Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is a model of software deployment where the application(s) are hosted by a service provider rather than residing on the users computers. Therefore clients don’t have to install the required programs on the users machine or maintain it.   

SasS vs. Cloud computing

Many people think "SaaS" and "Cloud computing" are the same but "Cloud computing" is made up of three following segments: 

• Software as a Service (SaaS)
• Platform as a Service (PaaS)
• Infrastructure as a Service (SaaS) 

With Cloud computing, we are now talking about running software that is written by someone else who also manages the infrastructure. SaaS or software as a service is a prime example of this. Salesforce.com has been a leader in this space with their CRM services.   

The following list can give you a general idea of the big players in the SaaS and Cloud computing industry, keep in mind that SaaS is growing quickly in the IT industry and lots of other known companies are currently using the SaaS

• AT&T 
• Cisco 
• Dell 
• IBM 
• Microsoft 
• Oracle 
• Salesforce 

Why SaaS? 

The following benefits are some of the primary reasons companies are switching to SaaS deployments:

Benefits of SaaS  

• Client can access the systems from anywhere, any computer and at any time
• Software updates are automatic and the vendor provides daily technical operation, maintenance and support so clients don't have to buy any hardware or software
• Vendors usually only have to update and maintain the software on the network, versus updating different copies of the software on different computers
• There can be no limit for the number of users
• SaaS services can be brought to market quickly using automation service modules
• Compatibility: All users will have the same version of software
• If an update is requested by a customer, most likely it will benefit all other customers who are also using the system.

When creating a web project in the Microsoft .NET Framework there are two basic project types: Web Application Project and Web Site Project. Though they sound similar there are a number of differences between them and the main difference between a web application project and a web site project boils down to when compilation happens.

First, a bit of background 

Compilation is the process by which code, written by developers, is converted into a machine readable format. So while a developer may write a program in C# or Java, a computer cannot understand these languages directly. The program must first be converted from C# or Java into a machine readable format. This process is called compilation, taking something human-readable and making it machine-readable. Of course, a consequence of this is that if the code is changed the program needs to be recompiled.

With Web Site Projects compilation happens at run-time. So when a user hits a particular page the code for that page is compiled behind the scenes and then executed. With Web Application Projects compilation happens for all pages ahead of time, before the site is deployed to the production environment. When a user hits a page the code for that page is immediately executed. The extra step of compilation isn’t required because the code is already compiled.

Why should you care? 

Seems like a no brainer. Just go with the pre-runtime compilation offered by a Web Application Project and save the lag time induced by the runtime compilation of a Web Site Project. And as an added bonus since the compiler performs a number of consistency checks before compilation, pre-compiling the code helps the developer identify potential issues with the code before it’s deployed to a production environment.

However it’s not as simple as that. The choice of when to do compilation has some side-effects.

Pre-compiling the code base means that when changes to any part of the code are made the code for the entire site must be recompiled. This can cause some discomfort for site administrators responsible for production deployments. Since the entire code base is being deployed to the production environment for even the smallest code change, a number of questions arise. How can the administrator be sure other changes weren’t accidentally introduced to the code running on production? Does the entire site now need to be retested? What effect do these changes to the code have on the rest of the site?

With run-time compilation, only the code that has changed will need to be recompiled and only when needed.

Which is best? 

Which methodology should you follow on your next project? Do the performance benefits and extra layer of checks with a Web Application Project outweigh the comfort afforded by only deploying the files directly affected by the change (and not the entire code base)?

On this there is some debate but it is generally agreed that for larger, enterprise-level deployments the Web Application Project is the way to go. For smaller sites, Web Site Projects make sense. VAULT usually goes with a Web Application Project.

Additional Reading 

There are additional benefits and drawbacks to both project types that stem from the main differentiator: pre-compiled/runtime compiled. Microsoft has provided a handy page that summarizes them here.

I spend most of my time talking to financial services clients about the web and how to better leverage the Internet channel to help their business. Occasionally, we discuss the social media phenomenon and whether Facebook, Twitter or other online properties present a commercial opportunity in their overall web strategy. Today, I was struck by the story in the Globe and Mail, "Heather Reisman spearheads 11th-hour bid to save Iranian woman from stoning" and was reminded that regardless of the commercial benefits derived from the web, each and every one of us has an opportunity - or obligation - to transform our world via the Internet.

Apparently, 4 days ago Reisman became aware of this Iranian woman's plight and so at 11pm Monday night contacted a handful of influential women around the world and joined a campaign to stop Sakineh's execution. A Facebook page was set up on Tuesday, 1,000 followers emerged, the petition circulated (1,000 signatures per hour) and this afternoon there's a global online panel event scheduled with women's rights activists participating on the call. It looks as though Sakineh's life has been spared and perhaps others on Iran's death row. She's been in jail since 2006, but the tipping point just arrived this week.

I don't know exactly where social media will lead us, but this is one powerful channel and I'm excited to be involved. 

The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) just released its “Status Report on the Implementation of Point of Sale Disclosure for Mutual Funds” and in it outlined its staged approach to POS implementation. Point of Sale regulation has long been the CSA’s key initiative for retail investor protection, in which investors would receive important information about a mutual fund at a time that is relevant to their investment decision. The central disclosure document, the Fund Facts, is intended to more clearly describe the nature of the mutual fund investment to investors and the CSA’s objective is to have financial advisors provide the disclosure information to their clients at or prior to the mutual fund purchase, and not after the fact as is currently the case (today, the prospectus is sent along with the trade confirmation two days after the trade, but investors do not read the document as it is written in legal jargon and it comes after the decision has been made).

