webqem blog

Macromedia Interview with Randolf Clinton / CoHead Asia Pac Cash Equities JP Morgan

webqem recently designed and implemented a rapid online presentation system for JP Morgan, using Macromedia Breeze. A Macromedia case study of the highly successful solution is reproduced here with kind permission…

Just like any business, JP Morgan needed to gain the competitive edge to grow revenue while minimising costs.

The investment banking industry is fragmenting. The number of clients is growing and it is getting harder to service all of them. The acceleration of technologies, such as the Internet and news wires, means that speed is of the essence – we must be able to respond quickly to market changes and cut through the clutter to reach our customers.

A key challenge for research analysts at the bank is being able to attract the attention of busy overseas clients in order to sell in the benefits of investing in Australian equities.

Everybody is faced with information overload and time management is a huge issue. We all try to fit 24 hours work into a 12 hour day. Here at the bank our challenge is how to get our research analysts here in Sydney to be able to communicate with a potential client in another country and time zone. We needed a way to help that analyst put forward a persuasive argument in order for the client to register them.

Before using Breeze, we used voice blasts – sending a voice message out to a mass phone number list. However, as most of our competition use the same technology it was hard to gain cut through. Now we can quickly and easily create tailored multimedia presentations to email to our target customers. As we can include voice commentary we are able to maintain the human element and augment it with visual detail.

In fact, effective communication is a critical success factor for the bank – not just externally, but also internally. As JP Morgan has sales teams in multiple locations worldwide, the research analysts need to be able to give the sales teams the ideas and concepts to onsell – efficiently, effectively and consistently.

As Macromedia Breeze allows us to send the same presentation to a number of people to be viewed in their own time, we can be sure they are all receiving exactly the same information in a timely manner. To pass on information by word of mouth is not only time consuming, it risks turning into “Chinese Whispers’ where the message and information can easily be distorted.”

webqem designed and implemented the Macromedia Breeze Presentation solution. As JP Morgan opted for an applications service provider (ASP) solution, the application is hosted and managed on Macromedia’s servers in the US.

To test the feasibility and user acceptance of the Breeze solution, webqem and JP Morgan trialled the concept with 200 internal staff and customers. All feedback was positive and because Macromedia’s Flash Player is so ubiquitous, all were able to access the presentations. The application was then rolled out within a week.

Larry Adler, Operations Director, webqem, believes that the hosted model played an important factor in the roll out of the Breeze solution…

The ASP hosted option allowed JP Morgan to be first to the marketplace as it required very little of JP Morgan’s IT resources to deploy the solution. All their clients needed was access to the Internet and Macromedia Flash Player which is already used on 98 percent of PCs worldwide.”

webqem trained staff in two one and half hour group training sessions.

Clinton admits that as the Breeze approach requires a business process change, there will be some employees who are too used to the old way of doing business to fully embrace Breeze. He said,

After the initial excitement we now have a hard core of users who really tap into the power of Breeze. We must challenge the norm. As far as we know we are the first to use it in our business in Australia and it really does provide us with a first mover advantage,” Clinton enthused.

The engaging experience of Breeze as a form of communication creates a differentiating component that, when a client chooses to transact in the Australian market, may be enough to differentiate us from our competitors – for us, that’s the real return on investment.”

Following the success of the Australian roll out of Macromedia Breeze, JP Morgan is in the early stages of implementing the solution across the Asia, Europe and US regions.

For JP Morgan, the power of Macromedia Breeze is that it allows staff to personalise presentations with their own narration and easily deliver them through any standard web browser to reach the target audience.

Key Benefits

• Research analysts are empowered to create their own high impact presentations.
• The inclusion of voice creates a human element for the presentation and reinforce the message being communicated.
• The experience created by the resulting presentations breaks through the email clutter at the client end.

Find out more about elearning.
For a Free 15 day Macromedia Breeze trial
contact Larry Adler.

JP Morgan is a leader in investment banking, asset management, private equity, consumer banking, private banking, refinance, and custody and processing services. The company has more than 90,000 staff in over 50 countries. The Australian equity operation needed to find a way to differentiate itself from the competition by helping its research analysts to break though email clutter in order to attract the attention of international clients to invest in Australian equities.