Mobile Productivity Blog

Thomson Reuters kicks off FMS2008

William Riordan and Brian Becker from Thomson Reuters kicked off the Financial Mobility Summit 2008 with their Thomson ONE Mobile User Meeting. The session focused on the power of their line of mobile applications that capture the experience of their desktop applications on a mobile device.

Reported as a benefit to their applications is the recent addition of Reuters data to the Thomson product, creating a richer experience for users.

The demo of their most recent release of the mobile product for Investment Management highlighted "experience" and "availability of information".

If you haven't seen the applications visit the demo here.

White Paper: Four Trends Reshaping the Market for Financial Advisors

Last week, we released a pair of white papers aimed at the financial advisor space. They are both available through our website.

Four Trends Reshaping the Market for Financial Advisors
And how they drive the need for mobile financial applications

Upheaval in global financial markets is creating tremendous uncertainty for financial advisors and their clients. Today, fee-based financial planners, commission-driven financial advisors, family CFOs, investment managers with discretionary trading authority, and wealth management teams face enormous risks and enormous opportunity.

• Risk. In down markets, clients are more likely to seek a fresh perspective. So advisors must assure excellent customer service and transparent performance reporting.
• Opportunity. Again - in down markets, clients are more likely to seek a fresh perspective. So advisors must increase their capacity for prospecting.

At the same time, evolving consumer preferences are affecting the way advisors sell and deliver their services:

• Consumers empowered by the Internet may not see the need for a financial planner, financial advisor, private banker, or wealth manager.
• Consumers accustomed to exceptional customer service from retailers, hotels, and other service providers expect a higher level of connection and service from financial professionals.
• Consumers engaged by immediate mobile access to retailers, friends, and information demand a new level of responsiveness from advisors.

These four trends - increasingly volatile financial markets, consumer empowerment, consumers’ high expectations, and consumers’ mobility - will create winners and losers among financial advisors.

This white paper will analyze these trends and show how they are affecting the way the best advisors work. It will tell how the most successful advisors manage their time. And it will describe ways in which advisors can use mobile financial applications, not only to respond to market and competitive pressures but also to more efficiently close new business.

Keep reading this document here.

Financial Mobility Summit 2008 Starts Wednesday

Don't let the current market conditions get you down. Mobile applications change the way that your employees do their jobs, adding efficiency, productivity and revenue growth.

Leaders from the Financial Services and Mobility industries are coming together this week to celebrate the value of mobility in the enterprise, find new ways to drive greater value, and to collect best practices and use cases that will propel their users to new levels of sales and service.

The Financial Mobility Blog will be covering the event in its entirety (http://blog.pyxismobile.com). In addition, attendees and followers alike can Tweet about FMS using hash tag #FMS08 (Twitterstream available at: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23FMS08).

Prepping for FMS 2008

I just watched the first run-through of the megademo that will be presented at FMS next week. 6.1 is a huge leap in function and features. It's not too late to register at http://www.pyxismobile.com/fms2008.

Committing to Clients: Better Customer Service

The folks over at Javelin Marketing provide insurance agents, investment advisors and financial advisors with tips on Financial Services Marketing, Prospecting, Lead Generation and Sales. Today's blog entry struck me as particularly relevant:

What do you really provide clients—a hope that maybe the mutual funds you help them select will reach their retirement goals, that maybe the UL policy you sell them will earn enough to sustain itself, that maybe the LTC company wont raise its rate? When you think about it, you offer prospects nothing firm and you expect people to give you their money. Maybe it’s surprising that we have any clients at all as we guarantee them nothing and expect them to jump into the financial pool with us, with no life vest.

Of course, you cannot make guarantees. Only the product providers can make these when they apply. But you can make promises about your own actions—something that few financial advisors do. If you don’t make promises to clients, why should they make commitments to you?

They go on to list a number of service-oriented ideas that bring advisors closer to their customers.

Take a read and think about how "doing more in less time" comes into play. How would mobility drive customer service in these cases? Can I prospect more, grow and build my book, and still spend a lot of time with customers?

Blogging from the BlackBerry Developer Conference!

