During the week leading up to New Year’s Day of 2016, I was a domestic all-star. On New Year’s morning, after I had nailed everything on her “honey do” list, my wife showed her appreciation by sending me off to spend the day “doing something I wanted to do.” The combination of her generosity and my lack of previously developed hobbies led to the discovery of a new love in my life: hiking.

I now spend at least a couple Saturday mornings each month at a local state park that happens to be one of the most beautiful places in the world. What I’ve learned over the last 18 months is that this state park also has rich deposits of the most valuable commodity in the world, and it’s easily accessible to those who stroll along its paths.

Make no mistake, this commodity is priceless. Without it, art, innovation, and excellence are impossible. Without it, persistence, durability, and consistency lose a good deal of their value. From a business perspective, this commodity is responsible for the success of companies as large and diverse as Apple, IBM, and Tesla. And yet, it’s a commodity that far too many businesses have no plan to develop or acquire.

The commodity is insight. And even though mining it is extremely cost effective, many companies just don’t take the time.

In today’s highly-connected, technological landscape, you probably think your financial institution is already providing everything that small business owners are looking for. Right? I mean, when you consider the incredible innovations in recent years, there can’t possibly still be gaps.

Well, the data is telling us otherwise.

There is an old adage attributed to Sir Austen Chamberlain, a British politician who heard it from a British diplomat who had spent time China. The old diplomat told him that there was a Chinese curse which stated, “May you live in interesting times.”

We are certainly living in interesting times. Think back over the last 20 years. Do you remember when you first heard the term, “world wide web”? Do you remember when websites first allowed you to create customized home page portals? They branded these portal pages with the prefix “my” so your experience of the world wide web was customized to you. It sounds passé now, but at the time it was innovative. Looking back over the last 20 years, it’s easy to see we’ve moved into a time of mass disruption and customization of our experience.

Does “Robo-advice” Include Lending?

By now, financial services consumers have gotten used to the idea of a robot handling their money. In fact, according to Accenture, seven out of 10 consumers even welcome “robo-advice” for their banking, insurance, and retirement services.⁽¹⁾ So clearly, consumers are at least open to the notion of a robot handling their assets – but what about their liabilities? Are consumers ready for a loan processed entirely by a robot?

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (cms.gov), national health spending is expected to grow at an average of 5.6 percent per year from 2016-25 and 4.7 percent per year on a per capita basis. The projected growth rates are 1.2 percentage points faster than Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per year over that same period. As a result, healthcare’s share of GDP is expected to rise from an already high 17.8 percent in 2015 to a staggering 19.9 percent by 2025.

Over the next year, European Union Member States will be scrambling to implement the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) which goes into effect in January 2018. In a nutshell, PSD2 is an EU directive that will require all banks operating in Europe to expose customer account data for retrieval and provide payment services for use by authorized external entities. These Third Party Providers will be empowered to retrieve customer account information as well as initiate payments directly to bank systems if their customer provides them the authorization to do so. European banks are now on the hook to develop and provide programmatic interfaces (API’s) for outside organizations to tap into, whether the banks like it or not.

“Frictionless payments” is an industry concept that has been around for many years. The phrase is used to describe a desire to limit the amount of customer interaction during a transaction, making the purchase process as smooth as possible from start to finish.

While the payment portion of a purchase can be the more laborious aspect of retail transactions, merchants and financial institutions must also focus on the end-to-end user experience when looking for ways to simplify the act of making a purchase. Streamlining the purchasing process should be a top priority for retail establishments and nonprofit organizations that want to attract new customers or contributors, or drive existing users to return more often.

No matter the industry or organization, there are essential gains to be made by applying the frictionless payments approach to customers’ purchase or donation experiences.  

The following techniques are often used to reduce friction in the payments process...

Revolving lines of credit to small businesses help fulfill a critical need for cash flow. They bridge the gap between the time services are completed or goods are shipped and the time payment is made for the resulting invoices. For most small business owners, this time gap can be challenging, especially since it is unpredictable and can leave the business at the mercy of its customers. For small businesses in the U.S., this time gap averages 50 days, although it varies by industry. Filling the gap with predictable cash flow is a critical requirement for businesses that are growing, as well as businesses that have opportunities for quick-pay and volume discounts.

In part one, began our three part series on user accessibility by discussing the Design and Construction stages of your site and attempted to convey the importance of a trusted partner who will be handling those critical foundational steps. In part two we talked about the actual content going on your site and hopefully gave you some tips on how to deliver your message in a way that all users can appreciate.

Today in the final installment, we’re shifting our focus to the last two pillars: Testing and Feedback Loop.

Last week we began our three part series on user accessibility by discussing the Design and Construction of your site. The primary takeaway is that you are very likely to be extremely dependent upon your vendor to help you make great decisions that give you the best blend of aesthetics and user accessibility. There are a lot of great folks out there. Find someone you TRUST, someone who has exhibited the subject matter expertise to do the job. Today our focus shifts to an area in which you, as the owner of the website, can have a great deal of control - the content that goes onto your site.