I think we can all agree that internet banking has proved itself to be a BIG thing! And yet, banks seem to be way off the pace in terms of quality of service and functionality provided to corporate and business customers online. In fact, I would say that internet banking for business is in a ten year time warp. It feels similar to where retail banks were back in 2000 – when they were still trying to understand what customers would do online and figure out if they could make money from that new-fangled ‘inter-web’.

It’s strange, really. These are the business accounts that are worth hundreds of millions – you would think banks would be lavishing money on them. However, business and corporate banking has remained a largely person to person relationship business. Internet banking has been a hygiene factor rather than a differentiator. This is especially as, by and large, it is small business people or junior finance clerks who most regularly use online services.
But I think this is all about to change – and for a few good reasons (and this list is not exhaustive):

Banks are waking up to the fact they can save money:

• The cost of a person to person service is growing. As relationship managers have to care for larger and larger portfolios of customers, banks will have to beef up their online offerings to compensate

• Collaborative working tools will give banks the ability to work more efficiently with clients – which will save banks money and save customers time. For example, web-chat built in to internet banking will allow banks to share information with customers in real time – answering questions in one touch.

It is becoming apparent that internet banking can differentiate service and  deepen relationships:

• Banks will be able to provide new functionality as a value add – particularly for top end users. By adding quality reporting functionality to online services and making it accessible via mobile / tablet devices, banks can deepen relationships with CFOs

• By offering broader ranges of functionality and more user friendly processes, banks will be able to help their business clients to save time and cut costs – particularly important in the current environment

Customer expectations have grown:

• Online customer experience leaders like Apple and Amazon – as well as retail internet banks – have raised the bar. Customers are already becoming frustrated that they cannot do the things they expect to be standard.

I recently co-authored a white paper on the future of internet banking for businesses – spanning both the corporate and SME markets.  As part of that process, I spent time reviewing all the major business internet banks and talking to users – both small business owners and corporate users. This conclusively confirmed that users want a better service.

Users want banks to get the basics right – which many do not do today. Users want their internet bank to provide a decent user interface – with simple to follow processes, a convenient log in process and proper multi-signature functionality. SME customers want access to a greater range of functionality. Corporate customers want more configurability – and to be able to fulfil their foreign exchange and money market transactions for themselves. However to truly differentiate themselves, I think banks need to look to the future – to the services that customers don’t even know that they need yet – or that banks are too scared to offer (online corporate lending anyone?). As all the banks bring their online services up to the standard of retail banks, that is where I think the true differentiation will lie.

So internet banking for business is in a ten year time warp – but it is starting to fast forward. There are clear areas for immediate improvement (banks need to get the basics right) – but differentiation will be achieved through innovation. Banks need to move now, before they get left behind by their competitors and their customers.

Alex is a retail banking and internet / mobile / social media professional with over 10 years experience.

Alex joined Lloyds TSB in 2000. During his time at Lloyds, Alex worked in both product teams and distribution. In his first permanent role, he managed a customer service call centre team of 100 people. He went on to work in Lean Sigma for Personal Lending and strategy for General Insurance. He also held roles in Telephony and Branch Network Operations.

Over the last few years, Alex specialised in internet and mobile banking. He started as a change programme manager and then moved into product management. In his last role at Lloyds, Alex was the product owner for Loans and Mortgages across the Lloyds TSB, Halifax and Bank of Scotland internet banks – the largest internet bank in Europe.

Since joining IBM, Alex has held implementation roles with UK online banking clients. He has also consulted on Retail, Corporate and Business internet & mobile banking and social media with European and Asian financial services clients.

Technorati Tags: alex bray, banking, banks, mobile, retail

Hot on the heels of Thanksgiving, many in the car industry have further reason to celebrate next week: the first birthday of America’s first mainstream electric vehicle (EV).  On November 30th 2010, the first Chevy Volt rolled off the production line at GM’s Hamtramck plant in Michigan.   In light of this anniversary, I attended a dinner hosted by IBM last week, joining representatives of the auto OEMs, electric utilities, government agencies and the media to discuss current issues in the emerging market for EVs.