The CSA is encouraging mutual fund companies to start creating these Fund Facts documents as soon as possible, promising Fund Facts requirements by December of this year and an effective date for mutual fund companies to comply early in 2011. The CSA has stood firm with its requirement that Fund Facts for each class or series of the mutual fund be created and filed by the fund company – an onerous administrative task that will potentially tie-up accounting, marketing, legal and compliance departments as they will need to create and file thousands of Fund Facts documents each year.

The CSA has offered industry a little more time before imposing a pre-trade Fund Facts delivery requirement and in the meantime will allow fund companies to deliver the Fund Facts after the trade along with the confirmation, or even in lieu of the prospectus for those dealers wanting to get a jump on the regulation and potentially save money in the process. Given Chairman Mary Shapiro's stated plans at the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) to move ahead this year with pre-trade delivery of their disclosure document and international pressure to do the same in other countries, it won’t be long before Canadian investors will be presented with relevant and plain English information before they purchase an investment fund.

Agree or disagree with the proposed regulation in Canada, one has to be impressed by the tenacity of the Canadian regulators in the face of much opposition. 

As some of you know, we have been developing a SaaS solution to meet our clients' needs regarding POS. Our strategy in response to the CSA's report is twofold:

• Publishing – we are working with our clients and prospects assisting them with the task of publishing and filing the Fund Facts documents. Our web solution automates this task, potentially eliminating months of development effort facing our clients.
• Delivery – we believe that an industry repository for all Fund Facts makes sense. We are providing an industry repository that enables advisors to find and deliver Fund Facts documents to their clients.

Some people have asked if we're in favour of POS. This isn't about favour or opposition, as much as about interpreting what the regulators are saying about POS (we believe it's going to happen) and ensuring our clients have a simple, cost-effective solution to comply. Personally, I favour less regulation but what I personally favour may not be relevant...

What do you think about Point of Sale?

As reported in the Globe and Mail, Hamilton-based FirstOntario Credit has rolled-out its first personal assistance teller, or PAT, which allows customers to speak with a teller via video link at an ATM.

It's funny how the more things change the more we come back to what we like. Over the last twenty years customers have been encouraged to do their banking at the ATM, or online, which can create substantial cost savings for the banks. For those that miss the personal interaction, they can now speak with a representative one-on-one in real time. The machines can also dispense cheques, scan cheques for acceptance, and dispense coins.

The tellers who speak to the PAT customers via video are located in FirstOntario’s office in Hamilton and there’s no plans to move the staff ‘at the other end of the line’ offshore, as has been the trend with call centres. UGenius, the manufacturer of the machines, realizes this is a very sticky point with their customers in the US and Canada, and is not presenting this as part of the business model for adoption.

Although ATM’s are not VAULT’s area of focus, we have developed web solutions for bank kiosks and I do see a time when we'll be able to speak to a teller using the camera on a Blackberry or iPhone. In this scenario, the teller would be able to deposit ‘money’ on our phone and we’d pay at a store using the phone rather than a debit card or cash. I think all this will become standard in the next generation of online banking.

If you had to speak with a teller, would you use a PAT ATM machine rather than going to the teller or would you prefer a personal, 3-D interaction?

Last month Alex Payne, one of the principles behind Twitter, left to join BankSimple as co-founder and Chief Product and Technology Officer. With the promise of “fee-free, customer-friendly and beautifully designed online bank(ing)”, is the race to fully move the Banking industry into the online world a go?

Payne asks we imagine a bank for a moment as;
“A bank that doesn’t gouge you with fees.
A bank that doesn’t treat you like crap.
A bank that cares about design, but gets out of your way.
A bank that puts your money to work automatically.
A bank that’s building a platform for the future of personal finance.”

Citing Spain’s La Caixa’s ATM server where users can purchase movie, opera, sport and museum tickets, and Kenya’s M-PESA’s mobile phone money transfer system, Shamir Karkal of BankSimple asks why America has dropped so far behind the rest of the world in bank technology. Karkal feels that it’s legacy systems that are holding the US back. BankSimple will start with a clean slate and therefore be able to reshape the way its services work.

BankSimple’s comments on ATM fees:
“We have the largest fee free nationwide ATM network. We will also reimburse some ATM fees for some non-network ATMs for those times when it is more convenient for you.”

How to deposit a cheque in a virtual bank?
“Take a photo of the check with your smart phone and send it to us with our app. Pretty simple, right?”

And the fifty thousand dollar question, how do you make money with no fees?
“We make money from two sources: interchange and interest margin. Interest margin is the revenue earned from lending, less what they pay on deposits.... Interchange is a small revenue source that card issuing banks earn whenever that card is used at a store...”.

BankSimple will initially only be available in the US but if they do come to Canada will you open a BankSimple account? Do you trust the BankSimple founders more than you trust the executive of your current bank?

Recently VAULT took on development of a Blackberry app for POS. The requirements of the app were relatively straight-forward: allow the user to choose Fund Facts documents to send to investors, choose a delivery method (email or print/mail) and choose who to send it to (based on contacts within the user's Blackberry contact list. Simple.

While RIM does provide some basic "Getting Started" type tutorials what is sorely lacking is any type of guidance on more advanced topics. Chief among our specific needs for the app was access to web services. Web service integration is key to developing apps for modern handheld devices. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find much help online as to how to best use web services from within a Blackberry app. For a period I was convinced the Blackberry APIs did not (natively) support web service calls at all.

While searching for help online regarding my web services issues I found comments from numerous other developers stating how much easier development is for the iPhone platform. Help online is abundant, APIs are easy to navigate and to use and there is support for modern web services standards.

