Check the iMedia Financial Summit Agenda here. If you are in New York on October 15, you may want to attend to learn about digital marketing in Financial Services. I will be joining an agency team to discuss a case study targeted at increasing the human touch for a fictional bank that has successfully used the online channel, but now faces churn and market share erosion. My focus will be on how Banks can begin using telepresence technology both within the branch and through the online channel to increase relationship value. Slides here:

iMedia Connection: Financial Marketing Summit '09 - Agenda

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I connected with iMedia about a speaking role at the Financial Services Marketing Summit in New York on October 15.  I will give a short talk to explore proposed solutions to the question of “how to operate your digital marketing in a way that doesn’t lose all of the personal touch you have with your customers offline.” We will use a fictional banking case study/scenario. I will then join a group of other “problem solvers” on stage with Jay Livingston, SVP, Global Marketing, Bank of America and two other brand marketers to discuss the problem, proposed solutions, and get the audience involved in a town hall type of format.

Here is the abstract from the event web site - maybe we will see you there.

The Bottom Line for Digital in Financial Marketing

Welcome to iMedia’s Financial Marketing Summit—now in its third year—where you can join more than 100 senior marketing executives from a broad range of financial service companies, as well as their agency partners, as they spend full day exploring the digital marketing opportunities and challenges for this important sector of the online marketing industry.

Now more than ever, marketing executives for financial services companies are focused on strategies that deliver the maximum ROI. Digital is unquestionably a leading direct-response and lead-gen powerhouse. In a financial environment where trust and stability are key components of a consumer’s decision-making process, however, marketers are looking to deploy the full-range of targeted branding options within the digital environment, not to mention ensuring they’re part of the social media digital fabric being woven by their customers every day.

iMedia’s Financial Marketing Summit is a one-day immersive experience to gain insights into these challenges. And it’s FREE to financial marketing executives and their agency partners!

I will write a more complete debrief from my experience as a speaker on Social Media for Advisors and engaging with attendees and colleagues at Schwab's Impact 2009 conference. It was a great event - very well run - and also well attended by Schwab's registered investment adivsor community.  While there, I was able to have a catch up with Kristen Luke. Kristen attended my talk and also provided me some insights from her current projects. Below is a summary of her lessons from the conference and here is a link to the blog post.

Lesson #1: The more channels a client uses to interact with his or her advisor, the higher his or her satisfaction with that advisor.

Lesson #2:  100% of High Net Worth individuals ask their CPA for a referral to a financial advisor.

Lesson #3: Become better at dating your prospects.

Lesson #4: Web 2.0 helps with organic search engine optimization.

Lesson #5: There are tools available to make it easier for social media to comply with SEC and FINRA rules.

Kristen Luke is a Revenue Architects colleague and the Principal of Wealth Management Marketing, a firm dedicated to providing marketing strategies and support for financial advisors. Kristen works with independent advisors to develop effective marketing plans and provides the back office support required to implement the strategies.

My slides are posted on slideshare here:

T.J. O'Connor and I are looking forward to speaking on June 25-7: Ritz Carlton-Lodge Reynolds Plantation One Lake Oconee Trail Greensboro, GA 30642 Abstract: Companies are undergoing a massive shift in investment away from traditional media toward online media. New web sites and social networks are accelerating brand awareness and audience engagement. Customers are making their product purchase selections and engaging brands online. While they follow a familiar buying process, the selling process needs to adapt to a more dynamic online environment that you can’t fully control. How do you capture customer value in a complex online environment? The answer is to use new online marketing strategies to nurture and engage your direct and indirect audience across the buy-sell process. opei_newsletter09_spread

Here is a quick update. We spoke at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium and the feedback was positive.  Tushneem posted a review of the panel talk here. Also, you can find more discussion at the MIT CIO Corner. The issues confronting the adoption of a virtual organization are many, but with the right culture, business systems, and technologies companies can really benefit. We have all seen it - organizations adopt virtual working models and productivity falls. Management is unable to manage teams effectively and workers can't collaborate with colleagues. The result can be a drop in productivity and a lack of customer innovation. With careful consideration, companies can successfully adopt flexible working models to reduce the real-estate footprint and contribute to a more green economy.  On May 20th, I am joining a discussion at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium along with some great Panelists:

• Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Chairman Emeritus IBM Academy of Technology and Visiting Professor of Engineering Systems, MIT;
• Ms. Lorie Buckingham, CIO Avaya
• Mr. Simon Crosby, CTO of the Virtualization and Management Division Citrix Systems
• Mr. Bilal Husain, Director of eServices Projects Saudi eGovernment Program, Saudi Arabia

Here is the abstract: The Virtual Organization Flexible, dynamic, and mobile, organizations are no longer constrained by traditional barriers of place and time. Business leaders are looking at virtual organizational structures to address critical resource, personnel and logistical issues.  This session will examine the ways that technology is helping business leaders implement optimal models to gain competitive advantage.