No shortage of optimism exists for the future of EVs.  One participant observed that the latest wave of support for EVs has the “…largest federated force of people around a new [vehicle] technology there has ever been”.  Nevertheless, this enthusiasm was tempered by equally important critiques of the numerous technical, regulatory and economic barriers that must be overcome if EVs are to become a mass-market alternative to gasoline internal-combustion.

From these discussions, I found the following issues to be of particular relevance over the next few years:

1. Growing consumer acceptance of EVs will be a marathon, not a sprint.
A report released last week (PDF) by IBM’s Institute for Business Value found that only 26% of consumers know ‘a lot’ about EVs.  This is not surprising.  The innovation diffusion literature emphasizes the importance of ‘word-of-mouth’ in the technology communication process – as information spreads, it influences peoples’ decision to adopt.  Our familiarity with EVs will only accumulate once we see a neighbor drive past in their Chevy Volt every day or once we take a trip in a friend’s Nissan Leaf.   As the number of EVs on our roads grows, so will the strength of this word-of-mouth effect, a reinforcing feedback.  However, with fewer than twenty thousand EVs on US roads as of October 2011, these interactions are at present few and far between.

2. How do we remove the barriers of public recharging?
The EV industry is facing the following ‘chicken-and-egg’ infrastructure dilemma:  To attract mainstream car buyers, a ubiquitous infrastructure is needed to support the daily recharging of EVs; however, a significant installed base of EVs is required before the construction of that infrastructure is commercially viable.

The difficulty is how to break out of this bind.  While one approach could be the widespread rollout of publicly accessible recharging infrastructure, this may be expensive and unnecessary.  The economics of public recharging are challenging, requiring high utilization rates and markups to be commercially viable, and are best sustained by large numbers of EVs. Further, early adopters of EVs are likely to include drivers with predictable commuting patterns and those willing to modify their driving patterns to suit their vehicle’s capabilities.  Removing barriers to the private deployment of infrastructure at frequently trafficked destinations such as workplaces, shopping centers and multi-tenant dwellings may be a more effective strategy in the short term.

3. Standards and coordination are needed if consumers are to enjoy a seamless recharging experience.
Numerous companies are developing solutions for the EV infrastructure market, with technologies ranging from overnight charging and direct current (DC) fast charging to battery switching.  This diversity provides useful insurance in the face of uncertainty about consumers’ future recharging needs.  However, it also introduces the potential for incompatible proprietary infrastructure platforms to emerge.

A truly effective recharging infrastructure would be as seamless as the global network of Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs) we have today.  Almost any cardholder can instantly obtain cash from their home bank account, regardless of where they are in the world and regardless of who owns the ATM they are using.

Achieving this in the EV market will require the adoption of agreed standards throughout the industry.  Similar coordination will be needed in relation to the back-end systems that manage payments, drivers’ search for infrastructure and electricity grid load management if consumers are to find recharging their EV a painless habit.

Technorati Tags: chevy, david, engineering, EV, institute for business value, keith, MIT, volt

by Holli Haswell, IBM Corp.
Global Healthcare and Life Sciences

As you may have seen in Gordon Bruce’s blog post a few days ago, today marks the 50 year anniversary of the IBM Selectric typewriter.   Looking back at the history of the Selectric, it surprises me how this machine evokes emotions in so many people. More often than not, you’ll find someone willing to share a very personal story about their relationship with the Selectric and how it changed the way we interact with the written word.

Here’s mine. When I met my first IBM Selectric typewriter, I fell in love. It was the early 80s, my junior year in high school, and my mother insisted I take a typing class because you never know when typing might come in handy.

I didn’t like the idea of typing, I had tried hunting and pecking on our old sticky typewriter at home, but as the hammers would pound they’d stick and tangle and  frustrate me. Yet when I walked into that industrial-looking high school classroom with row after row of new blue IBM Selectric typewriters, my world changed. Maybe it was the way the keys felt or the way the golf ball danced across the page imprinting each letter so clearly. The clicking sound was rhythmic and musical. In short typing to me became a sensory experience.

Like learning to type, I was also told at a young age that it was a good idea to take piano lessons. So for 10 long years prior, I halfheartedly took piano class every Wednesday afternoon. At the time I didn’t realize that when the dexterity from piano practice met the Selectric typewriter, I would suddenly make an entirely new kind of music. And this music wasn’t cacophonous like my awkward piano skills.