The launch of the iPhone and subsequent success of the App Store has shown that it's not enough to create compelling hardware. If RIM is to compete then they need to have a robust application development community. By providing weak development tools, Byzantine APIs and limited assistance RIM is pushing its developers away and into a space where they can succeed, the iPhone.

After hearing Scott Thompson, President of PayPal, speak at Mesh10, I'm wondering if PayPal is positioned to become the new international bank.

After answering the obvious questions about what PayPal is doing to resolve its well documented issues around customer service (one part of the solution is a soon to be opened 2000 seat customer service call centre) Thompson discussed how PayPal enables merchants to open an account in minutes and is working to bring down the costs for buyers and sellers to move money around.

Scott agreed that PayPal is in the fraud business as much as the payment business. He spoke about the $169(US) million purchase of Israeli software maker Fraud Sciences. In a meeting with the company before the purchase Thompson recalled the “aha” moment was when one of the founders summed up the key aspect of the software as ‘footprint finding’, ”Good people on the internet leave footprints. Bad people cover these footprints up”. By searching for people’s ‘footprints’ and reviewing other data they have access to (i.e. eBay and Skype accounts) PayPal is able to determine very quickly if you are who you say you are with a reasonable amount of certainty.

Fraud by merchants is actually a greater risk than fraud by consumers because sellers can rack-up huge sales and disappear before fulfilling the orders. By decreasing the risk of fraud and actual fraudulent acts, PayPal will be able to decrease the fees for merchants using their services.

When asked if PayPal will go into Banking Thompson simply answered, “Yes, in certain markets where it makes sense”. PayPal has also expanded into off-line payments on its own and in cooperation with MasterCard. Using the PayPal debit card you can access your PayPal money anywhere in the world via an ATM that accepts MasterCard. MasterCard currently issues PayPal credit cards but I wonder if that will change with the announcement earlier this week that MasterCard has its own API for developers. Currently both of these cards are only available in the US but if the MasterCard API release kills the partnership, PayPal may move quickly to complete a deal with someone like Visa and release their cards internationally.

Currently in over 190 markets around the world, with over 153 million accounts, a deal with Facebook to be its payment method of choice and, backed by the deep pockets of eBay, is PayPal positioned to become an International Banking force?

If PayPal gave you a competitive rate would you switch to using PayPal as your bank of choice?

It’s been 4 years since Google bought YouTube and delivering video on your site is now expected rather than an added feature. Several financial institutions have incorporated video into their site and some have really hit it right on the mark.

RBC Global Asset Management features Daniel Chornous, the Chief Investment Officer speaking about the market outlook. Placed prominently on the homepage these videos are studio quality and professionally produced. The video loads quickly and the sound quality is excellent. I really like the closed captioning feature which the user can turn on or off. The video also includes PowerPoint slides which are transitioned into smoothly.

I wasn't as impressed with Scotiabank’s video of Rick Waugh, President and CEO welcoming customers to Scotiabank. Buried deep in the About Us section the site, the video is almost impossible to find. Instead of embedding the video (common practice these days), the user must first select which format they'd like to use, Windows Media Player or Apple QuickTime. Usually I like user options but in this case I'd suggest they just present the video in Flash. Providing options for alternative formats in the right-hand column could be an added benefit. After selecting the link, I choose the QuickTime format, the video launches in a separate pop-up window at a resolution of 320x200. The first issue here is that many browsers now suppress pop-ups. Secondly, before the video starts QuickTime pops-up asking if I want to update QuickTime (which always happens as I never use QuickTime anymore). Thirdly, the resolution is far too small to engage me and lastly the quality is mediocre. Video presented like this harms your brand.

A good attempt that’s between the RBC and Scotiabank videos is TD Bank’s “What a difference a year makes”. Even though Craig Alexander, SVP and Deputy Chief Economist is speaking at a banquet hall, the sound quality and video work are good. There’s good use of slides which the camera zooms in on, making the viewer feel like they have the best seat at the banquet. The video should be presented in its own page or on the same page as the link rather than as a pop-up, but overall a good presentation.

A few basic tips to presenting quality video on your site;
1) Deliver it in the industry standard recognized format of Flash.
2) Incorporate other visual aids so that users aren't staring at a talking head the whole time.
3) Present it in a resolution that is appropriate for the standard size of monitors today. 520x390px works well.
4) Ensure the sound quality is audible by using a mic.
5) Try and keep the length 2 to 5 minutes.

For more advanced tips on using video on your site see the Google best practices page.

Have you incorporated video on your site? What were the biggest lessons you learned?

In February we posted that CIBC became the first Canadian bank to deliver online banking for the iPhone and iPod. Well TD Bank has just released their mobile banking platform for the iPhone and iPod and has provided a host of features including;

• the ability to login to TD Canada Trust banking to view account balances and recent activity, view and pay bills, and securely transfer funds between eligible accounts;

• small business customers have the ability to access their TD Canada Trust Small Business Banking accounts to transfer funds between accounts, pay bills, and review account balances and activities on-the-move;

• a locator to find the closest TD branch or ATM (useful for avoiding those extra service fees!)

• easy connection to:
- EasyLine telephone banking for general inquiries;
- TD Waterhouse agents to open accounts, get market quotes, and to place trades in English, French, Cantonese and Mandarin
- TD Insurance specialized agents for instant quoting on home, auto, life and health insurance or advice on how to file claims: and

• an accident toolkit from TD Insurance with information on what to do in case of an auto accident and an accident notepad to record details of the accident for an auto insurance claim.