Considering the Opportunity: There are real opportunities to both retain great employees who need a more flexible working model that delivers work-life balance, lower costs and better remote working models. With changing demographics and an increasingly global workforce, virtualization is no longer an option, it is a critical need.  However, we have all seen it - organizations adopt virtual working models and hoteling models and see productivity fall. Often, management is unable to organize virtual teams effectively and workers can't collaborate and coordinate with colleagues. The result can be a drop in productivity and a lack of product and customer innovation. At the same time, changing demographics and an increasingly global workforce suggest that succeeding in deploying a virtual organization model is no longer an option. For key segments of the workforce, global virtual working is the norm and must be delivered with the right technology and business systems.  Companies can successfully adopt flexible working models to reduce the real-estate footprint, retain great employees, increase employee satisfaction and productivity while contributing to a more green economy. The value of a virtual organization is particularly strong for knowledge workers and those workforce segments that are working with global distributed teams and are on the road with clients and customers.  R&D teams and developers can benefit from follow-the-sun strategies for continuous development and delivery. Obviously, it is far more challenging for production workers or call center staff to work in a virtual organization.  Today's broadband networks, telephony and computing capabilities to offer a secure collaborative environment for virtual workers.  The results can be lower costs of occupancy, a happier workforce, and a green environment.

A wish list of the technology enablers for a virtual organization (please add to this list!): Core Office

• I am not ready to give up traditional desktop office applications like MS Office PowerPoint and Word applications but I will also use emerging cloud models like Google Documents
• Advanced Calendaring and synchronization (MS Exchange for the enterprise,  Google Calendar is getting better, but it can still be difficult interacting outside our firewall)

Communications

• VOIP – I use Skype to communicate with a team in Portugal and Kiev… great!
• The perfect PDA - I use an iPhone, but enjoyed my blackberry before. Why can't iPhone work well with Exchange calendaring? It is a fun media toy, but not yet a powerful tool for virtual working
• eMail - 'nough said
• Electronic scheduling across networks – including people and resources of all types
• Synchronization of my calendar (e.g. Google Calendar Sync) and someday my contacts with LinkedIN? Plaxo?  (not really there yet)
• Presence and interoperable collaborative secure chat (Which chat service is everyone on? How do I connect?)

Collaboration

• Knowldege Management and Expertise Location - we have had this for a while, but collaborative systems and communities are improving and we can now begin to get access to valuable information - if tagged and stored in the right shared spaces!
• Videoconferencing ( I use a free service, but everyone needs to dial a toll number - not too bad)
• Virtual Whiteboards and collaborative workspaces (Everything from Google Docs to the Groove Application MS Live)
• Adobe Connect vs Webex  (these are getting better all the time, but can still be a bit awkward to use)

Broadband and Infrastructure

• I am always in search of speed and the coffee shops are still behind the times
• Secured Shared File Storage - We need trusted identity solutions that will help ensure authentication and protect our critical assets. What about those really big files?
• Auditing technology - how can we ensure remote workers are using their collaboration tools appropriately without being a big brother?
• Organizations need continuous operations and better service management using ITIL standards - this is particularly important for un-tethered workers engaging in critical business activities.

Share your thoughts on www.revenuearchitects.com I look forward to hearing your views.

