I recently was invited to write an article for FST and I have selected the topic of the future of mobile payments. I will add a link to the article later but in the meantime I am going to share a short preview.
Celent predicts that by 2015, the U.S. market alone could encompass between $1.8 and $5 billion in mobile payments related revenue. With such revenue potential, financial institutions that embrace early and actively move to provide mobile money wallet solutions will become the provider of choice for consumers.
However to reach the mainstream and transform the way people shop and pay for their purchases, industry players will need to look at the behaviors and needs of the most sophisticated mobile consumers to design services that meet the future needs of consumers.
Consumers are looking for the cool factor (I can't wait to use the Starbucks new mobile app to pay for my Latte) as well as convenience and flexibility of payment options.
Offering mobile payments as standalone capability will not be enough to become a market leader. Rather than solving for today’s needs innovative companies should consider key emerging trends and look at the future opportunities.
The list of Key Trends impacting mobile payments includes:
* Alternative Payment Models.
* Mobile Apps with mash-ups that integrate payment capabilities with location-based advertising and customer analytics.
* Mobilizing Payments:
Bill Pay & Invoicing
P2P Money Movement
POS payments with contactless
Micropayments
Stored value card (like the Starbucks mobile apps)
Once again in today's User Driven World the consumers are driving innovation. Mobile Apps built on the top of open source software such as Google Android will dictate the way people use mobile devices rather than the other way around where consumers had to wait for companies to bring innovation into the market place.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Priority Wheel - A Tool for Career and Family Alignment
The ability to "Connect The Dots" across career, family and children is one of the most pressing problems that professional women and men are facing today.
Guess what? There is not a simple answer.
After a long race trying to find a perfect balance between career and family, people came to the conclusion that a perfect balance does not exist. Rather than trying to achieve a BALANCE we need to have a goal of achieving ALIGNMENT between our top priorities.
ALIGNMENT means that the weight across your Priority Wheel will change according to the particular needs of your life stage.
The "Priority Wheel" is a tool for aligning priorities through change. Think about a wheel - Wheels are always moving.
Remember that success is a wheel of continuous improvements. Your wheel is always in motion. We all have many dots2connect and having a "Priority Wheel" will help you to be ready to achieve success when the opportunity comes. It will empower you to create opportunities to achieve success on your own terms and have the right person near you to share success with.
Success (like a wheel) is always in motion and the meaning of success changes according to what is most important for us. As you go through different life stages your priorities and needs change. Hence, your "Priority Wheel" needs recalibration in order to reflect new dimensions. Multiple life events can affect the dimensions of your "Priority Wheel", for example the following is a list of the most common life changing events:
o First job after college graduation
o Going back to graduate school
o Engage in a serious relationship
o Job displacement
o Leadership promotion (at all levels)
o Marriage
o Having kids
o Elder parents
o Opening your own business
o Community involvement
o Family lost or serious illness
o New job or career opportunity
o Personal interest / hobby
Once when you develop your "Priority Wheel" with the important dimensions you will need to be prepare to make trade-offs between the time and energy you dedicate to your career development and success and the time and effort you put on rising your children a nurturing your family relationships. My book Connecting My Dots offers multiple examples of how successful women of different ages use their "Priority Wheel" to plan for success.
One more important lesson from Connecting My Dots is an advice that many successful women have shared with me while I was writing the book. One of the lessons from the Five Leadership Lessons for Multidimensional Success is to find the right partner.
Only you and time can tell if you found the right partner that will work with you to put "Your Priority Wheel" in full motion.
Guess what? There is not a simple answer.
After a long race trying to find a perfect balance between career and family, people came to the conclusion that a perfect balance does not exist. Rather than trying to achieve a BALANCE we need to have a goal of achieving ALIGNMENT between our top priorities.
ALIGNMENT means that the weight across your Priority Wheel will change according to the particular needs of your life stage.
The "Priority Wheel" is a tool for aligning priorities through change. Think about a wheel - Wheels are always moving.
Remember that success is a wheel of continuous improvements. Your wheel is always in motion. We all have many dots2connect and having a "Priority Wheel" will help you to be ready to achieve success when the opportunity comes. It will empower you to create opportunities to achieve success on your own terms and have the right person near you to share success with.
Success (like a wheel) is always in motion and the meaning of success changes according to what is most important for us. As you go through different life stages your priorities and needs change. Hence, your "Priority Wheel" needs recalibration in order to reflect new dimensions. Multiple life events can affect the dimensions of your "Priority Wheel", for example the following is a list of the most common life changing events:
o First job after college graduation
o Going back to graduate school
o Engage in a serious relationship
o Job displacement
o Leadership promotion (at all levels)
o Marriage
o Having kids
o Elder parents
o Opening your own business
o Community involvement
o Family lost or serious illness
o New job or career opportunity
o Personal interest / hobby
Once when you develop your "Priority Wheel" with the important dimensions you will need to be prepare to make trade-offs between the time and energy you dedicate to your career development and success and the time and effort you put on rising your children a nurturing your family relationships. My book Connecting My Dots offers multiple examples of how successful women of different ages use their "Priority Wheel" to plan for success.