Despite a fair amount of negative comments on the iTunes App. Store about the use of images within the app., (ie. limited screen real estate shouldn't be taken-up with life style images), I found that once I entered the accounts portion of the app. the interface was clean and easily navigated.

All of the features besides the basic banking ones are nice to have but don’t really provide a great deal of value. It’s nice that I can call and get an insurance quote by entering the application and clicking on a button but this is really a onetime need. I’m not purchasing car, auto or life insurance so frequently that I need one-touch access within my iPhone.

Again the TD Waterhouse one-touch call feature to open an account is not an everyday need but might be helpful. As this is the only function under the TD Waterhouse menu it would have been more effective to put the icon on the homepage of the app. and call the users attention to it each time the app. opened.

Three other features that would be handy:
• one-touch access to a general help line. Rather than having specific phone buttons to opening an account or get a insurance quote, include a button on the homepage for general inquires.
• ability to send an email directly from the iPhone or iPod. This appears to be a huge oversight when rolling out a solution for this platform.
• a feed from @Ask_TDBank’s Twitter account. Not all user swould find it helpful or interesting but it would provide a sense of credibility that TD understands and is a leader in online banking as well as promoting the Twitter communication channel.

Have you used the TD Banking iPhone/iPod app? How useful have you found it? If you haven’t used it will you download and it?

Exchange-trade Funds (ETF) are coming on the market faster than the spring flowers are coming up. Advisor.ca recently launched the ETF Filter site which allows users to search, compare and evaluate all ETFs currently on the market. There are a number of sites available that allow users to compare and contrast funds and stocks, such as Globe Investor, the EFT Filter's solely focused on Exchange-trade Funds.

All the features can only be accessed after signing up. Sign up is quick and although there’s a request to allow Advisor.ca to share your information, acceptance is not mandatory. Those that choose not to sign-up can click through and view fund details one at a time but can not use the more robust features above.

The initial landing page is clean and all three ‘member’ features are organized clearly along the top of the page. The site is solely sponsored by Bank of Montreal and could be mistaken for a BMO site.

Using the search feature, users are presented with a 36 different criteria to refine their search against. Perhaps a few too many since there are only 143 ETFs to search. The search allows users to input criteria such as sector, region, asset class, bond maturity and bond section allocations by maximum and minimum percentage. I’d suggest most users will limit their search criteria to “inception date”, “maximum MER” and “fund performance” which are presented at the top of the page. The larger allocation criteria would be better presented as an advance search feature.

One feature that would be helpful is combining the compare feature with the search results. Allowing the user to pick a select group of the results to compare would create a richer experience. The compare feature only allows you to compare two funds at a time. Multiple comparisons would probably be more desirable. Comparisons are based on the search data listed above.  A “compare more” button would also be helpful as well as a ‘print friendly’ feature.

The Correlation Calculator allows the user to input the percentage allocation based on 42 different asset mixes a client may have to determine the best EFT comparison. Arguably this is too many fields but this is determined by the amount of products on the market. Breaking these into their primary groups and allowing the user to select sectors using a step-by-step process would enhance the experience. A running total of asset percentage already allocated would also be helpful.

Will you use the ETF Filter rather than using a site like Globe Investor?

TD Bank has been using Twitter since August 2009 to reach customers and answer their bank-related questions online. With 592 followers to date and 272 Tweets the initiative is off to a reasonably strong start.

If your organization is looking to use Twitter as a new means of improving online customer service, to support customer service call centres and potentially reaching out to new customers here are some things to consider for providing effective customer service using Twitter.

First and foremost be transparent. Tell people upfront who you are and what you’re trying to do using this channel. If you are using Twitter for customer service be sure to assure them there will be no sales or advertising forced upon them for using the method of communication.

Next, understand why Twitter is a great medium for customer service. Customer Service has a bad image to overcome from the start, customer service is associated with long phone calls spent on hold and ultimately unresolved issues.

People use Customer Service to have their problems resolved. A number of inquires can be resolved with a simple 140 character tweet between the business and the customer and resolution can be achieved in minutes. For those issues that require deeper conversations the moderator can direct the inquiry to the appropriate department within the organization for follow-up while direct messaging the client via Twitter that the issue has been escalated.

Ensure those monitoring the Twitter account have bought into the idea of using this channel to reach customers. If they’re not onboard and don’t understand the nature of the medium customers will tune out immediately. Worse yet, customers may start a public relations firestorm on Twitter that can be hard to put out.

Customer service is an active communication service and people need to know how to find you. Place a link on your corporate site to your Twitter account, ask people to follow you and advertise that this is a new means by which they can reach you.

Lastly, monitor what others are saying about you on Twitter. You can use Monitter or Tweetbeep to do this. Retweet positive messages from clients and thank them. Follow-up negative messages with an offer to help using the @replies rather than direct messaging people as this helps to assure others that you are being transparent and everyone can see @replies whereas direct messages only go to one person.

Other banks using Twitter for customer service:
Bank of Canada
Well Fargo
Bank of America
ING Direct

As Investment Executive reported earlier this month, LinkedFA was launched with the intent of connecting Financial and Insurance Advisors to each other and clients. The site is based on the same model as the popular networking site, LinkedIn.

On LinkedFA, advisors create a profile, much liked LinkedIn, and add personal information and content through features like blogs, videos and message sharing. One key differentiator is how the site helps professionals within the financial community comply with regulations that cannot be met using social networking tools like LinkedIn and Facebook. For example, all communications between advisors and clients are kept for 6 years and a report can be created to extract these communications at any time.

