Regular readers of this blog (there are some of you out there, I'm sure of it!) will know that I used to be Editor of FStech's sister title, Retail Systems.
I recently had lunch with a contact from my retail days and somewhat inevitably conversation turned to retail technology vs FS technology. "I'd imagine there is a lot less innovation in the financial services sector than there is in retail," said the contact, his logic being that, with many of the big financial institutions, it's a case of throwing large amounts of cash at legacy transformation projects. Retailers, on the other hand, have less money to play with and so sweat the small stuff, which is where true innovation lies.
I recently had lunch with a contact from my retail days and somewhat inevitably conversation turned to retail technology vs FS technology. "I'd imagine there is a lot less innovation in the financial services sector than there is in retail," said the contact, his logic being that, with many of the big financial institutions, it's a case of throwing large amounts of cash at legacy transformation projects. Retailers, on the other hand, have less money to play with and so sweat the small stuff, which is where true innovation lies.
Regular readers will also know that the 2012 FStech Awards took place last month. It was my first awards and it was interesting to compare the entries to those received during my time as head of the judging panel for the Retail Systems Awards. There were indeed a number of entries detailing projects which were immense in scale but not particularly innovative. But at the same time, there were lots of examples of how financial institutions are making innovative and effective use of technology in such areas as social media, mobile banking, payments, cloud computing and green IT.
To cut a long story short, the FS tech sector is just as innovative (arguably more so in several areas - e.g. social media and mobile) as retail. By way of example, I offer up a U.S. Bank project which involves employees piloting an iPhone app that uses augmented reality technology. The Find US+ app enables users to locate the bank's branches and ATMs. When pointed in a specific direction, the phone displays a computer-generated graphic for each location, its address and distance based on the user's GPS location. Each graphic is colour-coded to reflect whether the location is open, closing in an hour or closed. The app recognises when the user arrives at the destination and asks if additional information is requested. It also provides the best route and hours of operation.
There's a video on the bank's YouTube channel demonstrating the technology. It can be found here.
How cool is that?
