In today's financial services and insurance markets, you have access to massive amounts of information from multiple sources about your customers. The Internet of Things has led to an exponential increase in data types and sources, and assembling that information into usable insights can provide powerful knowledge about your potential or existing customers. 

Sometimes when you step back you can really appreciate things that may have become routine. I did this recently with our enterprise-first development approach. As usual, we are busy adding capabilities to our products that will make our client’s solutions even more valuable and I’ve been almost too close to it. 

This is the third and final post in my series on Digital Content. In the first post, we discussed how your advisors can build a personalized professional brand using NexJ Digital Engagement and Artificial Intelligence. In the second post, we discussed using the same AI tools to deliver personalized touches to your existing clients.

For a person to use something, they almost always have to believe they have something to gain. For a CRM system, that means that a person should get more information out than they put in. After all, if all you have access to is the information you entered, what’s the point?

Artificial Intelligence is everywhere all of a sudden. It’s on our phones, in our homes (I’m looking at you, Alexa) and peppered throughout our online experiences. It’s the hot topic from the water cooler to analysts to the media to the major industry players. (I think we all know where Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg stand on AI by now.)

In my previous blog, I discussed the importance of using content to create a personal brand on social media. To recap, NexJ Digital Engagement uses Artificial Intelligence to match articles from public news and internal sources to a profile that is unique to each financial advisor or banker. 

So when a system stops receiving support or development, it affects the health of the entire company. It can become expensive to maintain, difficult to upgrade, or so obsolete it risks pulling the company behind the competition. When people can't or aren't using the system, or when the system isn't able to provide the functionality that's needed, the organization must replace it.

Digital brands are important. In the digital age, customers do research on their financial decisions before they even contact the bank. They Google, talk to friends and colleagues on social networks, and look at the websites for both the institutions and the advisors themselves. When it comes to financial decisions, they are looking for someone they can trust and who will be a partner, not just a vendor. Your institution and your bankers themselves must communicate a unique perspective that makes them stand out from the crowd before the client reaches out directly.

In this blog series, we’ll explore the concepts that make up the Semantic Data Lake. We’ll begin with an introduction to Hadoop – what is it and why was it developed? Techniques traditionally applied when mastering complicated organizational reference data such as customers often require centralization to enforce standardization. 

You’ve seen the demo and read the brochure. You’ve read a dozen RFP responses, and expertly managed conflicting requirements and competing stakeholder expectations. You’ve short-listed the vendors, and authored a business case that you can be proud of. 

It’s still a little hard to get used to. For a number of years this would be the week I would make my way to the Big Apple, the financial services mecca of North America, to attend #CRMEvolution. The event used to take place in a hotel right in Times Square. There was always a flurry of activity all around.

At NexJ, we take great pride in being a responsive vendor. This is a big part of our value proposition – our desire to be a strategic partner who contributes to our clients’ success. If you’re making a software purchase, I strongly recommend you factor vendor responsiveness into the decision making process. It’s an invaluable intangible. So what exactly do I mean by ‘responsive vendor’?