Sometimes there seems to be a major gap between what financial product manufacturers offer and what financial advisors recommend. This illustrates a perfect argument for designing products that can be configured by experts.
In the case of retirement income products, every client is a little different. The financial advisors want more than just investment products — they want the right combination of products and features for their clients. Lisa Shider investigates more at Investment News where one financial advisor has this to say:
The biggest mistake product manufacturers make is that they don’t talk to advisers, said Mark Cortazzo, a certified financial planner and senior partner at Macro Consulting Group of Parsippany, N.J., whose firm manages nearly $400 million in assets.
“I just wish product developers would get more feedback from advisers,” he said. “They keep building this stuff and trying to jam it down everyone’s throat and telling advisers how they should use the product, instead of going to advisers.”
Mr. Cortazzo said that he doesn’t like products that require advisers to use a particular investment model instead of giving advisers the flexibility to create their own.
These kinds of intangible products are a perfect fit for modeling and offering online using a capable product configurator. In an expert mode, financial advisors could define constraints such as risk tolerance, expected returns, use of principal, duration of returns, management fees, and estimated tax bracket to custom tailor investment products precisely for their retired client portfolio. That is their job, after all.
Financial product manufacturers should give advisors the right tools and options for selling their financial products. For instance, using the Selectica configurator, sample portfolio templates and customizable products would let advisors better match investment portfolios to client needs. This would in turn generate higher volume in the advisor channel for financial product manufacturers.
The Predictably Irrational blog has a fascinating post about opting-in versus opting-out. In this case the decision was very significant — whether to agree to be a medical donor. The case study looks at European countries, and the results show dramatic differences between countries, based entirely on whether you have to opt in (few do) or opt out (again few do). The bottom line is that people apparently avoid making difficult decisions, and simply allow the default to apply.
Wharton says the decisions about technology at work are shifting.
“This blurring of business and consumer focused applications is called “consumerization” by technology research firms such as Gartner and executives at companies such as Microsoft.”
Employees are deciding which productivity tools they use, apparently independently of their employers, largely thanks to Moore’s Law and cheap imports.
“Gartner predicts that by 2011, 10% of all information technology spending will reside with employees. In other words, employees will pay for and bring their own technology — laptops, iPhones and the like — to work as their primary tools. By 2015, employees will customize 90% of the technology they use at work, according to Gartner.“
A survey by consulting firm Accenture titled “Big Trouble with No Trouble Found: How Consumer Electronics Companies Confront the High Cost of Customer Returns” reveals that in 2007, US consumer electronics manufacturers, communication carriers and electronics retailers expected to spend an estimated $13.8 billion assessing, repairing, reboxing, restocking and reselling returned merchandise.
Businesses looking to achieve high performance are not treating these costs as normal business expenses—rather, they are addressing the underlying reasons for these returns and, in the process, are seeing significant improvements.
The number one recommendation by Accenture is to focus on creating favorable customer expectations that forestall “no trouble found” returns. This suggests that businesses should provide better information to consumers during the buying process. Here is an opportunity to strike the right balance of information and in particular, guide novices to the products and services which best meet their needs and expectations. A capable configurator, product model, and presentation layer might pay for itself simply in reducing the cost of “no trouble found” returns.
The Lenovo X300 is one of the most exciting laptops to come along in a while. It’s also one of the first to include integrated broadband cellular connectivity as an option (not found in any Apple laptop yet). When it was announced in February 2008, it gathered a lot of interest. Lead times are still 4 weeks.
They have a fast and clean configurator targeted well for consumer use. It provides three basic configurations from which you can add certain customizations. The whole ordering process is only four simple steps.
Gizmodo offers a video review of the laptop capabilities below with some great close-ups of the desk too.
Apple wins five product design awards in 2008 from DD&D. Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive are major contributors to Apple’s design team. Ive is credited with designing the iPod and has a long career with Apple.
“I’m not driven by making a cultural impact,” he says. “That’s just a consequence of taking a remarkably powerful technology and making it relevant.” “My goal is simply to try to make products that really are meaningful to people.”
You can also hear his perspective in this interview from a few years ago.
Previously hobbled by design software incompatibilities, Airbus A380 executives are scrambling to keep production schedules on track. The consortium announced that fewer planes would be delivered on time, liking the production process to “landing men on the moon”.
But with Singapore Airlines flying the first three units delivered, as these interior photos show, the results are pretty impressive. One has to see the features of the A380 to recognize the scale of engineering and manufacturing it requires. The configuration options range from suites to board rooms, full recliners to coach. ”Where’s the economy section, please?”
By the way, check out the Olympic-like finish of this staged emergency evacuation of an A380. It sounds like a Wagner composition is playing in the background.