Soon I was typing faster and faster. I would type anything in sight for fun, soon reaching 100 words per minute, even competing in interscholastic typing contests. If you could have lettered in typing in high school, I guess that would have been my sport.

I think it was because of the Selectric that I later went on to journalism school where again I was embraced by a classroom with rows and rows of Selectric typewriters, tapping away in unison as we wrote our stories in the newsroom, proofreading and editing by hand and then retyping to perfection.

Then sadly, after one semester break we return to find that the blue Selectric typewriters disappeared from our familiar newsroom. Replacing each was a personal computer terminal with a dull plastic keyboard and a CRT monitor which glowed green. We were forced to adapt to this new technology and sadly the tactile pleasure of typing was never quite the same – event -despite turning on “sticky keys.”

As we recognize the 50th birthday of the Selectric typewriter along with the 100 year anniversary of IBM, I stop to wonder how this typewriter impacted others. Which of the world’s great novels were penned on a Selectric? What technology changing patents were first typed in triplicate? Which ground-breaking Supreme Court decisions and which leading screenplays were typed on this great machine?

Sadly, I haven’t typed on a Selectric in years, they don’t sell much Liquid Paper anymore, correction tape is a thing of the past, and the typewriter repairman I knew has long since retired. Nonetheless the Selectric still holds a special place in my heart.

Do you have a special memory of the Selectric typewriter ?

Also check out the video ‘IBM Selectric Typewriter & its digital to analogue converter ‘ by Engineer Guy, Bill Hammack.

Technorati Tags: IBM 100, IBM Selectric, IBM100, selectric

And one of the conversations heard at last week’s Pulse conference in Las Vegas had to do with how real-world infrastructure — from buildings, to water mains, to manholes, to streets — can become information systems with the help of sensors, analytics and other clever things.

Click on the image to open the picture story:

Technorati Tags: city infrastructure, picture stories, Smarter Cities, Smarter Planet, storytelling, tivoli, urban infrastructure

In the spirit and style of the Internet of Things video from earlier this year, we have just released this new film, System of Systems. The video features – from IBM – Mike Wing, Irving Wladawsky-Berger and Julia Grace, sharing their personal opinions on what SoS means to them, and how we all might find some new ways of thinking about this important subject.

From the introduction:
“If you look at our planet from space, what you see is something like a neural network with the cities as its nodes, and that is as good an image of the planet as a complex system of systems as one could hope for.

With the emergence of the internet in the mid-90′s, the world became one global commons. In the past, we could understand that there was some mysterious unity to the various dimensions of life but we couldn’t understand its dynamics, we couldn’t observe and measure their interactions. We basically operated like the drunk who looks under the streetlight for his keys because that’s where he can see.”

Technorati Tags: IBM, internet of things, Smarter Planet, system of systems

IBM employees are curious. We try to seek out relationships that lead to expanding our knowledge in exciting areas of innovation and thought. When we engage with experts from outside our company, we take the time to listen, the time to think, we ask questions. Sometimes we find ourselves in these situations where – if we approach with respect and an open ear – we afford ourselves the opportunity to collaborate, to further the conversation, to build valuable relationships. We are a global network of experts seeking to further our innovative insight through our innate curiosity, our collaborative nature, and our respect for the work and achievements of others.

As an example of this, a handful of IBMers over the last few years have visited the MIT SENSEable City Laboratory in Cambridge Massachusetts to meet with the students and faculty members there, and to learn about some of the innovative projects they have underway. Just as IBM has been exploring how to make our cities more instrumented, interconnected and intelligent, the folks at MIT have been investigating and testing their own ideas in a number of cities over the last 6 years. Their projects are fascinating.

One project from the SENSEable Cities Lab that has caught the eye of many IBMers over the past few years is called Trash Track. In a nutshell, this project involved attaching RFID tags to everyday garbage items so that the geographic movement of the trash could be tracked for up to a year depending on variables. An Internet of Things project of sorts based on Location Awareness, with mapping, analytics, and ultimately analysis of the tags as attached to their hosts traveling about — glass, metals, plastics, organic waste etc — this project provided unique and surprising lessons for all involved.

