So… I’m a customer of the BNZ, have been for 30 odd years now. I run about 8 different bank accounts through them as well as credit cards and seven figures worth of borrowing - I guess that makes me a moderately involved customer so here’s some feedback.
I’m a connected sort of a chat and do almost all of my banking online - so far so good. Unfortunately I have three different logon username/password combinations for internet banking for the different account groups. Ad to this that some of the logins utilise a netguard card (a plastic card with a matrix of figures that internet banking generates random combinations of for login) while some of the logins require the netguard token (an electronic random string generator) and you’ve got for some confusion. The reason for so many logins? Logically different people have access to different account groups and I need to control who sees what - the only way is through separate internet banking accounts.
So here’s an idea… single sign on. I have one internet banking login which gives me access to every single account that I am authorised to see (regardless of which entity the account belongs to). As admin I can then authorise others to see different accounts also (which then appear on their single sign on along with the accounts which they have access to). This one login would only require one security authentication method and, given that it would be the only login required, would be more likely to be palatable to customers.
Once that’s in place the next logical step is to have cross banking organisation single sign on (and this is something that, in time, the killer platform players will work out), so that my single sign on accesses all bank accounts that I am authorised to see - regardless of which institution they are set up with.
A few years ago, Campbell Gower, CEO of phil&teds, visited Cactus with some potential European distributors for our gear. Since then p&t has risen meteorically, they’re now selling in 2000 stores across dozens of countries, turning over a reported USD90mil retail value of product (which says nothing about profitability but is still a good number) and winning export and design awards left, right and centre.
Miki pointed out their latest employment advertising campaign and you should check it out - it’s an example of why they’re taking on the world and coming out on top.
So well done Campbell and team - it’s been a lot of effort but now you’re enjoying the spoils of the war.
For those still unaware, Google is introducing Knol, a tool that allows people to create articles about distinct subject areas and post them on specialised, Google hosted pages. The difference between Knol and Wikipedia is that while Wikipedia relies on the mass knowledge of “the crowd” to author articles, Knol articles will be authored by individuals who both own the page they write, and who share in the revenue derived from that page. Thus far it all sounds good….
However - Google owns web search (or 69% of it anyway) and has the ability, now that they will co-own content, to drive traffic to that content by altering page rankings for competitors. Knol could indeed mean the death of Wikipedia. This is the very sort of thing that gets market comptition authorities worldwide dribbling with expectation of court cases.
Why is Knol such big news? Because we’re seeing a move from Google being the (at least in appearance) neutral platform provider, simply indexing the content of others, to Google becoming both the owner of content, and the service that guides people to that content. Bob at Smoothspan is entirely correct when he says that platform vendors have to be Switzerland, that is neutral providers whose function is to provide a home to others. As soon as they start to compete with the providers who sit on top of their platform, bad things are liable to happen.
I’ve been doing a lot of talking recently about networks - be they special interest vertical ones or large horizontal demographic ones. In either case the rules are the same, the platform has to appear, act and develop as a neutral player. It’ll be interesting to see where Google go with Knol and whether they take steps to ameliorate any non-neutral taint that might come with their actions.
I’ve said for awhile that LinkedIn is as likely as any of the other incumbents to win the social netowrking war. The reason for this is that their more business orientated focus gives them the basis from which to launch a truly monetised service. Facebook et al on the other hand have their value statement steeped on social aspects and as such will find it hard to connect with a more transactional model.
With this in mind it was interesting to read that LinkedIn has formed an initial partnership with BusinessWeek with that aim of creating a place to do business rather than one just to read about business. I’ve thought about this model a lot and have some strong ideas about how it could work. The validity of the concept is a no-brainer, my question remains as to who is best placed to execute it - the directory aggregators, the traditional directories or maybe the network carriers?? Watch this space…
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