One more important lesson from Connecting My Dots is an advice that many successful women have shared with me while I was writing the book. One of the lessons from the Five Leadership Lessons for Multidimensional Success is to find the right partner.
is quite important if you want to achieve multidimensional success with your career, family and personal life.Lesson #3 Finding the Right Partner
Only you and time can tell if you found the right partner that will work with you to put "Your Priority Wheel" in full motion.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Web 2.0 Check List
The terms Web 2.0 and Social Networking continue to hit the top of the emerging technologies list for corporate executives, small business owners, non-profit organizations and individual consumers.
In every business networking meeting I have attended over the last four months people get asked if they are using Twitter. Adding the address of your LinkedIn profile has become one of the new best pratices for professional job seekers. Others have created consulting practices to teach organizations and individuals on how to leverage the power of these tools. Since 2006, the Gartner Group identified Web 2.0 technologies in their key emerging technologies watchlist.
I compiled a list that I plan to use during my presentation about Social Collaboration at Duke University. I want to share this list to help you to connect the dots across all the different Web 2.0 tools and technologies:
1) Blogs
2) Collective Intelligence (Crowdsourcing)
3) Mash-ups (Aggregation of Content)
4) Peer-to-peer fiel sharing
5) Podcasts
6) RSS (Syndication of Content)
7) Social Networking
8) Web Services
9) Wikis
In every business networking meeting I have attended over the last four months people get asked if they are using Twitter. Adding the address of your LinkedIn profile has become one of the new best pratices for professional job seekers. Others have created consulting practices to teach organizations and individuals on how to leverage the power of these tools. Since 2006, the Gartner Group identified Web 2.0 technologies in their key emerging technologies watchlist.
I compiled a list that I plan to use during my presentation about Social Collaboration at Duke University. I want to share this list to help you to connect the dots across all the different Web 2.0 tools and technologies:
1) Blogs
2) Collective Intelligence (Crowdsourcing)
3) Mash-ups (Aggregation of Content)
4) Peer-to-peer fiel sharing
5) Podcasts
6) RSS (Syndication of Content)
7) Social Networking
8) Web Services
9) Wikis
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Mentoring Programs Toolkit
Mentoring continues to be a high priority for me and with the publication of my book "Connecting My Dots", I have been able to inspire many leaders to dedicate time and effort to mentor junior associates and emerging leaders across their organizations.
Now that I am taking a short time off from Corporate America, I can advise organizations on how establish successful mentoring programs.
Few weeks ago at the LISTA 2nd Annual Technology forum on the Hill, I had the opportunity to award a copy of "Connecting My Dots" to US Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis. During the event we discussed the importance of setting mentoring programs to promote STEM careers and develop emerging leaders for the new global economy. We talked about the importance of role models for Latinas and emerging leaders in STEM professions.
On June 2009, we successfully launched the NCTA WISE professional mentoring program for women in STEM in the Charlotte region. The program is running as a pilot this year and women from over 10 different organizations are participating in the program. Through the mentoring program we have identified the right mentoring relationship based on needs, preferences and career goals.
If you are looking to establish a mentoring program in your organization here is a summary of the critical steps you will need to consider:
1) Problem Definition
a. Initial step to define the need, goals and objective of the mentoring program
b. Define success metrics and expectations
2) Data Gathering
a. Survey managers and potential pool of participants to understand expectations for the program
3) Determine mentoring model
a. The mentoring model must fit the needs of the organization and participants. Mentoring programs that are tailored to the needs of one department tend to have more structured than mentoring programs that go across organizational boundaries.
b. Questions to ask when developing the model:
i. Duration of the formal program and Frequency of the interactions
ii. Level of engagement from Human Resources (career coaches, training courses)
iii. Mentor/mentee ratio
iv. Roles and responsibilities of Executive sponsor, Program manager, HR consultant, mentors and mentees
v. Select training materials (e.g. Personality tests, Career assessments, etc)
4) Recruiting participants
a. Self-selected
b. Nomination by managers
5) Application process
a. Both mentors and mentees need to submit an application requesting the participation in the program. Mentees will need to obtain approval from the direct line manager to dedicate time to the program during working hours.
b. The application form should contain the following information:
i. Career objectives and expectations from the program
ii. Preferred communication style
iii. Personal preferences
iv. Approval from line manager (for mentees)
6) Matching process
a. This is a critical step in the process and should be conducted by the mentoring program managing team (e.g. program sponsor, program manager, HR consultant)
7) Implementation and Communication
a. Develop a communication plan to executive sponsors and participants
Post a question to Get additional advice about connecting with a mentor.