In hearing about this project, IBM Fellow John Cohn agreed to take a trip to the MIT campus — his alma mater — to participate in a discussion with SENSEable Cities Associate Director Assaf Biderman to learn more about Trash Track. This video is the result of that trip, and some of the things we learned that day.

Technorati Tags: Analytics, john cohn, location awareness, MIT, Senseable City, trash track

The business community didn’t fair much better as 50 per cent of the public rate the way organisations convey their sustainability policies as ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’. How can we change that?

May be changing that perception over the 9 days of IBM Summit at Start is asking a lot but we can begin to get things rolling. The key to the event is asking, what can sustainability do for business? This is a more authentic way to approach the subject so as to arrive at a place where the output makes sense to business and it’s consumers.

Over the nine topics we will look at those people and businesses doing it right, talk to those with the big ideas and dreams and see how, through collaboration, we can all make business, people and cities work better. It’s a tall order but if you don’t start, you never get going.

We have a packed agenda and we will bring you much of the action via Livestream, Twitter @ibm_start (#ibmstart) and our news hub as is humanly possible.

Along-side the IBM summit is the Start Garden Party that is focusing on what individuals can do. The summit will deep dive into the issues and questions that help and hinder the take up of sustainable business practices.

Some of the sessions at the Summit are going to be held under Chatham House Rules, simply to encourage a full and frank exchange of views. However, the output will be collated and published after the event, probably in October.

We have a number of keynotes and panels sessions with speakers such as Wayne Hemingway, Designer and Entrepreneur; Dame Ellen MacArthur, Sir Martin Rose, CEO M&S, and many more. Full details here.

We hope you can join us and participate in the on-line debate around this topic of our times.

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• IBM to hold summit on sustainability (computing.co.uk)
• I’ll be at IBM Start this week (and next!) (greenmonk.net)

Technorati Tags: business, Ellen MacArthur, environment, IBM, ibmstart, london, sustainability, Wayne Hemingway

IBMers are a proud lot for many reasons. One of the things that makes me proud to be part of this organization is the impact that we have in our communities, and our company’s overall social responsibility. In fact, citizens in general – and IBM employees in particular – are becoming more and more interested in their communities and societal engagement. A company that’s dedicated to making a difference and being a responsible corporate citizen is a company that more people are interested in working for and staying at.

But IBMers are not the only ones who value these traits – others are impressed by them too, and that’s helping to boost our brand equity. As many of you have seen, IBM was recently selected as #2 in BrandZ’s ranking of the Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands for 2010. Sure, some of the criteria used to rank companies are not surprising: building trust, making a brand personal, using heritage to create authenticity. Those make sense and they’re hugely important. But the things that resonate most with me might not be quite as intuitive when it comes to brand equity – citizenship and corporate social responsibility.

In a tight economy like the one we’ve been in for the past couple of years, corporate giving and philanthropy tend to be some of the first casualties. As companies around the globe have struggled through one of the toughest recessions on record, a lot of them have dialed down or entirely stopped community donations and volunteering programs. But not IBM.

Corporate social responsibility and community engagement are part of IBM’s nearly 100-year history. Our focus has always been on innovation that matters for our communities, helping IBMers feel fulfilled and developing the next bench of leaders. It’s our business culture and our community culture.

See IBM’s VP of Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs, Stan Litow, speak about this value to communities, employees and brand equity here.

The Corporate Service Corps is a perfect example of how IBM employees are engaging in communities, feeling more fulfilled in their jobs and enhancing their leadership development. This program is taking what’s at the heart of our Smarter Planet strategy and enabling groups of highly talented employees from a range of countries to volunteer their time and travel to emerging markets to help improve economic development, government services, and stimulate job growth.

There are three main advantages to programs like this. They benefit the cities in these emerging markets by helping them to leverage intelligence and improve critical systems such as transportation, water, food safety, education and healthcare. They benefit the groups of IBM volunteers by building their teaming abilities, providing a cultural learning experience, and offering a chance to broaden their skills and test them out in emerging markets.

And for IBM, which has created this program to enable this expert volunteerism, it provides an enormous benefit by building bridges between high-talent employees and important urban centers around the world and developing the type of leadership to help the company lead globally in the 21st Century.