Another feature that is very different from other social networking sites is the ability for advisors to 'approve' or ‘deny’ comments that are posted on their profile before they are publicly viewable. This will ensure professionalism is maintained but is contrary to the idea of transparency in social networking. A moderator that reviewed comments for general appropriateness might have been more in keeping with accepted social networking practices and provided a stronger conversation forum for the site and investors.

Another key feature is that investors are only connected to advisors through personal invitations. This is necessary to ensure investors aren't inundated with solicitations and I expect will encourage adoption by investors. Advisors are free to browse the network and reach out to other advisors but not to investors, thereby stopping the potential poaching of clients. All investors are identified by a self-selected nickname.

It's still in beta testing and there are a few kinks to be worked out. For example, when I tried to setup my account the system kept asking me for a password that was 6 characters and at least one number. After several attempts I tried something completely different and it finally worked. There’s also a live chat that connects you with someone within LinkedFA and it connected me with a person after waiting for about 2 minutes.

As an advisor or investor are you going to sign-up for LinkedFA? Let us know why you are or why not.

"Consider the task of saving for retirement. It used to be a simple matter. You'd put your savings in a savings bond, or maybe in a sock."

I read Margaret Wente's lighthearted but always bang-on column a couple of weeks ago entitled, "Complexity will destroy us all" and was reminded how complex life had become thanks to the technology we've developed to simplify or otherwise 'enable' our lives. Wente cites the challenges she has in programming her new oven, operating her computer and wading through a "stupefying array of investment options". Knowledge of investments has become so specialized that few of us can help ourselves, let alone manage most aspects in our lives without customer support, a personal trainer or a user manual. 

"Complexity means that many of life's central tasks and obligations are now beyond the ability of ordinary people to manage on their own."

Why is it that as we each gain more knowledge in our respective fields that we feel compelled to share that same knowledge in the same excruciating detail to the uninitiated, always under the guise of 'knowledge transfer'? Why can't we all endeavour to keep things simple? 

As my philosophy prof used to tell me, "It's far tougher to write a 1-page argument than it is to write a 20-page thesis." You must distill the information. The truly beautiful works of art are remarkable in their simplicity. The most elegant code is concise. The best user interface is quite basic in its design. Think Apple. 

Investment decisions can be dizzying, but beware any individual who does little to clarify your options, instead, maintaining the shroud of mystery and the upper hand in the relationship. In each of our fields, the challenge for us all is to first gather all the information we can, but tackle the complexity, breaking it down in order to effectively communicate. 

We've written before about the soon-to-be Point of Sale disclosure regulation for the mutual fund industry. The new rules will ensure investors receive plain English and easily understood information about their mutual fund purchase when they need it most - before they make their investment decision - and not after the fact as is currently the case with the simplified prospectus (a long, legalese document replete with jargon and seldom read by investors). These new rules will go a long way towards improving financial literacy amongst investors, simplifying language and improving communication. If anyone is interested in learning more about Point of Sale (This is a plug, since I'm speaking at the conference), there's a 2-day conference April 14/15 in Toronto that will help eliminate some of the complexity for you.

This is the second instalment in a series of posts about financial literacy and website design. Last time we looked at sites for kids. This week we’ll look at sites aimed at teenagers.

Teenagers set financial habits that will last a lifetime. According to a report by the Jumpstart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy less than half of high school seniors qualify as ‘financially literate’.

The Mint by Northwestern Mutual Funds

The Mint provides content for kids, teens, parents and teachers. All the sections are contained within the same standard wrapper and differentiated by colour coding which makes for a clean and cohesive experience. The tab style navigation is easy-to-use, although the 9 subcategories might be a few too many. A plus is the social networking links placed front and centre on every page. Topics include Earnings, Savings, Spending, Owning, Tracking, Giving, Investing, Safeguarding and Try it!

Diving into the Teens section, a 3^rd level navigation is introduced and works well with four or five items in the Earnings section. The content is text heavy and could be a little more interactive for this young age group. There are a few rollover actions and a few links that send the user back to the Kids section which might be mildly offensive to some teens. An alternative would be to reproduce the same content within the Teen’s section or create a general section within the site that can hold this material. The game within the Earnings area is Flash based and consists of 14 consecutive yes or no questions. Flash is probably overkill for this series of questions, although the content could be more engaging by animating the image on the right and making the interface a little more interactive.

On the whole the site is well designed and the content very appropriate for this age group. Adding more interactivity would likely keep teens on the site longer and help them recommending it to their friends.

Money Talks 4 Teens by the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE)

A simple, creative design with the site displayed as a pad of paper pinned to a corkboard. The top navigation is disconnected from the left navigation and teen content is split between the two. Including the left navigation items as a secondary nav. at the top would have worked to combine all the content. This is one of the few US sites that I’ve seen which is also offered in Spanish - nice.

Within the Teens section, the main content area in the bottom right of the screen is a little sparse and repeats the left navigation. A sectional landing page here, explaining the content within the section might be helpful. Again the imagery used could be a little more engaging. There is some very rich content but it’s presented in PDF format which takes the user away from the main site when it's opened. If the PDF content could be presented within a window on the main site the experience would be a little more cohesive.

One exceptional feature of the site is the use of video. Their presentation might be a little better incorporated into the site but its inclusion is commendable. There are also interactive games which would be best suited to younger teens but do teach valuable lessons, like the service fees incurred by using a different ATM , in a simple and straightforward manner. On the whole the games are well thought-out and engaging for the right age group. The games would benefit however from taking over more of the screen to provide a larger presentation area. Despite some interface design issues the site provides good financial education content for younger teens and is reasonably engaging.

