lanzen

OK, OK. I wouldn’t have put this on here but it’s Jen Aniston and its the weekend. Anyway. You don’t want to hear from me. Here you go… Well. Not a whole lot for me to say after that, is there. Have a great weekend! Read Full Story

How come most companies think having PowerPoint more important than CRM? CRM comes last, after email, office productivity and accounting. Everybody knows, we’re told often enough, that looking after customers is vital. But as a process, many companies don’t see it as that important. In fact, most companies don’t think about managing the relationship with their customers until something goes wrong and they find they can’t. Ironic, really. When you consider that CRM will start to... Read Full Story

NFC on phones is being pushed hard – the Next Big Thing for affluent spenders. Sure, it makes sense at first. A cool way to pay. But… Why not – we’ve this gadget-laden generation. Out to impress. They’ll love NFC. Well, maybe they won’t even think about it. How can I say this. It flies in the face of everything the marketers are saying to us. But that’s the thing about marketers. They can sometimes miss the obvious… Society’s layer cake We live in a multi-layered society. The... Read Full Story

Email. Its been around for over 40 years. And up there as our No 1 business tool. But things could be about to get very interesting in Inbox world. As they say on Wall Street, what follows are some forward-looking statements. Therefore take this as my personal view, as the outcome is far from certain. Three events have got me thinking about what might happen. Let’s set the scene. And taking the stage are RIM, Microsoft, VMWare, Zimbra and SalesForce… Poor old RIM – Blackberry is... Read Full Story

Just a few months ago, I had high hopes for what Tesco bank might achieve. Even with Fred Goodwin fan-boy Benny Higgins in charge. But the recent prolonged outage for so many customers has been handled badly. And Benny Higgins has shown his old-school banking colours. Given the opportunity to show strength and courage, he chose to make excuses. Instead of holding his hands up, he chose mitigation. Every new venture has a wobble. He could have shone, but he blew his chance. Not only... Read Full Story

If you wanted to take on the big boys, you maybe wouldn’t choose 2011 to do it. Fortunately GiffGaff thinks differently. They think differently about a lot of things. GiffGaff doesn’t sell phones – or take your soul for two years for the privilege. GiffGaff doesn’t sell you network access and penalise you when you use it. GiffGaff’s all about a mobile SIM – and a great package. But there’s a lot more… Taking on the big boys GiffGaff is compact, no power suits, no swish offices, no... Read Full Story

OK, regular readers will know I’m not buying the hype around SmartPhone NFS. This is for a number of reasons and none of which are about it being new. I’ve talked about security, why quick isn’t a good reason, but that’s not everything. The real show-stopper to me is market reach. NFS just won’t fit the market. Every other payment system before NFS reached its market cheaply and quickly. Now I’m going to show just how far NFS will fall short. Time to wake up… Don’t take my word – check... Read Full Story

Paying huge bonuses to retain top people in banks has long been controversial. Distasteful certainly – but maybe even counter-productive. Let me tell you about a test Karl Duncker did just after the Thirties banking crash. You could be surprised. And even more angry with the banks… Mr Duncker’s Candle Problem Karl Duncker was a cognitive psychologist. He wanted to analyse the effects of financial incentives had on problem solving. So he came up with a simple test . He took two... Read Full Story

Can anyone tell me what message RBS is using for its current media campaign? Sure, NatWest’s you may know, but what about RBS? Although owned by Royal Bank of Scotland, NatWest isn’t as hated as its parent. Strange, because really NatWest’s no better – some may even say its worse. I’d like to talk a little about NatWest, but lets concentrate first on RBS as a brand. What can be done with a brand so damaged it’s lost the trust of its market? Past the point of no return? Any company... Read Full Story

I love it when I come across great ideas. Like game changing, eureka moments. But it frustrates me when solutions appear for problems that don’t exist. Take NFC payment systems, for example. A clever use of the tech in our pockets. But who said we had a problem at the cash-out? We, the consumers don’t. The retailers like the short delay as they get to up-sell. Maybe its the payment system providers who have a problem. Like card fraud? Here’s the crazy thing about NFC. The security is... Read Full Story