In the previous 10 pages we’ve provided some of our ideas for 1998 planning. These may or may not be appropriate for your financial institution. To come up with the best ideas for your company, consider the five-step process outlined in the book Jump Start Your Brain:

Five Steps to the Big Idea

1. Immersion: Study the situation, visit competitors, read some new research reports, talk to customers and employees, go to a conference, or poll your customer base.

2. Environment: Clear away impediments to thinking, go off site, lose the suit, stockpile plenty of food and coffee, play music … whatever it takes to let your brain run free.

3. Stimulus: Do “thinking exercises” to loosen the brain before tackling your specific problem.

4. Idea Generation (free-form): Think of every possible crazy solution to the problem, write them down as you go, but make no judgments or justifications at this time.

5. Plan Development: Put each idea on its own 3x5 card and arrange into bigger concepts and brilliant ideas.

Source: Adapted from Jump Start Your Brain by consultant Dave Hall, Warner Books, 1995 (order www.amazon.com)

Immersion

To fully immerse yourself in online banking/online services, you need to go beyond your normal patterns of reading the trade and business press and conversing with peers and subordinates. Try some of these techniques.

1. Launch a Personal Fact-Finding Mission to find out how consumers use online financial information and how they would like it to be improved, simplified or enriched.

• traditional in-person customer focus groups (attend the sessions yourself)
• branch staff focus groups
• online focus groups (users meet online in a moderated chat environment)
• telephone focus groups (users meet in a moderated conference call)
• casual meetings/lunches around the company

2. Go to a Conference. Away from the daily grind, surrounded by the latest technology and thinking; a perfect prescription for break-through thinking. Consider one of the non-banking conferences for exposure to a wider range of people and ideas:

Conference Calendar

• Thinking Outside the Lines: 1-day seminar in various cities by National Seminars; $99; 800.258.7246, www.natsem.com.
• Bank Marketing Assoc. Marketing Forum: Sept. 7-10; Chicago; $875 member, $1,195 nonmember; 202.663.5274.
• Internet Commerce Expo: Sept. 8-11; Los Angeles, CA; by IDG; $995; 800.667.4423, www.idg.com/ice/.
• Financial Technology Expo: Sept. 10-12; New York; by Miller Freeman; 800.829.3976, www.financetech.com.
• The TeleCosm Conference: Sept. 14-16; Palm Springs, CA; by Forbes Magazine and George Gilder; $3,800; 212.206.5521, telecosm@forbes.com, www.forbes.com/conf/ .
• Online Developers IV, Building to the Bandwidth: Sept. 17-19; San Francisco, CA; by Jupiter Communications; $1,690; 212.780.6060, jupiter@jup.com , www.jup.com .
• ABA Bank Card Conference: Sept. 21-23; Long Beach, CA; $925 member, $1,125 nonmember; 800.338.0626.
• Payments System Strategy Symposium: Sept. 22-23; Washington D.C.; by BAI; $895 ($1,195 nonmember); 800.224.9889 or www.bai.org .
• IntelliQuest Brand Tech Forum Five: Sept. 29-30; San Francisco; $1,195; 800.543.6124, www.intelliquest.com .
• Building Risk Management Systems: Sept. 29-30; St. Louis, MO; by BAI; $795 ($1,075 nonmember); 800.224.9889, www.bai.org .
• Advanced ATM Conference: Sept. 29-30; Dallas, TX; by Faulkner & Gray; $795; 800.535.8403, order@faulknergray.com , www.faulknergray.com .
• Banking Call Center Conf: Oct. 8-10; New Orleans, LA; by Faulkner & Gray; $795; 800.535.8403, (see above for Web).
• Technology Summit ’97: Oct. 15-16; New York; by The Wall Street Journal; $1,650; 800.321.3443, summit@wsj.dowjones.com , info.wsj.com/techsummit/.
• Microbanker ’97: Oct. 19-22, Dallas, TX; by Microbanker; $995; 518.745.7071, www.microbanker.com .
• Online ’97: Banking & Financial Services in Cyberspace: Oct. 19-22; Phoenix, AZ; by American Banker; $795; 800.803.3424, absuccess@tfn.com .
• Performance Measurement for Customer Profitablity in Banking: Oct. 28-30; Chicago; by IQPC; $1,295; 800.882.8684, info@iqpc.com , www.iqpc.com .
• CU InfoTech ’97: Nov. 13-16; Scottsdale, AZ; by William Rogers & Associates; 314.843.3845.
• Credit Card Marketing: Nov. 16-19; Orlando, FL; by Faulkner & Gray; $835; 800.535.8403 (see above for Web).
• Retail Delivery ’97: Dec. 1-5; New Orleans, LA, by BAI; $1,050 ($1,425 nonmembers); 800.224.9889, www.bai.org .

3. Read a Research Report Cover-to-Cover. We know this is going to hurt, but plunk down a couple grand for the latest online banking research, clear a half-day on your calendar and really read the whole report, not just the executive summary. Even if you don’t believe any of the conclusions, think about the implications for your company were they to come true. It might help you see things in a new light.

A much lower cost alternative (FREE) for Piper Jaffray clients, is to call Bill Burnham, 612.342.5540, bburnham@pjc.com , and request a copy of his recently published Electronic Commerce Report (published 8/97, 272 pages). Non-clients can get the executive summary. There is much food for thought in his report, though not all of it is relevant to retail banking.