Unfortunately after a couple of hours of searching these are the only two new sites I could find, aside from the ones mentioned in the kids post below which also have teen areas, that have financial education aimed at teens in an interactive manner. There are a number of sites that provide a lot of content for teens to read but very few that use engaging interactive content to educate teens about the basic principles of savings, interest, investments and money management. This category, like the kids, also has a real lack of Canadian content.

An article by Gary Rabbior for the Globe and Mail from last year makes several good points about the need for financial literacy, not the least of which is starting young. Engaging young people online with sites and content they find appealing would go a long way to make this happen.  

Free or a paid subscription? This is a question that has been debated at length, most notably by the newspaper sites. Seems most people expect the free model. So how do companies and sites get someone like me to pay for their online content?

Recently I’ve been looking for a site that will catalogue the wine in my cellar and capture details about specific bottles. I came across the www.erobertparker.com site and started thinking about how well they set it up to convert me into a paid customer.

Having been drawn in I decided to sign-up. The next well designed ‘hook’ was to give me the option to sign-up for different periods of time at various price points. I could sign-up for a year, but in case the yearly rate scared me off they provided a one-month option. Believing in your sites ability to consistently deliver quality content means you should be comfortable allow paying customers to browse for a month while being confident they'll upgrade when they're ready (convinced it's worth it!)

Robert Parker did three things really well to convert me into a paying customer:

1) Allowed me to peak at what's inside, enough to convince me that what’s deeper is worth spending money on

2) Gave me sign-up period options that let me test the waters before I sign up at the yearly fee.

3) Once I'm registered, they gave me a very compelling reason to remain a paying customer. They'll store content for me and continue to provide quality new content to keep me coming back

Another good example of this model is LinkedIn. LinkedIn allows everyone to browse, you must sign-up to start building your network on the site (the hook), and to contact people not in your network you must pay for their service.

For the record www.erobertparker.com has stopped providing the summary content free of charge and the wine cellar database is still listed as “coming soon”. Nevertheless when they do get the cellar up and running I will happily pay for the service.

Reaching out to customers and clients through social media channels has become regular practice for many businesses these days and the investment industry is no exception.

Last month Pensions and Investments  magazine published the survey results of interviews with 324 pension fund managers, money managers and consultants on social media and their business. Fifty one percent of those surveyed said they are already using social media tools such as Facebook , Twitter  and LinkedIn  and 61% agreed that these tools will become more important in the coming year.

Specific areas where social media will have an impact for this group included attracting and retaining new customers and improved collaboration and discussions. As other industries have found, social media will also have an impact in recruiting younger talent for the Pension and Investment industry.

Despite some misgivings about the security of these channels and potential regulatory and legal issues, as one money manager pointed out, “We're in a relationship business and these networks will probably serve a very useful function.” Social Media is all about relationships. If that is your business you’ll have to at least understand the playing field or risk being left out of the game as those using these tools  become the majority of your clients.

This month CIBC  became the first Canadian Bank to release a mobile iPhone app  that enables transactions. Although Scotiabank  released its iPhone and iPod Touch application in December of last year it only allowed customers to find Scotia ABM and bank locations. Useful, but not as impactful as enabling mobile banking.

As highlighted in the Globe and Mail  Feb. 8, Mobile banking has been slow to take off in Canada. One cause of this may be high data costs in Canada as compared to other parts of the world while other factors I would attribute to the slow adoption are concerns about mobile security and although both the Blackberry and iPhone have web browser capability, online banking sites are not typically optimized for mobile devices.

Canadians are early adopters when it comes to new technology and IDC Canada notes that 78% of Canadians are using online banking while Mercatus LLC mentioned 9% of consumers already have a mobile banking account and nearly 20% are planning to start one next year.

Congratulations to CIBC for taking the first big step.

Recently, we had need to calculate the Flesch-Kincaid grade level for our POS product.  The Flesch-Kincaid grade level is a standardized formula to determine an approximate grade level for the readability of a piece of text.  Industry regulators have mandated a maximum readability grade level for the forthcoming fund fact documents to be grade 6.

"No problem", I said, "I can do some math".  A quick Google search netted me the formula:

Looking through the formula I took stock of what elements I'd need to gleam from the text to be analyzed:

"total words"? No problem, just count the spaces. 

"total sentences"?  Piece of cake, just count the periods. 

"total syllables"?  Not a chance.

Not being much of a linguist I had no clue as to how to count syllables.  I never gave it much thought, it's just something you know how to do.  Unfortunately computers aren't like that; they need to be told how to do something.

Fortunately, I came across another blog(ish) entry on code.google.com for a PHP implementation:

http://code.google.com/p/php-text-statistics/source/browse/trunk/TextStatistics.php

I'll spare you the nitty-gritty of my work to port the PHP implementation to C# but the gist of it is:

Step 1: remove (and count) prefixes and suffixes from each word ("re-", "-ly", "-ing", etc...)

Step 2: split up each word by consonant grouping, ie. "consonant" becomes "co nso na nt"

Step 3: exclude any syllable exceptions (ie. "<vowel>rse" as in "purse") which would be counted as 2 syllables when they should only be 1

Step 4: include any syllable exceptions (ie. words ending in "-ism") which would be counted as 1 syllable when they should be counted as 2

The Flesch-Kincaid formula is strictly for analyzing English text.  As such, the prefix/suffixes and exceptions built in to the algorithm given above are acceptable.

The Flesch-Kincaid grade level for this blog entry?  A cool 7.1, just about the grade level when I stopped really paying attention to linguistics.

