As part of Strategy 14’s continuing role in developing secure mobile communications technology for both financial and security services Phil was recently invited to speak at Mecom Expo’s highly focused one-day forum designed for the Banking & Finance sector.

The one-day forum featured up to the minute case-study based presentations on the latest communications technology & solutions from around the world and included speakers from Cisco Systems and IBM.

Speaking to a select audience of senior business managers at the forum Phil spoke about the many commercial applications of secure automated SMS and the use of
mobile banking as part of the greater ‘valued added’ proposition.

He also included details about how one of our clients, a UK wide group is adapting this technology to support their own product and at the same time are using it to support the Financial Services Authority objectives for financial capability.

To see the Powerpoint presentation please click here.

Phil observed “there seems an array of exciting developments in all aspects of technology for improving customer services, and the customer experience as a whole – while at the same time streamlining costs for the financial institutions. I can see XMS becoming a key delivery tool for many of these new services.

I do believe that there is a real hunger to develop new ways of delivering banking and financial service products in the Middle East and Africa, perhaps more so than Europe, and I’m excited at the opportunity to become a part of that.”

Lots of bits of news to cover this week – so take a deep breath and we’ll dive right in.

Firstly for those of you who have been using our Retailer / Affinity Partner sections you will note that there is nothing on there currently – except a message about our forthcoming password element. The reasons for the introduction of this section are fairly straightforward really – in order to keep you informed of all the potential opportunities that are arising with the companies we work with we must keep some of it confidential.

We are very conscious of your competitors watching our website to see who is about to launch what, or who is planning to run a specific offer. On new password system will mean that you can access and advertise potential opportunities but not spy on your competitors. By way of an example, under the new system House of Fraser and Marks & Spencer will both be able to read about forthcoming opportunities with say the Ryan Air scheme or the Young Enterprise scheme, but they won’t be able to read about each others promotions. Similarly Ryan Air will be able to read about Marks & Spencer’s promotional offers, and House of Fraser’s promotional offers but not Young Enterprises forthcoming plans.

Secondly, our blog is underway – www.strategy14.blogspot.com . The first one is up and the second will be posted over the weekend, and as sad as it sounds we’re really excited about sharing our views and experiences with you. We would also love to get your feedback on the blog and the points it discusses. We can see a lot of issues for brands in all sorts of direct-to-consumer industries and charities over the next 24 months and we think the only way to succeed is to discuss these challenges so we can make our decisions from an informed and well thought-out point of view.

Thirdly, our new system is on course to go into testing at the end of next week / early into the following week and we are getting very excited that it is so close – it was beginning to feel like painting the Forth Bridge. With that in place we should be able to dramatically improve the usability and functionality of all the websites we support and we sure you’re as excited at us at the prospect of improving traffic, conversion rates and volume of sales.

Finally we are finalising the soft-launch for Young Enterprise, and we are talking to several brands that are interested in running promotions specific to the Y Cash card scheme in the initial months. If you want to be a part of this exciting project as well, and want to improve your brand’s awareness and sales with either the 13-21 year old students or their parents then do get in touch as soon as you can (email me).

Have a great weekend everyone!