On May 20th, I am joining a discussion at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium along with some great Panelists:

• Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Chairman Emeritus IBM Academy of Technology and Visiting Professor of Engineering Systems, MIT;
• Ms. Lorie Buckingham, CIO Avaya
• Mr. Simon Crosby, CTO of the Virtualization and Management Division Citrix Systems
• Mr. Bilal Husain, Director of eServices Projects Saudi eGovernment Program, Saudi Arabia

Here is the abstract: The Virtual Organization Flexible, dynamic, and mobile, organizations are no longer constrained by traditional barriers of place and time. Business leaders are looking at virtual organizational structures to address critical resource, personnel and logistical issues.  This session will examine the ways that technology is helping business leaders implement optimal models to gain competitive advantage. What are the issues? Here are some of the issues that come to mind (I would value your thoughts!):

• Role of real estate and physical space in an increasingly virtual organization?
• Impact on social norms, community and collaboration with virtual working?
• Striking the right balance between virtual and physical working?
• The technology dependencies - more than just the collaborative network, what about phones and other technology needs?
• Employee productivity?- less? more?
• Employee satisfaction? greater? less?
• Cost reduction.. can you really limit the real estate costs?
• Green. What is the carbon footprint impacts?
• While flexible working has been shown to offer many advantages to both employees and businesses companies of all sizes have been slow to implement it. Why?
• How well do we understand the costs and business benefits?
• Who are the early adopters and what can we learn?

As a part of the CrossTech Partners partnership with the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium, the board of directors of the Symposium has subsidized a special rate of $150 for CrossTech Partners to offer to the ITEC Community. The MIT Sloan CIO Symposium is the nation's premier CIO event bringing together information technology executives from around the world and leading faculty from MIT. The annual event offers a day of interactive learning and thought-provoking discourse on the future of technology, best practices, and business that is not available anywhere else. It includes presentations, panels, networking and a closing reception. This year's symposium is being held on May 20, 2009 from 7:30AM-7:00PM at the MIT Kresge Auditorium in Cambridge, MA. To register as our guest, please use the code CTP2009 when registering via the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium site. I hope to see you there!

I enjoyed a trip to Philadelphia last week to attend the ITEC Conference . I spoke at two sessions on Thursday, here is a summary.

Session 1 Second Circle Web 2.0 and New Marketing

Metcalf’s Law – The value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users
We are in a new digital ecosystem and the search box is the new window to our intentions:

• 112M million blogs
• Bloggers are mainstream
• 2,700 Social networks
• 1.5 million photos added to Flickr daily
• 4 million daily Twitter messages
• Average age of evening news viewer: 60

As Chris Brogan has shared many times, there is a new information model:
Information must be: Dynamic, Localized, Atomized, Relevant, Mashable, Mobile, Shareable

Web 2.0 is a jargon term and overused, but it still is understood as representing a wide range of new technologies that share some common principles:
Participation
Social Software
Mobility
Folksonomy
The Long Tail

We talked about the following technologies that can transform new marketing and PR:
Blogs
Microblogging
RSS, Content Aggregation and Syndication
Wikis

Session 2 – Web 2.0 for KM & Collaboration

The second talk focused more within the enterprise and discussed how similar technologies are having an impact with team collaboration and innovation.

Companies are realizing the benefits in using Second Circle tools for KM and Collaboration. However, there are some key differences inside and outside the firewall.

Need for security
Firewalls restricting access to social networks
Regulations/ Sox prevents transparent communications
Mix of public and private networks for content
Rich new media impacting network performance
Documents buried across servers and desktops
Culture doesn’t support blogging and sharing views
Can’t establish my personal presence and profile online
Not using RSS to keep track of my information resources
Access expertise across all my networks – work / personal

KM & collaboration drives innovation, participative decision making, and information access, and colleagues access across an organization:

Driving efficiency and lower costs
Enabling distributed, networked businesses
Delivering innovation and speed to market
Supporting flexible working
Knowledge as a distinct factor in market value
Low cost open networks and services
Generations of tech-savvy digital natives.

A case study in life sciences pointed out four key strategies:
Building customer relationships
Enhancing the work environment
Achieving competitive advantage
Ensuring compliance and security

We talked about the following technologies and how they are being used “inside the firewall” to drive value.

Profiles & Expertise Location
Corporate Blogs
Wikis
Document Management
Search
RSS, Alerts & Messaging
Team Collaboration

Some advice:
Support your “Digital Natives”
Foster Grass Roots Adoption – Participation
Use Tagging Strategies and Folksonomy over overly burdensome taxonomy models
Adopt light weight but clear procedures and policies for Information Management Governance, Security

Contact me at CrossTech Partners if you want to learn more from the presentations:

jstone@crosstechpartners.com