Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Announcement index and actual delivery

The deployment of mobile banking solutions is extremely difficult. This is especially true when the solution requires the deployment of a comprehensive wallet solution, as well as card issuing. These projects are often late and launch dates delayed. As the industry grows and solution providers become more experienced, this will of course improve.

What is interesting to me is the rate at which suppliers announce the intention to deploy mobile banking solutions. What is being reported on, is mostly what will be done in the future, rather than what has been done. While this is a common practice and a mechanism to ensure exposure, it should be backed up by actual delivery, which is often not the case.

I was thinking, maybe some-one should calculate an announcement index. This would be the ratio of pre-announcements vs post-announcements of the deployment of a mobile banking solution. If the ratio is less than one, it means that the company in question demonstrate a track-record of actual delivery. If the ratio is more than one, it would indicate a propensity to talk about things, but not always doing it. The higher the index, the more the talk.

No comments: