The Most Famous $5 Ever - Bank of America's Planned Debit Card Fees

Graphic: Joe Lackow

That's what CNBC called it.  PIRG called it a kick in the head.  Bert Ely, one of the most quoted banking consultants around and with good reason, called it an incredible marketing and PR debacle instituted without research or competitive positioning.

And, Jay Leno, on The Tonight Show, called it "B.S. of A."

I say, you didn't do your homework, Bank of America.  You did not consult your GIS, you did not do your financial analysis, you did not research your customers, you probably asked your customer contact staff but then ignored them anyway.  And you sure as heck didn't call RPM or Bert Ely or Dave Kerstein or Steve Reider - or anybody else  - for data or focus groups or surveys or social network monitoring.  And boy does it show.

Banks used to make 44 cents from a merchant debit transaction.  Now they make 21 cents.  So.  The bank needs to recover 23 cents a transaction, and at $5 a month, that is about 22 merchant debit transactions.  Some people make that many, some make even more.  Most don't and quite a few make just a few.  And a whole lot of folks have a debit card they didn't even ask for and don't even use - they just wanted a Checking account and an ATM card - and they are really going to be wondering what the hell this five bucks gets them.

The bank has really good GIS people, great branch networkers, I know that for a fact.  But I don't think management ever asked them to look at the GIS and determine which lifestyle segments make the vast proportion of debit transactions, and where they are.  Hell, they had a hard enough time getting funded for a contemporary GIS at all.  It would have been a small investment to determine test markets, rationalize the pricing, find ways to cut branch costs, and communicate the changes in an information-driven way - and collect a windfall nobody would take offense with, not to mention avoid national umbrage and great annoyance expressed on late night TV.

It's even worse than that, evidently nobody ever asked Marketing or Planning either, and did a competitive matrix, and see who is charging what and where and to who and for what.  And that would also have clearly shown that $5 is out of whack.  $2 or $3 sounds so much nicer.  More like other banks charge. And more accurately reflecting the "lost" - reduced - revenue.

Add some uncharacteristically poor PR, et voila, you're not on Letterman's Top 10 list, you ARE Dave's new Top 10 List.

It's been a rough time for the banks lately.  You might want to take body armor to the BAI Retail Delivery show with you this coming week.

And B of A, your website has been down a lot, too.

The old B of A would have done this in a market driven, information driven manner.  And the new B of A will learn heartily from this experience, and will do that.  I'm calling that one right now, they'll get this horse back in the barn.  And marketing tech will help drive that.

Vaya Con Buddha, Steve Jobs

Every product development person alive feels sick and sad right now at the passing of Steve Jobs, the greatest new product guy since Da Vinci.  Because, most of the whole world is saddened by this news, and no one in that world was not touched by this man and what he did.  But most, most of all, what a terrible loss for Laurene and the kids, my very best thoughts are with you tonight.

Apple Magic - Poof?

I thought the new iPhone 4s looked pretty cool at the unveiling today.  It's got the iPad 2 dual core processor under the hood now, better battery, much better wi-fi connectivity, worldwide compatibility, up to 64GB storage, and a MUCH better camera.

Courtesy of InfoWorld

And, it's the first version with Siri, the voice-driven intelligent assistant that Apple acquired the technology for last year.

But it's not the awaited iPhone 5, which a lot of people were expecting today.  No 4G.  No bigger screen, no improved case.  Etc.  So, while I see a much better phone, available everywhere now except on T-Mobile and MetroPCS, with the prior iPhone 4 just 99 bucks, it seems that disappointment abounds.

And it begs the question, is the Apple magic waning, in this, the start of the post-Jobs era?

Not really.

Despite the fact that early investments in Apple (like Xerox in a prior day) have made a lot of us wealthy, the fact is that Apple has never been able to sustain steady, long term equity growth.  Growth has been spectacular when it comes, but there have always been huge proportional declines.  Take a look at the chart and ask yourself, how is Apple to sustain the current growth trend?  Is there another iPad and iPhone to be pulled out of the hat?

Hint: it would be nice if a phone you buy today has 4G, which will be important over the total life of the phone.  Unless you like having to keep upgrading.  It would also be nice if someone really addressed - and emphasized - real cell phone security.  An unencrypted password for the phone and a 4 digit PIN number for my e-Wallet does not make me feel very secure.  Especially on an OS shot through of potential breaches.  And that is why every IT person you are likely to talk to will tell you that, given their preferences, there wouldn't be ANY mobile devices to manage securely in the enterprise, but the iPhone and iPad are clearly their preference if it has to be.

Back in the day, the lack of security nearly killed Windows in the enterprise.  Google would do well to take that lesson to heart with Android, and do it yesterday.  It is going to be an absolute given for Wallet, their mobile payment system, and everywhere security is a concern.