With programs like this, we’re not just tossing our spare change back to the community, with the only goal being generosity. But rather we are taking what is most valuable to the IBM company – our innovation technology and the skill and talent of our people – and contributing it into the communities we live and work in. IBM’s overall approach to philanthropy goes beyond simple check writing and harnesses our company’s industry leading technology, the talents and passions of IBM employees, and our Smarter Planet vision. That’s one of the reasons we keep talented employees around, and it’s one of the reasons I’m proud to be an IBMer. It’s also helping to build our brand equity around the world, as more and more people see the value we’re creating in our communities.

Technorati Tags: citizenship, corporate service corps, litow, responsibility

• Watch it live: 13 May, Thursday 11:30 BST .
• Facebook event
• Tweet stream (#ibmsmartsys)

Rod Adkins, Senior VP, Systems and Technology Group, traveled to Manchester (at the risk of being stranded thanks to the ash cloud) to cut the ribbon and welcome the lab into IBM.

Manchester Lab in the heart of the city

The lab creates systems software for the Power system, focusing on privacy, virtulisation and opimisation – so clients can manage workloads and reduce storage costs.

The IBM Lab has its origins in Transitive, a spin-off company from University of Manchester, acquired by IBM in 2009 and many of the Engineers are former graduates of the University. The acquisition formed part of IBM’s ongoing strategy to help clients optimise the efficiency and productivity of their computing infrastructure and improve the utilisation of the servers that run them.

I spoke to a couple of the guys at the lab last week who are looking forward to the new challenges and opportunities that being part of IBM brings. They are already working with teams across the globe, so this is no outpost but a core part of our integrated team that is working on enabling better and quicker systems migration and consolidation.

So tomorrow I’ll be taking a train up to Manchester to see the guys and video a few of them, hopefully if I get time I’ll post a couple before the event tomorrow.

Lots more on the website about Smarter Systems.

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• IBM liquid-cooled supercomputer heats building (news.cnet.com)

Technorati Tags: event, lab, live, manchester, opening, power, smartsystems, stg, video

Urs Duerig, one of the scientists involved in the project and a mountain climber in his leisure time, explains the choice: “I always had the dream of mimicking the ancient Egyptians and chiseling stones, making something beautiful, so I said, ‘Let’s try to do a work of art.’” He chose the Matterhorn as the subject for obvious reasons.  To avoid being labeled provincial, the team also carved a tiny elliptical replica of the world.  It measures 22 by 11 micrometers. More than 1000 copies would fit on a grain of salt.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Enough fun for the non-scientists, though. The team’s handiwork illustrates an important scientific achievement. For the nanotechnology revolution to fulfill its potential, scientists and engineers need tools and techniques for creating structures at the nano scale for use in electronics, medicine, and life sciences–devices that can be used to make the world work smarter and better. The Zurich team’s carvings demonstrate a breakthrough they have achieved in the field of scanning probe lithography. “It’s a completely new method for creating structures at the nano scale,” says IBM Zurich researcher Armin Knoll.

They use a sharp cutting tool, called a nanotip, to carve patterns in semiconductor materials. The tip, which is just 50-atoms across at its point, is heated to between 300 and 700 degrees Celsius to to make it possible to evaporate the material without so much force that the nanotip wears out. Think of it as a miniature milling machine.

Such tips have been used to carve materials before, but the team produced several significant inventions, including their method of positioning the tip, the materials they used, and the ability to carve the material in three dimensions at such a fine resolution. The Zurich team, primarily physicists, worked with chemists at IBM’s Almaden lab to produce the materials they use–molecular glass for the Matterhorn and a heat responsive polymer for the globe.

Their method will make the process of creating nano structures much cheaper than existing methods for university scientists and corporate researchers.  “We can make nano science available to a large audience,” says Knoll.

The team faces some significant challenges. Their next task is to figure out how to scale up production. It took just 2 minutes and 23 seconds to carve the globe, but that’s a lot of time when you apply the technique to the mass production of devices. So the team is developing techniques for using several thousand tips in parallel.

That will be an important step toward turning the promise of nanotechnology into reality.

Technorati Tags: nanotechnology