Companies Doing Online Banking Research

4. Conduct your Own Research. There is nothing like a fresh survey of your own customers to help put things in perspective. And it doesn’t have to be expensive. You can put a survey on your Web for next to nothing and have results tomorrow. Naturally, this data is highly unrepresentative of your customer base as a whole. It’s more like a focus group, providing a quick peak at the top-of-mind concerns of your Web users.

Stimulus

Thinking exercises are designed to get your brain moving in different directions. Last year the thinking exercise was buying a computer. With the free-fall in computer prices, most of you have probably already done that during the past year. So here’s the new exercise for 1998: open an online brokerage account and make a trade (even if you already trade online, it would be a worthwhile exercise to open an account somewhere else).

With upwards of 40 brokers competing for customers online, the discount brokerage industry is about 6-9 months ahead of banks in delivering value-added services online. The lead is temporary, but we recommend experiencing their service delivery first-hand.

1998 Thinking Exercise:  Trading Stocks Online

If you haven’t traded stocks online yet, you should. Experience first-hand what your best customers are exposed to when they venture online to invest. Keep paper and pen nearby to jot down ideas as you encounter today’s online financial services world through the eyes of the consumer.

1. Clear an entire morning on your calendar.

2. Go to Yahoo and search for online stock brokers.

3. Check out several of the sites especially the top online brokers, Schwab, E*Trade and PCFN. Notice how the transaction accounts (checking, debit cards) are integrated with the brokerage accounts. Any implications for your business?

4. Select a broker that allows immediate trading for new customers such as PCFN www.pcfn.com  or FarSight www.farsight.com .

5. Complete the online application.

6. Check out the prices of your favorite stocks.

7. Set up a portfolio of stocks to track.

8. Make a trade (it only costs $20-40 plus the price of the stock); use a market price so that it will execute in a few moments.

9. Check out the status of the trade and look at your online statement. No batch processing here. This is a real-time environment by necessity. Any implications here for banking?

10. Finally, send money to the broker to cover your trade. Do they offer Web-based funds transfer (from your bank) yet? If not, it’s coming very soon.

Idea Generation

Keep the brainstorming as free-form as possible. But when things begin to bog down (or your cohorts simply demand structure), put some of these categories on the table for discussion. Also see also the list of questions on the facing page.

Incremental revenue from existing customers:

1. Indirect lending

2. Credit cards

3. Personal lines of credit

4. Home equity loans

5. Mortgages

6. Car loans

7. Computer loans

8. Privacy/credit bureau services

9. Companion checking accounts

10. FDIC insured savings/CDs

11. Investments/investment information

12. Financial information services

13. Business accounts/lending

Market Share

1. Small business

2. New geographic areas

3. Underserved niches

4. Account consolidation (getting your customers to move all their accounts to your bank)

5. Joint marketing opportunities

Cost Savings

1. Online direct marketing

2. Online data delivery

3. Online loan applications (applicants do their own data entry)

4. Self-service customer information

5. Fax-on-demand

6. Automated voice messaging

Relationship Building

1. Web-based services and community-building

2. E-mail communications

3. Instant online customer service

4. Online financial tools

5. Customized Web sites

6. Personalized information services

Developing the Plan

How many brainstorm sessions have you been to where you spend hours sweating out the ideas, then as time is running out, the ideas are prioritized in a haphazard fashion, assigned to someone to write-up and distribute, then forgotten? Don’t let your hard work go to waste. Schedule a follow-up session to find the best ideas and arrange them into tactics and strategies that can make a difference in your company.

One way to go about arranging a jumble of ideas and concepts is to put each on a separate 3 x 5 card then arrange them into bigger concepts, strategies, and even new ideas. Another method is to write all the ideas on flip charts, then reorganize them into logical project groupings on a white board. 8

Questions to Stimulate Ideas/Thinking

• What is the most unique section of our Web? Can that thinking be applied to other areas?
• What can we or our customers do better on the Web than in the real world?
• What kind of online services can we provide customers who don’t have the time, inclination, or resources to go online frequently?
• What push services are we working on?
• If we were starting a bank from scratch today, how would the delivery system be built? Do we have competitors following this strategy today?
• Can this (communication, service, marketing program) be done electronically (Web, e-mail) easier, cheaper, more effectively?
• For our next direct mail program, can a response mechanism be posted on the Web?
• Which employees are most Net literate? Are their skills being used to generate new business?
• Could customers answer their own questions about this (product, promotion, problem) if we posted answers on the Web, produced a standard e-mail response, or loaded the answer on a fax server for remote retrieval?
• Do our customers know we exist on the Web? How did they first find out about our Web?
• Do we have e-mail addresses for each customer contact department? Do our customers know them?
• Are we taking advantage of all the free listings available online (search engines, bank directories, etc.)?
• Are we integrating our electronic presence with our mainstream marketing?
• Are we putting every customer form online, especially credit applications, check reorder forms, employment application forms, and a free-from suggestion “box?”
• Do we have service standards established for e-mail? Are we better than our competitors?
• Are we working on making Web information available to customers who don’t have convenient computer access (e.g., through kiosks)?
• Are our business bankers creating value-added information “niches” on our Web?
• Are we establishing a database of questions and answers we receive via e-mail?
• Are we sharing customer “success stories” about how to maximize the value of an online program?
• Are we talking to our business customers about joint marketing opportunities on the Internet?