to teach students to administrate systems for small and medium sized businesses, helping to close the gap in supply and demand of qualified IT administrators.

HP UK and Ireland vice president and managing director Nick Wilson said: "Customer and channel partners tell us that they are experiencing a growing shortage of job-ready IT professionals with the right skills to grow and innovate within our businesses. HP is starting the Institute programme to address this need. We are working with education to continuously enhance the talent pool of graduates with the precise skills and experience businesses need most to help them succeed today and in the future."

Europe's biggest IT company grew revenue to €6.8 billion last year, but organic growth was a mere 0.3%

However, much of that growth resulted from acquiring German engineering company Siemens' IT outsourcing division. Underlying, organic growth was relatively flat, at 0.3%.

Wakefield Council hopes to save £1m in property costs and a further £100,000 annually in telephony related costs through technology deployments which will promote flexible working.

It is working with Siemens Enterprise Communications to support telephony mobility for hot-desk environments and unified communication.

Alan Kirkham, Wakefield Council service director of ICT at “We still have quite a long way to go with flexible working. We want to look at all other services to see which ones could benefit the most from taking a more flexible approach.”

The company, a subsidiary of eBay, currently employs 1,500 people at its European HQ in Blanchardstown, Dublin.

The new jobs will be for customer and sales support teams, order processors handling online payments from Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

US Central Intelligence Agency top technology officer Ira "Gus" Hunt," the agency wants to buy software services on a "metered," pay-as-you-go basis,” rather than continue with more traditional deals, that ‘inhibits flexibility’ which means that it cannot take advantage of emerging software early, as well as surmounting the challenges that federal agencies regarding budgetary cuts.

This strongly hints that the CIA is ready to make the leap into the cloud. Details of proposed provider offerings are, of course, classified.

Mobile apps are to be the heartbeat of the NHS Information Strategy, says Giles Wilmore, senior responsible owner for the strategy.

“This is not something that could have been generated by the centre. We don’t want to run a big national procurement, but create something which harnesses the local dynamism and innovation,” he said.

"Innovation and technology can revolutionise the health service, and we are looking at how the NHS can use these apps for the benefit of patients, including how GPs could offer them for free."

There’s much ado about cyber-crime at the moment.

Last week’s report by McAfee and the Security & Defence Agenda (SDA) Cyber Security: The Vexed Question considered the opinions of 330 policymakers and cyber security experts in government, business and academia worldwide. The consensus is that there is a cyber-war ‘arms race’ afoot – 57% of those surveyed think this. 45% think cyber defence is as important as border security.

According to a report in 2011 by Detica, acting for the Cabinet Office, cyber-crime costs UK PLC £1,000 per second, or a gargantuan £27bn per year…..

Then, on Monday, we found out that the FBI investigating hacking group Anonymous’ eavesdropping into of a Scotland Yard conference call that talked about ongoing court cases involving hackers. Not only did they get into Scotland Yard’s phone calls, they hacked the FBI’s emails, to find out when the aforementioned call would be taking place! If cyber criminals can access the FBI’s private mail boxes, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Dr. Phyllis Schneck, Vice President & Chief Technology Officer at McAfee, says “Until we pool our data, and equip our people and machines with intelligence, we are playing chess with only half the pieces.” This cannot continue – industry and governments must unite. There needs to be a worldwide collaborative movement against criminals, ‘political hacktivists’ and terrorists, not to mention the espionage activities of other states…

At the moment, no country achieved the full five stars in the McAfee & SDA report. Israel, Finland and Sweden did the best, with four and a half stars. The UK and the USA, along with France and Germany achieved only 4 stars. And these are the high achievers! Many nations scored much lower, and this brings about a problem of ‘jurisdictional arbitrage,’ where criminals operate from less secure, more lawless nations. The experts surveyed took the near-unanimous opinion that we are more vulnerable than ever before.

The thing is, the criminals are getting better quicker: they are highly organised, well-funded and most importantly, they collaborate in ways that corporations and governments can only dream of right now. Sharing information freely, carefree of the ‘competition’ – there isn’t the same attitude to competition, as the crime sector offers pretty much infinite opportunities – is something that criminals do instinctively, and corporations and governments tend to resist.

According to the report, private companies fear their information could be misused by the government or competitors. But, in terms of ensuring that systems are secure it is vital to dispense with this attitude and join forces.

Major ITO providers – who manage huge swathes of the world’s corporate and public sector IT – should share appropriate information to make sure everybody’s customers are as safe as possible. The cyber criminals, although disparate, and cloaked behind anonymous IP addresses, are thick as thieves. IT providers, corporate end users and governments must achieve a similar state of affairs if we are to effectively team up to defend £27bn per year. And for every second we don’t, that’s another £1,000 down the drain…