Notes from the Trenches – Gonzo™ Goes to BAI RDS

This week marked the annual BAI RDS conference, one of the year’s last great gathering events for financial institution employees, vendors, consultants, and manufacturers of giveaways that cost less than $2 each and break in less than a week.

Your faithful Gonzo reporter was there, down in the Big Easy (that’s what we hipsters call New Orleans). Things started dubiously when I looked outside my hotel room and saw nothing but one big billboard advertising Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club on Bourbon Street. How could things fail to get better?

With apologies to Larry for not taking him up on his kind invitation, here’s a rundown on things that got my attention.

What Was Hot

• Integration. Man, everybody wants systems to share data and transactions more easily. Loan origination systems talking to deposit systems… enterprise contact management and account history… information from profitability systems integrating into CIF… images in account history and research screens… MCIF data into branch delivery systems… middleware and APIs needed to accomplish all of this. The list goes on and on, and there is a growing recognition of the complexity of the design needed to make this happen. People are also beginning to understand the potential conflict between these needs and a no-holds-barred, best-of-breed environment. Should make for interesting discussion at the banks.
• Loan origination systems. In the hot, barren and unforgiving desert, poor decrepit wanderers crawled across the sand delirious with thirst and hoping beyond hope that they would find the oasis with the cool, clear water that could resuscitate their aching bodies and souls. Translation : Everybody wanted to know if there’s a stinkin’ loan platform out there that can really handle mortgage, consumer and at least small business lending, if not full-blown, high-end commercial. My answer : nope, but there is pretty good progress on mortgage/consumer or consumer/small business in one system. The Web app pieces, however, are for the most part still standalone. Why is this all so hard? Note to vendors – he who parches the thirst of the crying masses will make many gold coins.
• Check 21 and Payment Systems. Somebody is going to save money with Check 21. However, nobody is quite clear about what the impact will be on volumes, returns and NSF income, if any. At the same time –
  • Debit is growing in volumes while fee income is narrowing
  • Check-to-ACH conversion is an absolute unknown in terms of how big it will be and how it might impact fee income
  • ATM transactions and deployment look to be on the same flattening trend as checks

Add it all up, and there is a growing realization out there that banks and credit unions need to look at all of this in terms of an overall payment systems strategy. Too much fee income is at stake not to.

What Got the Polite Smiles and Yawns

• Big-picture CRM
  I know this is a recurring theme for you Gonzo readers, but people at RDS were a lot less interested in how the big picture of CRM is going to play out and a lot more interested in the long-term standards they needed to think about and what quick wins could be accomplished. What seems to be happening is that people are realizing CRM is not a front-to-back design, meaning you don’t start with sales tools, next-best-product prompts, sophisticated marketing initiatives, one-to-one marketing, or any of that stuff.
  Instead, people seemed to be recognizing CRM design as a back-to-front strategy – get your delivery systems, customer information, and employee knowledge in order in a way that allows you to create great customer experiences (read “fast, accurate, knowledgeable, and fanatic about follow-up” here). Then move to selling it – selling won’t take care of itself, but it will be far more likely to succeed with the back end in place. I think that was the reason for the focus on integration and loan systems I mentioned earlier.
• Wireless and biometrics (at least as far as customers were concerned)
  With all due respect to the cute demos that let the personal assistant get a balance, there seemed to be more interest in how these technologies could help back-office productivity (e.g. employee ID for biometrics, remote access for employees on the wireless side). The big win might be on the back end.
• ATMs that personalize messages and serve as a marketing outlet
  The general read I got from the crowd was that this might be a nice add-on capability the next time they buy a new ATM as long as it doesn’t increase cost too much. People doing anything with ATM personalization seemed to be viewing it as straight R&D.

One Idea We Weren’t Expecting to See But Liked

Several vendors were showing systems that produce combined statements or any other type of form/correspondence using data from disparate systems/sources and adding summaries, images, and detail in one file. Physical, e-mail, and Web delivery can be supported. What was interesting is that these vendors approached customer correspondence as one big, overall topic needing to be managed in total, not in pieces. A nice niche.

One Cool Product

An Epson printer that can also scan a check, read the MICR line, create/store an image, and create a TIF or other file that can be used for collection in the Check 21 world. Slick.

Best Presentations

• John McKean from the Center for Information Based Competition , whose presentation was titled, “Why Customers Don’t Want Relationships.” Geez, this guy must have felt like Ghandi at a Soldier of Fortune rally. But he was factual, he was blunt, and he hit it right on the screws, as we say on the golf course. For my money, the best presentation of the week.
• Richard Branson. People either loved him or hated him. Put me in the former camp. For sure, he is one weird, strange cat, but he has built 200 companies, not one of which was acquired! For an hour, he talked about business and success and never mentioned a number or a ratio. All he focused on was his people, his corporate culture, and how to make things fun. He’s got muy Gonzo.

Other Sundry Thoughts

• Coolest booth
  eFunds – sort of a Frank Lloyd Wright meets Jane Jetson thing. A close second to Wincor Nixdorf .
• Most blatant use of booth babes to sell product
  Absolutely nobody. Not a sighting. What a disgrace. What’s happened to our industry? Where’s the vision and leadership? Somebody needs to step up, dammit.
• Biggest reason I’m ashamed to be a middle-aged male
  People were more upset that Unisys didn’t have the golf swing analysis booth than they were about the lack of booth babes. Golf inspires more interest than lust? How humiliating. Somebody put me out of my misery.
• Best free beer
  Well, this was a tie among anybody who gave it away for free, of course, but the BAI reception on Monday had Coronas and lime – can’t go wrong there. After three or four, those egg rolls almost tasted like egg rolls.
• Best reception a sniveling consultant couldn’t crash but heard was a blowout
  Corillian. The search party reported that they found most everybody by Friday morning.
• Wierdest giveaway
  Baker Hill. It’s this wet thing shaped like a brain that sticks to the wall when you throw it. The biggest hit with the Central High freshman girl crowd by far. A really sick handout – and we say that with the utmost awe and respect.
• Hardest part about coming home from New Orleans
  Explaining to your spouse she needs a penicillin shot for your ear infection.
• Most expensive handouts
  Visa. Bags, shirts, radios, etc. Apparently, settling the lawsuits didn’t impact the marketing budget too much.

Final thought – if this all adds up to anything, it seems like a pragmatic year of making systems work together and focusing on customers and service. Quite the revelation, eh?

Till next year – in Las Vegas, baby.
-tr