Which, unfortunately, and unhappily, is one long term trend that still appears to have plenty of upside in an overwhelming, international, climate of fear.

Google Wallet - Mobile Payments Finally Arrive. Sort Of.

With the Google wallet, released yesterday, mobile payments on smartphones have arrived!

Well, only on the Sprint Nexus 4G.  Only with a Citibank MasterCard (or Google PrePaid, though others are coming).  And, only with MasterCard Pay Pass merchants (which does include biggies like Bloomies and Macy's, megachains like Foot Locker, Radio Shack, and Toys "R" Us; big drugstores like Walgreens & CVS Pharmacy, fast food outlets like 7-Eleven, McDonald's, Jamba Juice, and Subway; and big box stores like Best Buy and Home Depot.)

Google Wallet allows users to store credit cards, loyalty cards, and gift cards - and to receive and redeem loyalty and sales promotions - on their mobile phone.  Yes, it's kind of like your physical wallet.  The big enabling technology is NFC, "near field communications" that allow secure payments by simply tapping the phone on any PayPass-enabled terminal at checkout.

Experience suggests that the faster the merchant throughput, the more valuable the technology will be.  For example, fast food and convenience stores (and supermarkets, and gas stations) have always led the way on innovative payment systems.  But it only takes a moment's reflection to imagine what this could mean at a store like Home Depot, with its excruciatingly slow point of sale.  And, the value that this offering could add to a banking customer relationship, with the right kind of customer.  I am reminded of the advent of ATM machines, which were thought of as a huge cost to reach what were considered marginally profitable customers.  Of course, analysis showed that early ATM users used more banking services and were highly valuable relationships, and today no bank would dream of operations today without them, as the ATM itself becomes more functional and a richer experience.

Google will add VISA and Amex in the coming months, and other Android phones will start shipping with NFC chips, and other carriers will start lining up.  When the next iPhone ships next month, it's gonna have NFC.  Then, let's see where Apple can drive.  Like, straight to the heart of the early adopters.

So.  What does this mean for you, and your bank?  If you don't already know which demography and Tapestry segments are driving mobile usage - and social networks - hurry up please, it's time.  Your GIS awaits.






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ESRI 2011 User Conference and Business Summit Highlights

Last week's ESRI Business Summit was, for the very first time, visualized and presented as a business conference rather than a GIS conference.  This reminds me of how Economy.com conferences are about business not econometrics.  What is critical to my business here?

Clearly, the answer to that question, at the Business Summit, and the broader ESRI User Conference, is the power of place.

Jack Dangermond was particularly compelling and inspirational this year, opening the conference with an explosion of applications from all over the globe and all over the chart, one positive "game changer" after another after another. 

Timothy and Michele Schilling astounded everyone on Monday afternoon with their tale of improving the income of Rwandan families tenfold in a decade by using GIS to process and market Rwandan coffee (broadly available under the Community Coffee brand in the U.S.)  All of these presentations underscored doing good and doing well, the role of private for-profit companies in creating social as well as economic wealth.

Jacqueline McGlade of the European Environmental Agency talked about the private citizen's role in climate change, and was very moving and inspirational as well.  Just One Degree = catastrophic climate change, but just one person can act.  Jane Goodall's Roots and Shoots, same deal.

At the Business Summit, Warner De Gooijer of Cisco (video) gave a great, clear explanation of how Cisco uses GIS as the backbone of their supply chain through which customer parts can be delivered anywhere in the world, from the closest warehouse to the needy customer, in within as little as two hours.  In the same set of discussions, Nigel Davis of Willis Re (the insurance companies insurance company) talked about using crowd sourcing information from social networks like Twitter to help evaluate and manage risk and losses in a disaster.  And Michelle Ellington of the University of Kentucky showed the history of facilities management at the university from paper maps to digital GIS, all the while using the process as a tool to bring stakeholders together.  When I asked the panel for a model of how GIS developed in their organizations, they all agreed that find a senior manager champion, build strong GIS staff with interpersonal skills, and architect solutions as close to the heart of IT as possible were the keystones.

Earlier, Matt Mikula of Edward Jones provided a glimpse of the history of GIS usage at Edward Jones that was somewhat like Michelle's, but with the usual reticence towards fundamental systems changes at many financial institutions - where it's usually best to be second and allow someone else to be bleeding on the edge, and where IT is often tasked with wiring together different generations of technology that ends up looking like something out of the movie "Brazil".  Another Matt, Matt Felton of MacKenzie Commercial RE, was as enthusiastic as anyone in recounting how he makes GIS relevant to a large number of very different people and functions in his organization.  Genial Pat O'Hagan of Starbucks, who has become a fixture at this conference, was as helpful as always in explaining how Starbucks puts GIS - and business intelligence - to work.

