Archive for February, 2011

18FebMobile Banking 2.0 – A Perspective

“Of the next billion people who come online, the vast majority of them are going to do so for the first time through a mobile device.” – Jimmy Wales in SAP Spectrum, [Manr10, p. 17]

Where does this road lead?

“If you had asked most bankers five years ago when they thought that mobile banking would become mainstream, they would likely have told you “not in my lifetime”. Yet, in the last five years, that is exactly what has happened and now banks everywhere are talking about mobile banking.” [King10, p. 228]

Even though banks everywhere are talking about mobile banking tools, Mobile E-Banking is still in its infancy, especially in Switzerland (see [Frey11, p. 24] and below). Even innovations or prime examples such as mint.com (see [Intu11]) or Swissquote (see [Swiss11]) cannot hide this fact. Is it fear of reputational damage, e.g. fear of hitting the headlines in Social Networks (see [Frey11, p. 24]) that slows development down?

At the same time, the number of always connected mobile users is growing steadily. Most of the used new devices (millions of iPads, Galaxy Tabs, iPhones, Nexus, etc.) allow an intuitive user guidance – easy-to-use Apps are available. Provider and retailer sell mobile devices with data flatrates. Consequentially, the SMS Banking (~ “Mobile Banking 1.0″) area is over –

Nevertheless, fact is that bank customers want to have access to “Bank 2.0″ wherever they are. In the evening, you rather grab your smartphone or tab that’s always online than turn your PC or Mac on. And who would like to make the detour to go to the bank branch?

“Bankers need to start treating mobile as a serious competitive advantage.” [King10, p. 228]

King, an acknowledged strategic advisor to the financial services sector and author of “Bank 2.0″, is absolutely right. In fact, a couple of companies are already working on solutions and aim at leveraging the competitive advantage of a soon introduction of new “Mobile Banking 2.0″ applications (and “Apps” respectively). Thus, the above-mentioned companies like mint.com, IBM and Swissquote are just examples.

However, while in some countries at least mobile money transfer and basic mobile banking features are “day-to-day business” some countries are more reluctant to introduce new technical tools. The latter particularly applies for Switzerland, one of the main financial places worldwide. Technical support is in Switzerland quite often reduced to mere SMS (~ “Mobile Banking 1.0″) services – without making use of the now market-ready options of new mobile technologies. And the potentials go even beyond “classic” Retail Banking.

Based on my own experience as a bank advisor, I must however say that Swiss banks exercise caution and monitor developments that might affect security, business risk etc. very closely particularly due to the (compared to other jurisdictions) very strict banking secrecy and data protection rule that Swiss law provides. This explains, at least to a certain extent, the reluctance of Swiss banks towards mobile money transactions and the introduction of new “Mobile Banking 2.0″ technologies in general.

In turn, it is exactly the tension between the opportunities that new technology provides and the challenges that makes Switzerland a very interesting place for bank advisors. Beyond, intuitive applications on new devices will give an impulse for “a real” Mobile Banking 2.0 (see [Alt+10, p. 44]).

Readers of this post who are interested in this subject can find some “incitations” in the reference list. If you need more information on the topic, please do not hesitate to contact me…

Reference list:

  • [Alt+10] Alt, Prof. Dr. Rainer; Möwes, Till; Puschmann, Dr. Thomas: “Neue Wege zum Kunden – Innovationen in der Kunde-Bank-Interaktion.” In: “Wirtschaftsinformatik und Management”, URL: http://goo.gl/815lO, last verified on February 18, 2011.
    Wiesbaden: Gabler Verlag | Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, 2010, WUM 4.2010, pp. 40-47
  • [Frey11] Frey, Matthias: “Die Bank als Plattform.” In: IBM – Think! URL: http://www-05.ibm.com/at/think/data_info.html, last verified on February 18, 2011.
    IBM Österreich Internationale Büromaschinen Gesellschaft m.b.H., 2011, pp. 24-25
  • [Intu11] Intuit, Inc.: “Free Personal Finance Software, Budget Software, Online Money Management and Budget Planner | Mint.com.” URL: http://www.mint.com/, last verified on February 18, 2011.
    Intuit, Inc., 2011
  • [King10] King, Brett: “Bank 2.0: How Customer Behavior and Technology Will Change the Future of Financial Services_”
    Singapore: Brett King and Marshall Cavendish (International) Asia Pre Ltd., 2010
  • [Manr10] Manross, Perry: “How Wikipedia Is Serving The Next Wave Of Internet Users.” In: SAP Spectrum, 4/2010, URL: http://en.sap-spectrum.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/SAP_SPECTRUM_2010-no-04_E_j_wales_wikipedia.pdf, last verified on February 18, 2011.
    SAP AG, 2010, pp. 16-18
  • [Swiss11] Swissquote Bank Ltd.: “Mobile – Technology – TRADING – Swissquote Bank ltd.” URL: http://www.swissquote.ch/sqweb/epb/technology/mobile.jsp, last verified on February 18, 2011.
    Swissquote Bank Ltd., 2011