"We must pass along such fundamental knowledge to our family and friends, because financial literacy empowers all of us.”
- President Barack Obama 2009

In June 2009 there were 14,148 Canadian bankruptcies, a 51% increase over June 2008 numbers. The average Canadian carried $2,000 in credit card debt** and the average Canadian student reported that two years after graduation they still had $20,000 in loans*.

I’ve been thinking about financial education since attending a conference in June hosted by the Investment Fund Institute of Canada  called the Financial Literacy Forum. And since becoming a father in August (gulp!) I’ve been thinking about what’s available online for young people, who consume a large portion of their information online, to learn about financial management.

This week I looked at sites designed to help kids learn about basic money matters. After spending a couple of hours searching I’m happy to say there are some good sites. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of Canadian grown content. Here are a few sites that stood out for me:

Hands on Banking by Well Fargo

A great piece of content developed by Wells Fargo, the landing page allows you a branch off into four age group categories including Kids and Teens.
Touring the Kids portion of the site I found the lessons and content appropriate for young children. There are a couple of functional glitches, such as using the right menu at the beginning sends a user back to the very beginning of the introduction, but overall the execution is strong and the creative work is engaging for this age group. There’s also encouragement to complete the experience by offering kids a certificate if they go through all the lessons on the site.

This site would benefit from a little more Information Architecture design as the navigation is not overly intuitive and Quality Assurance testing but provides kids with a great understanding of financial basics in a fun way.

 
Oddly enough the site doesn’t mention Banking online though.

 
Citi Financial Education Program (includes a Canadian section) 

One of the first things I noticed about this site and like is that it provides printable lessons that can be used at home or in the classroom.

Although not as visually stimulating as the Wells Fargo site, the Canadian content that has the user purchase hockey cards is commendable. The lessons are also divided up by school year to help parents easily identify which content would be appropriate for their child. There is no navigation within each lesson plan which makes usability difficult and at times there are two correct answers and no prompt to keep selecting before you can move forward. This may cause some kids to assume the program is done and leave the site early. Again this site would benefit from further Information Architecture design particularly where children are the primary audience.

The use of pop-ups may be discouraging for some and the graphic design feels a little too 1970’s to engage kids today but the site does function well at providing kids with basic lessons that are easily digestible having been delivered in small interactive sessions.

Practical Money Skills by Visa Canada 

The game is delivered via a Flash overlay so it makes it difficult to share the URL with friends and family. The game suggests that it helps kids learn to save money but selecting money from a scrolling line of coins and then going to a store to spend the money doesn’t leave me with a sense that I’ve learned lot about how much something costs or the implications of saving & spending money. It did teach me quickly to grab all the loonies because if I didn’t the only thing I could purchase at the ‘store’ was gum. The site would also benefit by adding sound to engage the user.

I’d like to thank Ellen Roseman  for her input and some site suggestions.

 
* CNW Group – September 30, 2009
** CreditCards.Com Canada – Sept. 18, 2009

My 9-year old son scored his first goal in hockey last night, taking the puck from his own blue line and snaking through the crowd to score at the other end of the rink. As a defenseman he doesn’t get a lot of scoring opportunities, but after 2 years on the team he was beginning to wonder if he’d ever put one in the net. They’ve nicknamed him Bobby Orr and he’s fairly proud.

As in life, persistence generally pays off. Talent, attitude and support are as important in life as they are in business, but persistence separates those who succeed from those who come close. Occasionally it takes a child to remind me of life's simple truths.

A friend flipped me this link to a TD Bank sponsored “1-on-1” hockey event in Boston. This 9-year old has some moves too.

Enjoy: http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/blog/puck_daddy/post/Video-9-year-old-scores-greatest-goal-in-Boston?urn=nhl,195876

I recently attended a Salesforce.com user group session in Toronto and was impressed by the extent to which this SaaS (software as a service) pioneer has managed to maintain data quality within cloud computing. Their success at instilling confidence by maintaining data integrity externally from the client’s organization has in large part contributed to the enormous adoption of the SaaS model in recent years. While cloud computing is a broad computing concept, of which SaaS is only one variation, Gartner defines cloud

computing as “a style of computing where massively scalable IT-enabled capabilities are delivered as a service to external customers using Internet technologies”.ⁱ

As our firm has a SaaS offering of its own for Point of Sale within the mutual fund industry, I appreciate the challenges of maintaining data integrity within client organizations.

In the Salesforce presentation they discussed two tools that companies may use for scrubbing and protecting their database from bad data:

Demand Tool:

We use this tool to clean up single tables in the database.

For example, after collecting customer data for two years we may want to check to see if we have duplicate records in our database. By defining rules for Salesforce’s Demand Tool, it will clean up our table and merge the duplicated records together based on the rules that we define. We can create this clean up as a Windows service that can run automatically in any period desired.

Dup Blocker:

Dup Blocker is similar to Salesforce’s Demand Tool, except we use Dup Blocker when we are inserting (or updating) the data in the database real-time, whereas we use Demand Tool on an ad hoc basis after we have our data in the database.

We can define scenarios in the tool (same as the rules in Demand Tool) and it will check the data before we insert it in the database. We can define error  messages to inform administrators that a user is inserting a duplicated record in the system. The administrator can then decide if the record should be inserted or not. We can have diagrams to show which scenarios are most active and some other facilities for monitoring the database.
According to Gartner, many factors are driving adoption of SaaS, but effective data quality protection measures combined with the benefits of rapid deployment, less upfront capital investment and a decreased reliance on limited implementation resources will certainly lead to further SaaS deployments.

Having joined VAULT recently I’ve been thinking about project management methodologies and practices and one thing that keeps coming to mind is how there are no large projects.

