The future is here...thank goodness!

As a client pointed out to me last week, I'm not exactly a prolific blogger. Sorry about that - clients, as you may appreciate, and team, generally come first! Frequency is blogger best practice number one...ooops.

And I don't really do a huge amount of cross promotion (almost none). That would be blogger best practice number two down the drain. Here's one to make up for that at least...

Recently I've been fortunate to have a series of conversations with Huron Inan of Bienalto.

Bienalto essentially help their client with online "stuff" such as customer experience and "dialogue" (eg marketing!). Why do I think I'm fortunate to have talked with them? Because they have what we see as the
holy grail of marketing and communication - real data and analytics to power decision making.

That's decision making about anything online - which most marketing is or soon will be.

Some smart marketers and their CEOs are there already.

Some are still grappling with our industry's traditional change aversion. There is something apparently scary about "new" that sometimes stops senior decision makers in our industry adopting successful marketing models which have already been pioneered in other, similar, industries.  

If we'd waited for the business case (as requested in the 90s) on whether or not to have a website, we (and most financials services corporates) still wouldn't have one.

Firms such as Bienalto, and the data-driven, intuitive way they can help all of us evolve our communication to the end customer, are the way of the future.

Certainly PR firms, and others in professional services, can learn much from thinking in (say) consumer goods or travel, about service design.

Hurol's blog about service design is exactly what financial services organisations organisations who care about their sustainability should be reading.