Related articles:

  • Schwiebert, Marc; Körber, Olaf; Thälker, Carsten: “Neuland im Bankvertrieb – Wie mobile Endgeräte die Kundenkommunikation verändern.” In: “Wirtschaftsinformatik und Management.” URL: http://goo.gl/twA0p, last verified on February 18, 2011.
    Wiesbaden: Gabler Verlag | Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, 2011, WUM 1.2011, pp. 24-29
in Bank 2.0 and E2.0. Closed

14FebBusiness Capabilies in Enterprise Architecture Management

What are Business Capabilites?

The Management of Business Capabilities attracts the attention of Business, IT and EAM representatives. It not only represents one of the cornerstones of Business Informatics (and Information Systems respectively) but it is also considered a key topic of Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM). As outlined by Wolfgang Keller,

„Capabilities are one of the later ‚hot topics‘ in Enterprise Architecture Management.“ [Kell09, p. 1]

Beimhorn et al. describe the term “Capabilities” as follows:

„Capabilities represent firm-internal encapsulable services, i.e. units of business functionality. In contrast, a workflow or procedure is the end-to-end group of activities that describes how a capability is performed, while a business process is the interconnection resp. a composition of capabilities to fulfill a market demand.“ [Bei+05, p. 5]

Balasubramanian et al. provide the following definition:

„A business capability is a distinctive attribute of a business unit that creates value for its customers. Capabilities are measured by the value generated for the organization (…). Thus, capabilities differentiate an organization from others and directly affect its performance. ” [Bal+00, p. 41]

As you can see, there are a lot different views on this topic and a “plethora” of definitions. From my point of view, Business Capabilities are a promising instrument that promotes the sustainable alignment of the artifacts of the Enterprise Architecture to the corporate strategy. Capabilities allow a business-focused perspective – abstract from technologies, applications and infrastructure. This is an encouraging way to reduce complexity and to support management decisions. Another aspect is the constancy:

„While processes are modified, technology changes, and people reorganize, a business capability remains constant.” [SyCl09]

Beside, this instrument helps companies and groups to achieve transparency in their IT landscape.

As investments are more and more questioned and budgets get increasingly scarce, the business value of Capabilities will increase in future. A good introduction is given by Wolfgang Keller (see [Kell09]). Currently, I am working on a further publication on this topic. You will hear on this website about this publication (expected Summer 2011, http://www.generate-value.com/publications/).

Reference list:

  • [Bal+00] Balasubramanian, P.; Kulatilaka, N.; Storck, J. (School of Management, Boston University): Managing information technology investments using a real-options approach. In: Journal of Strategic Information Systems 9 (2000).
    Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2000, pp. 39-62
  • [Bei+05] Beimborn, Daniel; Martin, Sebastian F.; Homann, Ulrich: Capability-orientated Modeling of the Firm. In: Proceedings of the IPSI 2005 Conference. Category: Proceedings. http://www.wiiw.de/publikationen/protected/CapabilityorientedModelingoft1269.pdf. Registration required, last verified on April 7, 2010.
    Amalfi/Italy: IPSI 2005 Conference
  • [Kell09] Keller, Wolfgang; Using Capabilities in Enterprise Architecture Management, Version of 2009-12-18. URL: http://www.objectarchitects.biz/ResourcesDontDelete/CapabilityBasedEAMWhitepaper.pdf, last verified on April 20, 2010.
    Lochham: Wolfgang Keller, 2009
  • [SyCl09] Sykes, Martin; Clayton, Brad (Microsoft Corporation): Surviving Turbulent Times: Prioritizing IT Initiatives Using Business Architecture. In: MSDN Architecture, The Architecture Journal, www.thearchitecturejournal.net, last verified on April 13, 2010. URL: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/aa902621.aspx.
    Redmond: Microsoft Corporation, 2009
in EAM. Closed

07FebRethinking Knowledge Work – A Comment

“The key is applying technology more precisely”, says Tom Davenport in the new McKinsey Quarterly (see [Dave11]). In his new article, the author explains the different requirements to support less and more knowledge intensive processes in companies. For this purpose he used the classification which he has already presented in 2005 in “Thinking for a living” (see [Dave05, p. 27]). Different processes need different approaches. Davenport provides some good points in his contributions.