I am out at the first BlackBerry Developer Conference in Santa Clara, CA. Starting this year, RIM has decided to go to a two conference schedule - the WES and the Developers Conference. RIM has once again delivered the goods at this conference. I am here with almost 700 fellow developers with my team of 3 and the vibe is very positive. RIM made some major announcements today regarding the new on-device Application Storefront, major web browser enhancements, Google Gears integration, PayPal partnership, and much more! I also got a chance to play with the BlackBerry Storm at the Verizon Booth and its definitely a very different experience (I'll let the pundits pass judgement on the touch vs. full keyboard). We also had lots of opportunities to sit down with RIM Product Managers to discuss road maps and provide some feedback as well. 

My team and I are here till Thursday night and are very excited to get back to the office to put some of these new ideas and tools into use and continue work on Pyxis Mobile 6.2!

I am guest blogger this week at the conference, you can check it out here.

And of course, here is a picture of me taken from a BlackBerry during the partner interview videos that was played during today's keynote!

RLS2000 Offers Mobility to Real Estate Agents

RLS2000.com Inc. has announced a great new product, MLS Property Finder Mobile, powered by Pyxis Mobile.  For agents that use MLS Property Finder and have a Blackberry, this is a MUST HAVE product. With MLS Property Finder Mobile you can view listings in the palm of your hand. You can find listings available for you and your client, Map to address from your current location, view photos and much more. MLS Property Finder Mobile is currently available for Blackberry's only, but will be available for smart phones soon.

What Market Turmoil Means for Advisors

Experts are predicting painful layoffs as a result of the financial crisis of September 2008. One commentator predicts as many as 27,000 employees could lose their jobs in the aftermath of the BofA/Merrill merger. As a result, there will be a lot of talent available, enabling stronger firms to choose from among the very best financial advisors. Firms that can show strong operating results, a continuing commitment to advisors, and savvy use of the newest technologies will be in a good position to recruit these financial professionals.

In addition, the market shake-out should benefit firms that can show how they are different from failed or weak competitors. Consumers are likely to pay more attention to independent advisors, smaller banks, and regional firms. So large firms will need to provide transparent information about clients’ portfolios and prove their strength with the latest technology and tools. And small players should strive to demonstrate that they can not only remember clients’ names and faces but also execute at a high professional level.

For every advisor, market turbulence means that clients will need more handholding. It will be more important to keep up with real-time changes and respond promptly to information requests. To reassure nervous clients, performance reporting must be more timely. Advisors will need to connect 24/7.

Advisors today need the ability to gain productivity from mobile technology. They make calls, check email, surf websites, use GPS functionality to map locations. But these devices are underutilized. There is much more possible.

SmartFlicks: Netflix on BlackBerry Ready for Download

Get on over to our Application Studio Lab site to download SmartFlicks, a mobile companion to Netflix. This is an exciting use of our software and we are interested in feedback. There are definitely some issues, as this is beta software, but our "alpha" testers have recorded great experiences with the product. Its nice to see that Marc Rosenbaum's queue is now full of Grey's Anatomy DVDs in the proper delivery order.

I want to stress again the reasons that this release is interesting to the FMB community:
       

1. Application Lab software is designed, not built. When you are using an App Lab application, you are using the same codebase and client application that Pyxis Mobile's enterprise Financial Services customers use.
2. Application Lab software is designed and delivered by creative, forward thinking teams of technology and marketing experts in under 24 hours. That's the point. Creativity is the only boundary. No coding, no compiling, no custom client application.
3. Application Lab software can grow with you. Because the application you are using is built on the device at run time, we can add features and enhancements at any time that will simply "appear" in your app the next time you log in. You won't need to reinstall the app. You'll just need to log out and log back in.

       

   

1. Application Lab software is designed, not built. When you are using an App Lab application, you are using the same codebase and client application that Pyxis Mobile's enterprise Financial Services customers use.
2. Application Lab software is designed and delivered by creative, forward thinking teams of technology and marketing experts in under 24 hours. That's the point. Creativity is the only boundary. No coding, no compiling, no custom client application.
3. Application Lab software can grow with you. Because the application you are using is built on the device at run time, we can add features and enhancements at any time that will simply "appear" in your app the next time you log in. You won't need to reinstall the app. You'll just need to log out and log back in.

       

"App From Scratch" - A Winning Application has Been Selected

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner in the App From Scratch competition. One of the apps listed in previous blog entries has been selected to go live on our site.

We expect to announce this winner very shortly. Stay tuned.