A disappointing summer has turned into a dreadful September, and I’m not talking about the weather. Not a week (or should that be a day) seems to go by without another company announcing all kinds of financial difficulty. From airline operators to banks, organisations are struggling amidst choppy economic waters while consumer confidence in the economy drains away. Despite all this, technology and financial services continue to go together like planets and gravity, and the Big Bangs in the last eight days alone, including the events at the London Stock Exchange a week ago and the news that even the imploding Lehman Brothers spent $1.14 billion last year on IT last year, demonstrate the link.
   

For many consumers, these turbulent happenings will further shake their confidence in a troubled economy, which was already battered by the fall-out from Northern Rock, the sub-prime chaos and rising prices seen from the shelves to the pumps. The immediate future of the investment and retail banking sectors remain a key concern for all and, understandably, the Government is taking these matters very seriously.

A series of consultations has already taken place on financial stability and depositor protection otherwise known as ‘How to deal with another Northern Rock situation’.  Unsurprisingly, the influential Treasury Select Committee (TSC) has kept a watchful eye on these proceedings and this week published their report into banking reform which highlights the need for ‘tough deadlines’ on the banking sector to arrange payments to customers, in light of bank failure. 

We all agree on the need to compensate account holders as quickly and as smoothly as possible, but as both Intellect’s and the British Bankers’ Association’s evidence to the Committee noted, the disruption to the banking system in light of a bank’s failure is massive and depending on the size of the financial institution, organising the compensation payments would really be a brave new world for all parties involved (not least the FSA who would be responsible for collecting the account data needed to facilitate the payouts). As such, one needs to consider whether the arbitrary target of seven days is desirable. If this was not achieved, it would have the perverse effect of damaging consumer confidence further.

Another concern articulated by the Committee relates to the Government’s proposed timetable for legislation (it is hoped to have it on the statute books by Spring 2009 – an ambition shared by the Tories). For the sake of all parties involved (and not just the political ones) it is important that the proposals make it onto the statute book sooner rather than later, but the legislation needs to be right, not rushed. For the laws to work effectively in a period of substantial media, political and public scrutiny, tested systems need to be in place, procedures need to be clear and staff need to be trained, within both the financial institutions and also at the FSA, amongst others.

So it would appear that seven days may not be long enough to arrange the payouts and seven months may not be long enough to get the Bill through the Houses of Parliament with adequate scrutiny. Timing is crucial to ensure customers know what is expected to happen by when. But raising false expectations, or rushing through laws of this magnitude, could mean good intentions turn into bad practice. This is the last thing anyone needs at the moment.

By Ben Andersen-Tuffnell, Transformational Business Programme Manager

I always thought it was BA Baracus, the iconic figure from 80’s TV show The A Team that coined the phrase "time is money". It turns out, like many other things, we owe this wisdom to the Greeks, in this case to Antiphon, an orator who wrote speeches for defendants in legal cases.

"The most costly outlay is time," he told his clients. Quite how right he was and how explicitly this maxim is now being applied in new business models he couldn’t possibly have imagined. Could he?

It now appears that the most valuable economic commodity in a world abounding in competing and distracting information, is our own attention, or our own time, and people are prepared to spend a lot of money to capture it. 

Welcome to the discipline of "the attention economy" that  advocates believe will be the dominant currency in new knowledge and information-based societies. This radical theory of value is focused on the relationship between advertising, commerce and societal behaviour. The current over-abundance and growing body of information that sprawls across various networks and devices is locked into a competition for the precious commodity that is our attention. This scarcity of attention has been compounded by the falling cost of transmitting advertising to consumers that has fallen to a sufficiently low level where more ads can be transmitted to a consumer than the consumer can possibly receive or process.

Technology has also played a role in producing this scarcity of attention. At one time the advertising model was relatively straightforward: find a big audience and speak to them, insistently and disruptively if need be, but ensure that your message is put across.

However, new technologies have facilitated the fragmentation of mass audiences to such a degree that advertisers - mega media events such as X-factor or the FA Cup Final apart - can no longer identify a mass audience, grazing like a herd of buffalo on the plain. The audience is hiding now, elusive and difficult to reach, on the internet watching YouTube, fast forwarding through adverts on their personal video recorders listening to their iPod’s and oblivious to billboards. To respond successfully to this paradigm shift in audience behaviour, businesses and advertisers will need to rely heavily on theories of attention economies.

So that’s the theory, but what does it actually look like? Well, in the formative stages it looks something like UK company Blyk, a free mobile phone network exclusively for 16-24-year olds entirely funded by advertising. Users signing up to the network receive no more than six advertising messages on their mobiles a day and in return are given an allowance of 47 texts and 243 minutes for free each month. In short, consumers are exchanging their attention to advertisers for an agreed set of services and products. Advertisers get access to an important and sizeable target market and can generate data and sales for brands from the dialogue they instigate with the consumer. This is a win-win and a notable example of how businesses are having to adapt business models in the face of falling revenues.

Now just think what you could have charged for reading this article… 

By Sam Ingleby 

Paulo Coelho is a publishing phenomenon: the Brazilian novelist specialises in a sort of quasi-philosophical magic realism that has struck a strong chord with those in search of something more. He has sold well over 100 million books worldwide and his work has been translated into 66 different languages. Perhaps his most famous work is The Alchemist  - the tale of a boy’s journey towards spiritual enlightenment.

It is perhaps surprising in the resolutely traditional world of book publishing Coelho is a progressive and voluble exponent of the benefits of the internet in dispersing and disseminating his work. In a recent speech he explained how the use of piracy helped spread the word  about The Alchemist. He explained how he had posted Bittorrent links in an effort to pirate his own novel, an approach that helped to radically increase hard copy sales and readership in different languages. He said that this new method had helped him interact with his readers in ways he "did not know were possible".

Since Monday he has also lead the way in a innovation coming from the publishing house Harper Collins. Readers who log on to http://www.harpercollins.com/ will be able to see the entire contents of "The Witch of Portobello" by Coelho as well as a host of other (US focused) titles including "Mission: Cook! My Life, My Recipes and Making the Impossible Easy" by celebrity Chef Robert Irvine " and  "The Undecided Voter's Guide to the Next President: Who the Candidates Are, Where They Come from and How You Can Choose" by Mark Halperin. 

There are, of course, certain terms and conditions. These free electronic editions will only be available for one month, and control of the content is restricted as readers are not able to download them to laptops or to an electronic book reader like Amazon’s Kindle. The print function has also been disabled, so budding book-binders will have to wait a bit longer, but readers are offered links to retailers like Amazon.com to buy copies of the books they are sampling.

Jane Friedman, chief executive of Harper Collins said in her announcement that she doubted most people would read the entire versions online, but use it as a taster to see if they would like to purchase a full copy. She compared the initiative to "taking the shrink wrapping off a book" and also tackled the idea that the new digital editions would jeopardise actual sales. "We will know very soon if we sense any kind of cannibalisation," she said.

This is a shrewd move from Harper Collins offering a new avenue to access and purchase content while pulling traffic to its site. It also plays well with the consumer who is effectively getting something for free: if digital media has proved one thing, from music to video, it’s that the consumer likes this and has come to expect it as their right. Coelho, for his part, is relaxed about his content being available in this way: "I believe that generosity pays off," he said. In this, Harper Collins will hope he is proved right.

By Sam Ingleby - Digital Communications Programme Manager