Of particular relevance for companies are processes that are not standardized and through which significant competitive advantages can be achieved. Knowledge plays an important role in this process type. Davenport uses the term “Collaboration model” to describe the processes, that are highly reliant on deep expertise across functions (see [Dave05, p. 27], [Dave11]) and in which the collaboration of distributed experts is of high relevance. But how can new developments like Web 2.0- and Enterprise 2.0-technologies respectively bring added value in the context of knowledge-intensive, dynamic, unstructured processes to overcome the limitations of standardization? The forthcoming book “Potenziale und Herausforderungen des Geschäftsprozessmanagements im Enterprise 2.0 unter der Berücksichtigung der Dynamik unternehmerischer Systeme” (see [Domb11]) will place particular emphasis on processes that cannot be adequately supported by “traditional” technologies.

Resource list:

  • [Dave05] Davenport, Thomas H.: „Thinking for a Living – How to Get Better Performance And Results from Knowledge Workers.“
    Boston MA: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2005
  • [Dave11] Davenport, Thomas H.: “Rethinking knowledge work: A strategic approach.” In: McKinsey Quarterly, February 2011. URL: http://goo.gl/QCp5M, last verified on February 4, 2011.
    McKinsey & Company, 2011
  • [Domb11] Dombrowski, Boris – Forthcoming Book: “Potenziale und Herausforderungen des Geschäftsprozessmanagements im Enterprise 2.0 unter der Berücksichtigung der Dynamik unternehmerischer Systeme.”
    Berlin: Logos Verlag, 2011
in BPM + E2.0. Closed

01FebAre Workflows dynamic?

Dynamic, unstructured processes vs adaptive, ad hoc workflows

The Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) defined a workflow as follows:

„The automation of a business process, in whole or part, during which documents, information or tasks are passed from one participant to another for action, according to a set of procedural rules.“ (see [Alle00, p. 15]).

Automation and execution in an operational environment are constituent features of workflows (see also [Holl95, p. 6]). As the procedure of the activities of dynamic, unstructured processes can not be determined in advance, these features do not exist in dynamic, unstructured processes. Terms such as “ad hoc workflow” (see eg [Gada08, p. 56 et seq.]) or “adaptive workflow ” (see [Kam+98, p. 1 et seq.]) seem to provide to some extent a “contradiction in terms”. Accordingly, the author of this blog prefers the term “dynamic, unstructured process” (see [Domb11]).

More on this topic can be read in my forthcoming book “Potenziale und Herausforderungen des Geschäftsprozessmanagements im Enterprise 2.0 unter der Berücksichtigung der Dynamik unternehmerischer Systeme” (see [Domb11], http://www.generate-value.com/publications/).

Reference list:

  • [Alle00] Allen, Rob: „Workflow: An Introduction.” In: Fischer, Layna (Hrsg.): Workflow Handbook 2001.
    Lighthouse Point FL: Future Strategies Inc., 2000, pp. 15-38
  • [Domb11] Dombrowski, Boris – Forthcoming Book: “Potenziale und Herausforderungen des Geschäftsprozessmanagements im Enterprise 2.0 unter der Berücksichtigung der Dynamik unternehmerischer Systeme.”
    Berlin: Logos Verlag, 2011
  • [Gada08] Gadatsch, Andreas: „Grundkurs Geschäftsprozess-Management – Methoden und Werkzeuge für die IT-Praxis – Eine Einführung für Studenten und Praktiker.“ 5. Edition.
    Wiesbaden: Vieweg, 2008
  • [Holl95] Hollingsworth, David: “Workflow Management Coalition – The Workflow Reference Model.” Document Number TC00-1003, Document Status – Issue 1.1, 19-Jan-95. URL: http://www.wfmc.org/standards/docs/tc003v11.pdf, last verified on January 31, 2011.
    Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC), 1995
  • [Kam+98] Kammer, Peter J.; Bolcer, Gregory A.; Bergman, Mark: „Requirements for Supporting Dynamic and Adaptive Workflow on the WWW.” CSCW’98 Workshop on Adaptive Workflow Systems Report. URL: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.36.725&rep=rep1&type=pdf, last verified on January 31, 2011 .
    University of California, 1998
in BPM and BPM + E2.0. Closed