I wonder what the banks want their "partners" to help them with ?

Coming up with dumb gimmicks like that "Keep the Change" thing.

Bogus reward programs that don't give you anything until you've charged up a
zillion dollars.

Sending you endless "convenience checks" that have to be shredded.

Downloading transactions as "Check."

Forcing you to listen to 15 sales pitches for the latest dumb gimmicks
before you can "activate" your card.

Imagine the possibilities.

Susan



"Dick Watson" <littlegreengecko[at]mind-enufalready-spring.com> wrote in
message news:O24%23H1tDGHA.412[at]TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
- quote -

You mean they don't care about the users?

"harrelsonesq" <harrelsonesq2[at]yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:OpzlBBpDGHA.748[at]TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
- quote -

Thanks for posting that. Did anybody else see the problem with the Money
person's quote?

Susan

"Aloke Prasad" <aprasad123[at]columbus.rr.invalid> wrote in message
news:OJfsLbgDGHA.2320[at]TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
- quote -

It's a Quicken World Again for Intuit
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/31/te.../31intuit.html

"Quicken is thriving once again. The unit's revenue grew faster in the most
recent quarter, up 24 percent, than the company average of 20 percent, a
clip that has made the unit a model of innovation"
......
"After meeting daily for several months the star-filled team concluded:
don't place all your bets on Quicken by loading it with features; build a
portfolio of products instead."
......
"Mr. Karpas told his staff: "Your job isn't to make marketing's life easy.
Your job is to find unmet needs we can solve well." So they stripped
features like the home and car values download and removed the clutter of
on-screen ads, toolbars and folder tabs that confronted users. People no
longer have to type in every transaction; they can download that data from
any of 2,900 financial institutions. The program automatically sorts the
entries by recognizing company names. Safeway is obviously groceries and
Chevron is most likely gasoline. Users can download checks or statements
from their bank and attach it to a ledger entry so that the program becomes
a virtual, but well-organized, shoebox. "
......
"For Microsoft's part, it followed suit and stripped down its product
released in July 2004 to focus on capturing online banking customers. "Our
strategy is to be the best partners to banks we can be," said Anne Quaranta,
the senior product manager."
.....
"He approved the product, and the Medical Expense Manager was released last
June to strong reviews. Intuit charges $50 for it, far more than it charges
for all but the premium versions of TurboTax or Quicken.
With all these changes, the company was adding incremental revenue while
protecting the simplicity of its core product. It confirmed a radical change
in thinking. "Instead of making Quicken better with this, we created a new
product to solve it specifically," said Lisa Rogers, the Medical Expense
Manager product manager."

The Quicken group came up with other new products. They estimated that nine
million property owners hold 10 or fewer properties. So they created the
$100 Property Manager for landlords to track rent collection, repairs and
even how many tax-deductible miles were driven to the nearest Home Depot.

In December, it released Portfolio Manager for professional financial
planners."

"What's coming next? Look for software that inventories household
possessions and another that manages cash flow so there is a little more
money left over at the end of every month. Mr. Karpas's biggest stretch may
be Zipingo.com, an online service that anyone can use to rate local
merchants and professionals."


--
Aloke
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