I have always enjoyed the research reports produced by Forresters. They always seem to bring a fresh perspective on how one could look at things. In arecent report (Read here), they found that the ROI of a retail mobile banking deployment in the USA for 500 000 subscribers would come to roughly 15%. This is not particularly exciting, although one could argue that it is better than placing money on fixed deposits at this stage.However, in reading the report, one could see many ways that the ROI could be improved (in some cases) spectacularly. It is important to consider some of the aspects below that would lead to major gains that could be achieved in rolling out mobile baning services. Some of these are:
- The model developed by Forrestors catered for cost elements related to developing, testing and deploying these services. Obviously, if these costs could be reduced, one would increase the ROI. Two ways to reduce these costs could be to deploy low cost, configurable enterprise solutions, or to make use of commoditised outsourced services.
- The model also talks about benefits as being predominantly related to cost savings. If the services could deliver revenue-benefits (like increased transaction revenue), or improved risk management, the proposition can be increased significantly.
