Who are your competitors and what does this mean for the future of your banking model?
“In a world where a competitive advantage often evaporates in less than a year, companies can’t afford to spend months at a time drafting a single long termpolicy, ” claimsRita Gunther McGrathin the June issue of the Harvard Business Review. “To stay ahead, they need to constantly start new initiatives. . .”
Now this may overstate the case slightly as applied to your average credit union, bu change is constant and the old ways of devising a strategy for long termgrowth based on rigid assumptions about the future are as obsolete as JohnnyDepp’s star power (the Lone Ranger was blown away at the box office by Despicable Me II).
For example, if you think your only competitor is you’re notso friendly community bank down the street, or maybe the evil WalMart, which is always rumored to be interested in bringing its commitment to better service at lower cost to banking, then go into your local Apple retailer. Not only is the outstanding and informative customer service depressingly refreshing in an era where those things havegone by the wayside in the name of lower prices, but the technology they are already using today shows why the bank branch as we know it really is getting more obsolete by the day.
