Let me be direct and get straight to the point: This blog post is about the absolutely worst presentation about the changing world of banking that I have ever seen.
And I’ve seen (and possibly created) some real losers.
Booz & Co. (a very reputable consulting firm) published a PDF called Next Generation Retail Banking: The Rise of Social Apponomics. Some of the lowlights from this deck include claims regarding:
- The end of all things. According to the authors, as a result of the financial crisis, corporate cultures have been torn apart, and good and evil have been blurred. The report states that “Arisen from chaos have new views of the world, beliefs, and behaviors that pose significant new challenges to banks.”
- Digitization of human culture, the key to growth and profitability. The authors believe that a “fundamental paradigm change towards offering a holistic customer experience is required, implying transforming a bank from its core to its periphery.”
- Customized banking through coordinated networks. To quote the report: “The result of the digital transformation are coordinated banking networks organized by concentrators that work to offer the individually most relevant experience and solutions that maximize value-to-customer across the entire lifecycle.”
And that’s just slide 1.
The second slide attempts to elaborate on the “required paradigm change” and discusses something referred to as “nevolution” — broaden one’s horizon, creating options, preparing for change.
The third slide informs us that the Internet changes everything, and in case we didn’t quite understand that, goes on to mention that Broadband changes everything. And for good measure, the final bullet on the slide lets us know that Mobile changes everything. A little clip picture on the slide contains the label: “Customer expectations are evolving.”
Slide 4 is a word tag chart.
The fifth slide talks about how the “key capabilities” in retail banking have evolved from technology (the past) to value (the present), and how they will evolve to engagement (emerging).
There are a couple more slides, and if you have a strong constitution and high tolerance for pain, you can read them for yourself.
My take: I’m serious about this: Booz should remove the deck from its website, apologize for publishing crap, and call a do-over.
In addition to being just a bunch of buzzword bingo, what’s really mind-boggingly annoying here is that Booz is trying to create some new term to describe the new environment (social apponomics), but no where — I repeat, NO WHERE — in the deck is there any definition or even further mention of the term past the title slide.
Really, Booz?
[h/t to The Financial Brand for alerting me to this one. Although, maybe I shouldn’t be thanking him :)]
Ron Shevlin's Marketing Whims 