Case Study 2
Identified Problem
The apparent problem in the Bank of America case study is that Jen McDonald (head of the Bank of America digital marketing group), and Douglas Brown (senior vice president of mobile product development) received requests to create mobile apps more specific for individual businesses as a way to gain leverage (Supta & Herman, 2012). Brown, specifically, was hesitant to add additional mobile app features as he feared it would make the application far too complex. Not only would it prove to be difficult for some users to understand, more features often make applications run more slowly, which could complicate the idea of mobile banking. In addition this could possibly give the customer a more negative experience. To cite the problem specifically, Brown stated “App complexity has led to some high-profile failures in the market place. This carries a huge risk” (Supta & Herman, 2012).
Furthermore, Bank of America was provided $20 billion in capital from the United States government during the financial crisis under leadership of CEO Kenneth Lewis (Supta & Herman, 2012). Lewis had concerns that certain investors and customers would start to correlate Bank of America with Citigroup, who had previously given up 36% of its ownership to the federal government (Supta & Herman, 2012). This resulted in Brian Moynihan (head of consumer and small business banking) taking over as CEO on January 1, 2010 (Supta & Herman, 2012).
Constraints and available options
One of Bank of America’s options was to create different apps to target different groups and market segments, which proved to be somewhat of a risk. Not only was the organization concerned for the customers reaction, Bank of America was also hesitant because mobile apps are costly and in doing so, technology resources would be taken from other essential areas of banking such as online banking and atm machines. At this time customers were not completely trusting in working with their banks,
The apparent problem in the Bank of America case study is that Jen McDonald (head of the Bank of America digital marketing group), and Douglas Brown (senior vice president of mobile product development) received requests to create mobile apps more specific for individual businesses as a way to gain leverage (Supta & Herman, 2012). Brown, specifically, was hesitant to add additional mobile app features as he feared it would make the application far too complex. Not only would it prove to be difficult for some users to understand, more features often make applications run more slowly, which could complicate the idea of mobile banking. In addition this could possibly give the customer a more negative experience. To cite the problem specifically, Brown stated “App complexity has led to some high-profile failures in the market place. This carries a huge risk” (Supta & Herman, 2012).
Furthermore, Bank of America was provided $20 billion in capital from the United States government during the financial crisis under leadership of CEO Kenneth Lewis (Supta & Herman, 2012). Lewis had concerns that certain investors and customers would start to correlate Bank of America with Citigroup, who had previously given up 36% of its ownership to the federal government (Supta & Herman, 2012). This resulted in Brian Moynihan (head of consumer and small business banking) taking over as CEO on January 1, 2010 (Supta & Herman, 2012).
Constraints and available options
One of Bank of America’s options was to create different apps to target different groups and market segments, which proved to be somewhat of a risk. Not only was the organization concerned for the customers reaction, Bank of America was also hesitant because mobile apps are costly and in doing so, technology resources would be taken from other essential areas of banking such as online banking and atm machines. At this time customers were not completely trusting in working with their banks,