CIMB Group Redesign Its Account Opening Process

CIMB Group is a second largest financial service provider and the third largest company on the Malaysian stock exchange.  It offers a full range of financial products and services, including consumer banking, corporate and investment banking, insurance and asset management, and its retails banking network of over 1,100 branches is the largest in Southeast Asia.

The company launched a five-year information technology transformation initiative in January 2008 to align its information technology investments more closely with its resources.  It used the ARIS business process management (BPM) tool from IDS Scheer to identify 25 different areas for improving technology, people, and processes.  The ARIS software helped identify gaps and inefficiencies in existing processes.

The process of opening an account at a retail branch was singled out as needing improvement.  Improving this process was given high priority because its provided customers with their first impression of CIMB Group's service and customer experience.

New technology created opportunities for a short-cut.  Malaysia has a compulsory identity card for its citizens and permanent residents known as the Government Multipurpose Card, or MyKad.  Its is the world's first smart identity card, incorporating a microchip with identification data (such as name, address, gender, and religion) and capabilities for user authentication, government services, electronic payments, education, loyalty programs, mobile applications, and other conveniences.

CIMB Group's system-building team modified the front end of the customer account system to reduce the number of data entry screens and to accept customer data obtained from scanning a MyKad card.  By automatically extracting most of the identification data required to open an account from a Mykad card, CIMB only needs to use a single data entry screen to set up new account.  

CIMB group thus able to streamline the account-opening process, reducing the time required to open a bank account by 56 percent.  

Source:  Avanti Kumar, "Reaching for the Skies," MIS Asia, April 16, 2010.

What To Sell? What Price To Charge? Ask The Data

Starbucks

Starbucks is one of many retailers using sophisticated software to analyze, store by store and item by item, how demands responds to changes in price.  What customers are willing to pay certain items depends very much on their neighborhood or even the region of the country where they live.  Shopper in certain locations are willing to pay more.

The Duane Reade Drugstore

Software analyzing sales patterns found that parents of newborn babies are not as price-sensitive as those toddlers, so the company was able to raise prices on diapers for newborn infants without losing sales.  The chain's information system also showed how to adjust pricing based on location.  Shopper's at Duane Reade store near 86th Street and Lexington Avenue pay 20 cents more for a box of Kleenex and 50 cents more for a bottle of Pepto-Bismol than customers in Harlem.

1-800-Flowers

Sells flowers and gift baskets online, used analytics software from SAS Inc. to tweak its online storefront and marketing activities.  The software helped the company quickly record and analyze buyer profiles to help improve targeting of its product, determine what "specials" to offer, and plan sales and marketing strategies based on an understanding of real customers needs.  The company able to quickly change prices and offering its Web site - often every hour.

Source:  Anne Kadet, "Price-Point Politics."  The Wall Street Journal, July 42, 2010

Visit:-

www.duanereade.com

www.1800flowers.com

You're on Facebook? Watch out!!

https://www.facebook.com/matakuunique

Everyone knows that Facebook is the world's largest online social network, and increasingly, the destination of choice for messaging friends, sharing photos and videos, and collecting "eyeballs" for business advertising and market research.  

Facebook has a huge worldwide user base, an easy-to use Web site, and a community of users linked to their friends.  Its members are more likely to trust messages they receive from friends, even if this communication is not legitimate.  

According to a February 2010 report from Internet security company NetWitness, Facebook serve s the primary delivery method for an 18-month-long hacker attack in which Facebook users tricked into revealing their password and downloading a rogue program that steals financial data.

HOW THEY WORKS???

• A legitimate-looking Facebook email notice asked user to provide information to help the social network update its system
• When the user click "update" button in the e-mail, that person was directed to a bogus Facebook login screen where the user's name was filled in and that person was prompted to provide his or her password
• Once the user supplied the information, an "Update Tool", installed the Zeus "Trojan horse" rogue software program designed to steal financial and personal data.

Only take 3 simple steps for the hackers to STOLE your financial/personal data!!

The hackers, stole as many as 68,000 login credentials from 2,400 companies and government agencies for online banking, social networking sites, and e-mail.

Can you imagine what would happen if you tried to link to the internet without a firewall or antivirus software? Your computer would be disable for a few seconds, and it might take you many days to recover.

For further reading about Securing Information System:-

Securing Information System

System Vulnerability

Malicious Software

Think Honk If You Are A Telepath

Computers double their processing every 18 month – human don’t.  Kevin Warwick, Professor of Cybernatics at Reading University in the UK, has been wondering since childhood about how to upgrade humans and has few qualms about being his own guinea pig.  In 2002 he had a micro-electrode array implanted into the median nerve fibres of his left arm and was able to control an electric wheelchair and an artificial hand.  The array provided sensory feedback and also allowed him to receive inputs from a similar array.  Warwick predicts that enhanced human will interact with technology, and each other using the power of thought alone.

Source:  information from www.kevinwarwick.com/

Foreword: An Unlikely Journey

Right now, we are living and creating during an era of change.  The old limitations are disappearing quickly.  The towering old structures are past their stripping points and they’re falling down around us, revealing beautiful new views.

When we create, when we work for the new or push ourselves ahead in search of fulfillment and change, we do so in collective progress.  Then we step into the unknown together, ready to shape what’s coming.  Innovators, artists, creative-thinker and progressive are culmination of so many influential and inspiring people who have come before and opened our eyes to other worlds of thought.  We look to our mentors, teachers and peers who continually build us into citizens of the planet.  We walk with their energy and add our own.  We, in turn, become mediums of what possible.

And thus, they inspire in all of us the passion to take action, have impact, find responsibility, help others and move forward in the mutual endeavor of shaping what’s to come.

Alhamdulillah, praises to Allah the Almighty, the most gracious and the most merciful for providing me the opportunity to embark on MBA and for granting me the strength, perseverance and patience in completing my study.  Without the grace of Allah SWT, it would not be possible to me to reach at this level.  

I am firstly very appreciated and respectful to my Management Information System (MIS 750) lecturer, Prof. Madya Dr. Norzaidi Mohd Daud, towards his support and valuable advice throughout this coursework.  I am absolutely inspired his works and amazed at Dr. Norzaidi's professionalism and what he achieves at his age!! WOW!!

A special acknowledgement to my fellows friends for their teamwork, supportive and MAKAN-MAKAN time.  I am soooo delightful being surrounding with you peeps :) 

Finally, a special appreciation to my family and friends for giving me a full support as and when required.

Thank you






Credit to:  storymoryluahanku.blogspot.com