RPM Map Gallery Entry, "Geography at Work"

RPM did its part by participating in the Map Gallery - which everybody should do, and also bring guests and family to the Reception on Monday night.  And, Elio stood fondly by as our longtime friend and RPM client Scott McClymonds of ARVEST Bank won a SAG Award for Special Achievement in GIS.  We began extending and enhancing the customer database using GIS with Scott in 1993.

In short, this was the best conference since the economic downturn and pone of the best ever.  With 15,000 attendees, it was also the largest..

Here's Business Analyst 10 Service Pack 2

Fixes and improved performance await Business Analyst 10 desktop users in the BA 10 Service Pack 2. Here's a list of fixes, if you don't see yours, just holler.

ArcGIS 10 SP2 is recommended, but not required and you can install before or after BA10 SP2.
  
BA 10 SP2 Fixes

• NIM062750 [SP2] BA 10: Changing project directory does not refresh until restarting BA.
• NIM064837 [SP2] Running Market Area Gap Analysis report does not produce expected results when the option to Use all features in is selected.
• NIM066107 [SP2] If a non-standard install path is selected, the following layers will have red exclamation marks and need to be resourced: Major Lakes, States labels, States border, States labels, States labels (Regional) and Countries.
• NIM067407 [SP2] Store Setup - When using Store Setup on map ready data and in the Business Analyst Web.mxd the tool will fail with an error.
• NIM067434 [SP2] The defined analysis extent is not always honored when running tools. The current map extent is used instead.
• CQ124127 [SP2] Shopping Centers Report – Centers With Store ID 2 Show Up On Page With Store ID 1 On The Page Header
• CQ158120 [SP2] BA Message Center – Recent Map Documents – Add “Business Analyst Web.mxd” To The List
• CQ160494 [SP2] Trade Area Wizard - Huff Equal Probability – Incorrectly Prompts For Attraction Variable
• CQ161898 [SP2] Segmentation Study reports do not have report logos
• CQ167963 [SP2] If BA Is Installed, the Size of Normal.mxt File Increases After Every Start of ArcMap
• CQ168183 [SP2] Upload/Download Tool: In ArcMap upload report template dialog is unavailable
• CQ169770 [SP2] Color-Coded Maps toolbar should reflect changes in symbology done via Layer Properties in TOC
• CQ170071 [SP2] Large trade areas that do not intersect BGs return zeros with spatial overlay or reports
• CQ171520 [SP2] Message Centre L10N
• CQ171884 [SP2] Threshold Areas Memory Error
• CQ171979 [SP2] Color-Coded Maps Error For Specific Field With Online Data
• CQ172047 DemoCalc doesn't work if there is no Blocks layer in the dataset
• CQ172507 [SP2] Detailed Business Locations Report – Header Wrap Issue
• CQ174072 [SP2] BA Message Center Fails When Dataset XML Is Not Available
• CQ174536 [SP2] Help – Customer Prospecting Help Button Yields "This program cannot display the webpage" Message
• CQ176843 DemoCalc Indexes Crashes for Custom BDS from County Areas
• CQ177413 [SP2] Message Center Text Edit – Change “ESRI” to “Esri”
• CQ178400 [SP2] Error when running Online Reports with Standard Geography Trade Areas created from Online Data
• CQ178401 Search and Filter Control Crashes For Calculated Field Setup Dialog
• CQ180186 [SP2] Create new summarizations_us.xml that corrects the inconsistent index base values in the scripts for the CEX _I variables and correctly changes the SummaryType to be SUM instead of CALC.
• CQ180463 [SP2] Customer Derived Trade Areas GP Tool Error If ‘Associated Store ID Field’ Field Is Left Empty
• CQ180793 [SP2] Reports – Demographic and Income Profile Report – State Annual Trend Is Blank for BG and Tract Level Standard Geographies Trade Areas
• CQ180822 DIVINDEX90 (1990 Diversity Index) yields negative values
• CQ181477 [SP2] The Business Locator report is not properly summing up the business counts and sales per trade area
• CQ189576 [SP2] BA Geoprocessing tools do not create an output when using %scratchworkspace%
• CQ190264 Simple Rings fail if store layer ID field contains NULL values
• CQ190267 [SP2] BA GP Tools misuse ScratchWorkspace setting
• CQ190602 [SP2] BA 10: IDS_CANT_SAVE_ADDRESS_INTO_XML An unhandled exception is encountered using Evaluate Site Wizard by entering an address.
• CQ191517 [SP2] Geoprocessing Environments Default Workspace Paths Incorrectly Set To User Path of a BA Development Employee
• CQ191540 [SP2] Remove (Or Replace) Single Line Geocoder Functionality From Bing Search in BA Toolbar
• CQ191894 Color-Coded Maps ‘Unknown error’ When ‘USACensus2010’ Hierarchy Is Active
• CQ192391 [SP2] Remove the “380 New York St, Redlands, CA” Bing Search Box Tooltip on the BA Toolbar
• CQ192881 BatchReports GP Tool Creates Reports With Incorrect Names in Case Shape File Is Used as Input
• CQ192884 Core Segments Report Fails if Target Groups Parameter Is Used
• CQ193089 Provide User-Friendly Error Message in Color-Coded Maps Toolbar for USACensus2010 Dataset
• CQ193288 Threshold Rings with Drive Time option doesn't work with Japan dataset
• CQ193624 Next() operation crashes on ArcGIS Server on IStyleGalleryItemEnum interface if the object wasn't released correctly on the previous run
• CQ193647 [Dev] BDS layers fail to be decoded using DecodeFeatureLayer method
• CQ194338 [SP2] Cannot use custom BDS layers based on CBSA and DMA
• CQ194614 [SP2] Upload Operation: File Based Repo/SDE Repo.: Unhandled Exception:System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Win 7 & Vista
• CQ194617 [SP2] Download Operation: File Based Repo: Unhandled Exception :: Win 7 & Vista & XP
• CQ195517 Add updated Help files to BA10SP2 setup
• CQ195729 Online Reports Do Not Work Via Proxy Server
• CQ195735 QuickReports GP Tool cannot work with %scratchworkspace%
• CQ195906 [SP2] Evaluate Site Drive Time with All Reports Being Created in All Available Formats Doesn't Work
• CQ195907 [SP2] Custom Data Setup: When Double-Clicking Field Categories It Incorrectly Highlights the Category and Fields Below Instead of Moving Them to the Right
• CQ195908 [SP2] Two Online US Datasets Are Displayed in the Available Reports List
• CQ195909 [SP2] Custom BDS with CEX Variables Cannot Be Saved
• CQ195910 [SP2] Modern and Classic Report Styles Are Duplicated in Report Style Drop-Down Menu
• CQ196176 [SP2] SDE: Download operation: Internal BA Server/BA Desktop error
• CQ196289 [SP2] Color-Coded Map (Online) – Layer Attributes Are Missing ID and Name Fields Which Are Needed For Labeling
• CQ196326 [Dev] On some XP machines getting items from Business Analyst.severstyle fails in GP Tools on Server
• CQ197214 Upload Project: When uploading a project to BA Server, the progress bar disappears long before the credentials challenge window opens.
• CQ197443 [SP2] Color-Coded Maps – Using Custom Field From Custom BDS Results in Error
• CQ197444 [SP2] Smart Map – Using Custom BDS Layer Results in Error or Freezing
• CQ197476 Trade Area – Equal Competition (Thiessen) Results Are Odd, Jagged, and Non-contiguous For Large Extents
• CQ197534 Reports and Spatial Overlay return all zeroes for a custom BDS based on esri_bg.bds with base type = "NONE"
• CQ197572 [SP2] Smart Map Search doesn't work with newly add layers
• CQ197573 [SP2] Smart Map Search - Cannot add "Urban Areas" layer to the map after processing

