Online Banking Gets More Sophisticated

The holy grail for all the financial providers is to get all of a customer's assets and debts in one place.

Online Banking Gets More Sophisticated
So now banks are offering new tools to let clients transfer funds between institutions, pay bills faster, analyze spending.

By getting customers to spend more time at their websites, banks hope to open more new accounts and bring in more assets.

In the latest move, Yodlee Inc., which manages online services for many financial institutions, is introducing a product today that allows consumers to track their spending across all of their accounts -- regardless of where those accounts are held -- and make same-day bill payments. Yodlee says it is currently in "advanced discussions" with 10 to 12 financial-services companies to offer the product to their customers.
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More banks are expanding their "account aggregation" programs, in which details of a clients' bank, mutual-fund, brokerage, 401(k) and other accounts are presented on a single screen. Although the service has been around for several years, banks are only now starting to use it to power personal-finance management. Last year, Bank of America relaunched its account-aggregation service by allowing customers to access it with a single sign-on from their online-banking account. Since then, the number of people enrolled in the program has tripled.

Brainstorm on your own

If you're planning a brainstorming session, know that there will be some bad ideas, someone who will try to hijack the session trying to prove everyone else wrong.

Someone finally took a look at all those brainstorming sessions and found that four people brainstorming on their own did much better than four people brainstorming together.

Brainstorming works best if people scramble for ideas on their own. (Wall St Journal)

Older, richer, online

You can't take older consumers for granted any more.

40% of the US population is 50 or more
They hold 75% of the nation's financial assets
They do 55% of all consumer spending.

They've been online for a few years and they buying online at a faster rate than the population in general.

Older customers flex their muscle and money online.

The Neuroscience of Leadership

From Strategy & Business, comes The Neuroscience of Leadership.

David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz write about breakthroughs in brain research explain how to make organizational transformation succeed.

These conclusions would have been considered counterintuitive or downright wrong only a few years ago. For example:

Change is pain. Organizational change is unexpectedly difficult because it provokes sensations of physiological discomfort.

Behaviorism doesn’t work. Change efforts based on incentive and threat (the carrot and the stick) rarely succeed in the long run.

Humanism is overrated. In practice, the conventional empathic approach of connection and persuasion doesn’t sufficiently engage people.

Focus is power. The act of paying attention creates chemical and physical changes in the brain.

Expectation shapes reality. People’s preconceptions have a significant impact on what they perceive.

Attention density shapes identity. Repeated, purposeful, and focused attention can lead to
long-lasting personal evolution.

Female Gym Rats

Athletic boutiques that cater exclusively to women are doing a bang-up business says Businessweek

FEMALE GYM RATS
Indeed, the target audience is growing. Participation in yoga rose 18% last year, to 14.7 million, the fastest growth rate among 19 activities surveyed by American Sports Data Inc. Women aged 25 to 40 are a target, but boomers are also driving the trend. According to the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Assn., the latest numbers for gym membership among women aged 45 to 64 show a 51% rise between 2000 and 2004. That's showing up in sales of women's athletic apparel, which in 2004 totaled $4.9 billion, up 8.8% from 2002. According to the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Assn., men's sales were flat.

Web is No.1 Media

CNet reports on new study by Ball State University where researchers monitored the media use of 350 participants every 15 seconds.

Web media is the dominant at-work media and No. 2 in the home, according to a new report from the Online Publishers Association.

In March, the Pew Internet and American Life Project published a report that found more than 50 million Americans per day in 2005 used the Web as their primary news source. It also noted that news gathering was the third most popular Internet activity.

Self Help Business

The self-help and actualization movement is now a $8.5 billion-a-year business.

Scientific American calls it the SHAM Scam and asks does it work? Of course, it focuses on the sillier new age stuff like firewalking and crystals, not on the serious attempts of people to make their lives better and to grow into higher, more evolved states of greater consciousness. Apparently since neither are measurable, they don't count to the author.

Stealth Army of Moms

Businessweek reports that Proctor & Gamble has enlisted a stealth army of 600,000 moms to chat up its products.

I sold it through the grapevine
P&G, the Cincinnati consumer-product giant is using personal endorsements to cut through advertising clutter. "We know that the most powerful form of marketing is an advocacy message from a trusted friend," says Steve Knox, Vocalpoint's CEO.
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P&G is the only such company to have developed its own in-house business units devoted to it, and it has the nation's largest legion of connectors. The effort started in 2001, when P&G launched Tremor, a word-of-mouth program also headed by Knox that is aimed at teens. Tremor now has enlisted 225,000 teens.
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P&G concentrates on finding women who have large social networks. Vocalpoint moms, who range in age from 28 to 45, generally speak to about 25 to 30 other women during the day, where an average mom speaks to just five.
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For one thing, they receive a steady stream of product samples. That's not all. They also get "a voice that is going to be heard by other companies," says Knox. Vocalpoint does this via a weekly e-mail newsletter it sends connectors called The Inside Track. A recent edition asks for the women's opinions on everything from the design of the newsletter itself to express mail options.