Now that I am taking a short time off from Corporate America, I can advise organizations on how establish successful mentoring programs.
Few weeks ago at the LISTA 2nd Annual Technology forum on the Hill, I had the opportunity to award a copy of "Connecting My Dots" to US Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis. During the event we discussed the importance of setting mentoring programs to promote STEM careers and develop emerging leaders for the new global economy. We talked about the importance of role models for Latinas and emerging leaders in STEM professions.
On June 2009, we successfully launched the NCTA WISE professional mentoring program for women in STEM in the Charlotte region. The program is running as a pilot this year and women from over 10 different organizations are participating in the program. Through the mentoring program we have identified the right mentoring relationship based on needs, preferences and career goals.
If you are looking to establish a mentoring program in your organization here is a summary of the critical steps you will need to consider:
1) Problem Definition
a. Initial step to define the need, goals and objective of the mentoring program
b. Define success metrics and expectations
2) Data Gathering
a. Survey managers and potential pool of participants to understand expectations for the program
3) Determine mentoring model
a. The mentoring model must fit the needs of the organization and participants. Mentoring programs that are tailored to the needs of one department tend to have more structured than mentoring programs that go across organizational boundaries.
b. Questions to ask when developing the model:
i. Duration of the formal program and Frequency of the interactions
ii. Level of engagement from Human Resources (career coaches, training courses)
iii. Mentor/mentee ratio
iv. Roles and responsibilities of Executive sponsor, Program manager, HR consultant, mentors and mentees
v. Select training materials (e.g. Personality tests, Career assessments, etc)
4) Recruiting participants
a. Self-selected
b. Nomination by managers
5) Application process
a. Both mentors and mentees need to submit an application requesting the participation in the program. Mentees will need to obtain approval from the direct line manager to dedicate time to the program during working hours.
b. The application form should contain the following information:
i. Career objectives and expectations from the program
ii. Preferred communication style
iii. Personal preferences
iv. Approval from line manager (for mentees)
6) Matching process
a. This is a critical step in the process and should be conducted by the mentoring program managing team (e.g. program sponsor, program manager, HR consultant)
7) Implementation and Communication
a. Develop a communication plan to executive sponsors and participants
Post a question to Get additional advice about connecting with a mentor.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
10 Trends from Emerging Technologies Outlook
Last week on the Hill, I had the opportunity to address representatives of the goverment during the LISTA Technology Legislative Forum where I provided an outlook on emerging technologies.
I want to share the main points of the briefing:
Intro:
Innovation and the Democratization of technology are driving the growth of our economy. Retention in technology, science, energy professions and the creation of green jobs propel innovation and position our country to compete in the new global and "connected" economy.
Solid understanding of the emerging technologies trends will position us to anticipate the needs of our economy and the consumer market.
Trends and Technologies:
1) Electronification of transactions (financial transactions, medical records), migration from paper to electronic medium.
2) User-generated content and democratization of information and knowledge ( adoption of web 2.0 technologies). Impact of user-generated trends to digital media and adversiting.
3) Mobile technologies ( mobile payments, P2P services, location - based services)
4) RFID, NFC impacting manufaturing, retailers, logistics
5) Adoption of Web 2.0 technologies (blogs, wikies, tagging)
6) Social networking
7) Collaboration technologies (teleconferences, videoconferencing) enable global collaboration and accelaration of innovation.
8) Cloud Computing
9) Nanotechnologies
10) Open Source Architecture
I want to share the main points of the briefing:
Intro:
Innovation and the Democratization of technology are driving the growth of our economy. Retention in technology, science, energy professions and the creation of green jobs propel innovation and position our country to compete in the new global and "connected" economy.
Solid understanding of the emerging technologies trends will position us to anticipate the needs of our economy and the consumer market.
Trends and Technologies:
1) Electronification of transactions (financial transactions, medical records), migration from paper to electronic medium.
2) User-generated content and democratization of information and knowledge ( adoption of web 2.0 technologies). Impact of user-generated trends to digital media and adversiting.
3) Mobile technologies ( mobile payments, P2P services, location - based services)
4) RFID, NFC impacting manufaturing, retailers, logistics
5) Adoption of Web 2.0 technologies (blogs, wikies, tagging)
6) Social networking
7) Collaboration technologies (teleconferences, videoconferencing) enable global collaboration and accelaration of innovation.
8) Cloud Computing
9) Nanotechnologies
10) Open Source Architecture
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