Arvest Bank, Edward Jones at ESRI UC This Weekend

The ESRI 2011 User Conference is nearly upon us, so get out those travelin' shoes.  Scott McClymonds of Arvest Bank will be receiving a Special Achievement in GIS Award, recognizing nearly two decades of GIS excellence at the Bank, on Wednesday.  Way to go, Scott!

The ESRI Business Summit will kick things off on Sunday morning July 10, where upwards of 200 business geography pros will gather to hear the latest and greatest from industry leaders - and each other.

Matt Mikula, IS Services at Edward Jones.

Added to the ESRI Business Summit speaker lineup is Matt Mikula, who is a key IS adminstrator for Edward Jones.  Matt is responsible for IS Financial Advisor and Branch Services, and supports many of the systems used by the firm's financial advisors and branch office administrators.  Edward Jones has been a pioneer shop for GIS, with a long track record dating back (like Arvest) to Atlas GIS, the pioneering business geography platform invented by our longtime friend and associate, Steve Poizner, which was purchased by ESRI in 1996.

Joining Matt will be a group of exceptional speakers from Cisco, Starbucks and others.  So, come on down, and hear about best practices, tips and tricks, new software features - and enjoy the usual raucous good time had by all.  Here's where to go for more information about the Summit, and about the User Conference.