Spoken like someone who has never worked a day in IT in his life (or read the article it appears). A large migration to any new system takes time. Whether it be Windows, Linux, SAP, PeopleSoft, etc… In a lot of ways Linux is harder to roll out as the tools needed to support such a large implementation simply do not exist. But if done intelligently they should see savings from it.

(personally I always found OpenOffice too unstable to use for any extended period of time so hopefully this effort spurs improvement in that suite)

Going back to Rons point earlier, what I really question is the thinking that customers go through when considering their bank branch. The classic answer is that it is based on location. Typically some event such as moving, a new job, or dissatisfaction drives people to a new bank, and the most convenient branch was the standard for that decision.

The change I perceive is that peoples consideration of bank is broader now, considering amongst others:
- online banking reputation, features, and online demo
- ease of transfer of automated payments
- associated offers or free stuff
- reference from friends or work
- bank reputation (i.e. is it safe)

None of those characteristics are geo specific. The ultimate question is whether geo location will over-ride the above characteristics.

Anyway, we started (by coincidence) in the group buy initiative around “heating oil”, Colin, you can not imagine the push back we got from the industry … “.. but iChoosr, we own the customer, not you !!!” And so they started several lawsuits against us. So far, we won them all (obviously). This was end 2008. What happened just now? One of the larger producers of heating oil approached us with the question “When will you guys organize a new groupbuy … ?”

Next in parallel, we started to organize a group buy initiative for energy contracts (also for consumers). Same reaction from the vendors “… but we own the customers … and iChoosr, who are you?”
But then, when I show 2.000 intentions from people, you notice that the sales guys at those companies start to listen. Only the marketeers but their heels in the ground.
The only players who are interested to join the auction are the smaller players, as they see this approach as a cheap lead generation effort. But do they understand/do they want to understand VRM ?? Absolutely not !!! It’s all short term thinking, based upon their “own” wallet …

That is THE problem with the VRM approach. Online, I guess you can convince the blogosphere and early adaptors @ Twitter, but then you only covered 0.01% of the people.
(in our heating oil example, we had 40% of the people subscribe to our initiative via a paper form …)

So I see iChoosr as a front runner in the evangelization of an early VRM application, but we need a long time to get it between the ears of Vendors and Consumers.

If you would like to have more feedback on our experience, do not hesitate to contact me.

Cheers and enjoy the weekend.

Bart Stevens
http://www.twitter.com/ichoosr
Bart

Is that for all cards or just for Canadian cards? Does this mean that US stripe cards won’t work in Canada?

However, you are correct in that chip cards do not deal with all potential fraud issues.

That seems to of critical importance!

* GM’s application on June 1, 2009 for Chapter 11 protection from its creditors, triggered the biggest industrial bankruptcy in history. Until 2008, when it was overtaken by Toyota, GM was the world’s biggest carmaker, producing well over 9 million cars and trucks a year in 34 different countries. It has 463 subsidiaries and employs 234,500 people, 91,000 of them in America, where it also provides health-care and pension benefits for 493,000 retired workers. In America alone, it spends $50 billion a year buying parts and services from a network of 11,500 vendors and pays $476 million in salaries each month (Economist)

* GM is now selling off its many of its assets, as part of global auto consolidation and perhaps providing the chance for some countries to get a foothold in new countries. On a macroeconomic basis, the net result will likely be job losses which could weigh on growth in the most affected regions and countries. GM has been selling assets including both foreign and U.S. brands but not all the deals are finalized. The largest such deal concerned Opel, its European operations

The difficulty of course is timing the failure. I continue to be worried about the California money situation and can’t help but think socially there is a time bomb waiting to go off. That poor state is bleeding money and with the moves the state government is making in regard to releasing prisoners because they can’t afford to keep them incarcerated is just a match waiting to set it all off. And I think it will ripple across the nation. Add to that this financial woes and things could get bad quick.

Take a look at the gold graph on the widget http://www.learcapital.com/exactprice and it’s obvious for a while now that investors have recognized that FED’s practices are leading to a killing of the dollar and into major inflation. Gold is on the rise. People turn to it to protect their money with paper money is in crisis. And crisis is where I’m afraid we are finding ourselves.

I typically hear about the ‘big 6′ and not the ‘big 5′. Yes, National Bank of Canada is a small player there are 546 branches nationwide, of which 454 can be found in Quebec. Needless to say is that the National Bank of Canada is primarily focused in Quebec. And still should be considered, even if they are ‘smaller’.

Well written article, I enjoyed it. I recently subscribed to your blog and I find it enjoyable, looking forward to the next article.