Madrid, 21st June 2011.- “We believe in the radical specialization of our knowledge and skills, and this means developing software infrastructure products for asynchronous corporate notifications, whether they be SMS, email or the newly-emerging push notifications”, indicated Oriol Ros, Latinia’s Head of Marketing.
“There are three branches to mobile banking; browsing, applications and messaging or notifications, which are currently SMS-based text messages, but will soon largely be push notifications. Being excellent at everything is impossible, because one field of knowledge which is applied -specific to each technology- has nothing to do with another. We crossed the Rubicon of this principle some years ago, when we understood that the mobile channel was here to stay and that the financial institutions would be very demanding about our knowledge and development of its possibilities, so we chose to continue with what we already knew, and not to extend our skills to other models which the (mobile) channel had to offer”.
“Of course we have received requests to extend the product to other mobile banking formats! Once a customer relies on you they do not want to miss the opportunity to reduce all of their mobile strategy to one single provider, but we consider this to be illogical, simply because the demands of the synchronous channels have nothing to do with those of asynchronous channels”, Ros continued.
“In some markets, the single provider logic, but above all the prevailing uncertainty about which channels would be most in demand from their customers, has meant that the dominant model is that of software vendors offering products based on triple play, in other words browsing, applications and messaging. This represents a less risky approach for a financial institution, especially when you are not sure which mobile technology will have the most appeal. That is a mistake; each of these three options has very different and complementary benefits, but to ensure an excellent product for any of them requires specialization and knowledge which are too heterogeneous to be undertaken by a single vendor”, Ros believes.
“We believe that not succumbing to these siren songs and not extending the product to other channels and mobile technologies has undoubtedly resulted in a more specialized, vertical product with greater depth and, when all is said and done, a competitive advantage for our customers”, Ros concluded.