Project size is relative and whether you’re managing a project that is $2 million or $10,000, one of my key principles is breaking the project down into smaller parts. The project becomes smaller projects within the overall effort.

For example, when creating a web site for a client there are four distinctive ‘buckets’ a project can be broken into. First there’s the planning which can include kick-off, requirements gathering and detailed project planning. Next the design

process which includes developing the information architecture and starting the creative design. Third, the code development and in some cases hardware installation. Finally, the quality assurance process along with user acceptance testing and final handoff.

There are many different methods of breaking a project down but the benefits of doing this are all the same. Whether its $2 million or 10,000 these benefits remain true.The first benefit is manageability. It’s always easier to manage things in smaller parts. When running a marathon you don’t try and run 42 kilometers all at once. Try running 5 kilometres at a time and the overall distance will become much more achievable. With a project budget of 2 million dollars it can become very easy to lose sight of what’s being spent on early activities and before you know it the expenses have run away on you and you’re starting to use funds that should be allocated to the next phase. Breaking it down allows you to track how you’re spending money and how that’s going to impact the remaining work.

Breaking the project down also allows you to more easily manage where you are in a project’s life cycle and ensure you’re going to be able to deliver the product on time. Looking at each part of a project as a product ensures you’re producing results all the time and not covering the same ground over again.  The other benefit of looking at each bucket as a project unto itself is that you can celebrate the success of delivering a product many times and not just when the site goes into the production. Small successes on a regular basis are good for everyone.

Even if the budget and timeline are small it’s worthwhile breaking it down. The smallest projects with a tight timeline are often the ones that can easily go off track. Break them all down into smaller projects and your success rate will remain high. 

• centralized security management
• consistent application of security controls across platforms
• enforcement of data transfer protection and encryption levels
• centralized monitoring, logging and access control data management
• mirroring, backup and restore operations without availability impact and to some degree, protection against the always-present security threats coming from end-user systems.

The securities regulators from each of the 10 provinces and 3 territories in Canada (Canadian Securities Administrators, or CSA) just released proposed amendments to the securities laws governing point of sale disclosure for mutual funds. This will go a long way towards improving investor education and protection. Essentially, the aim of the rule is to provide a new two-page "Fund Facts" document to investors with meaningful information about a mutual fund when they need it most - before they make their investment decision - and not after they purchase the mutual fund as has always been the case (currently they must decipher the lengthy, printed legal prospectus document which arrives in the mail after the purchase and typically goes unread).

Getting this Fund Facts document into the investor's hands before the mutual fund purchase represents the final chapter of a nearly decade-long story started by regulators in 2003, aimed at increasing financial literacy amongst retail investors. And while it may be another 2-3 years before the new rule is enforced and implemented by mutual fund managers and dealers, it represents a significant improvement to the investor's situation. Not surprisingly, this communication breakthrough will be enabled by advancements in technology and the pervasiveness of the Internet. In time, investors interested in any financial product (not just mutual funds) will receive basic, plain language information about their investment whenever, wherever they want.     

I attended a conference this week on financial literacy, hosted by The Investment Funds Institute of Canada (IFIC), and I realized we have a real problem with investor education. I thought I'd been close to the situation as our company is developing a solution to satisfy new regulation in the mutual fund industry surrounding information disclosure to investors at the point of sale, and having worked with IFIC for the last few years to develop the Investor Education Award (part of the Canadian Investment Awards in December each year). But this week's conference reinforced in my mind that while we have a global issue with financial literacy, elevating investor education levels requires some finesse.

Speakers from the Canadian Foundation for Advancement of Investor Rights (FAIR), the provincial regulators, Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) and a few mutual fund companies pointed out that investors' understanding of financial concepts is frightfully low. And as financial products become more complex and more readily available to retail investors, that understanding only decreases and the risks associated with not understanding the concepts increases (in part to blame for the recent global financial meltdown). 

The problem, in part, is that we're all talking amongst ourselves. Legalese and financial jargon are rampant in financial documentation and they obfuscate (one of those great words that 'does' what it 'is') the communication meaning. One of the presenters quoted Joseph Kimble, teacher of legal writing, Thomas Cooley Law School, Michigan:

“Plain language is more precise than traditional legal and official language. It eliminates all the ambiguities, inconsistencies and uncertainties that traditional language tends to cover up.”

Simplifying the language is relatively easy. Once the information is plainly presented, the bigger challenge is getting investors to read it. Regulators and other stakeholders are trying to engage investors in a dialogue they've traditionally tried to avoid (50% of individuals don't research their investments and most individuals would rather do chores than discuss their financial plan). They'd like us to take our medicine and while we all know it's good for us, perhaps a spoonful of sugar might help that medicine go down. Offer investors some incentive to encourage this desired new behaviour. That "sugar", in addition to regulation and plain language will ultimately lead to better financial literacy. Cod liver oil tastes bad, but flavoured chewables work. Now, let's look at that prospectus... 

Went to the Metro Toronto .NET User Group session on ASP.NET MVC last night...as I walked in, the speaker, Joey DeVilla (shown above) was playing the accordion. I couldn't help but flash back to RailsConf 2006 in Chicago, where why the lucky stiff and his band, the Thirsty Cups, were playing musical numbers whose lyrics included unit tests, Java vs. Ruby exception handling, and flash animations. I get a certain kick out of watching Microsoft copy something and turn it decidedly uncool. Particularly when it comes to trying to emulate another technology's culture, like Apple's or the open source movement. That being said, I'm really happy that Microsoft is now offering an alternate method of building websites from their traditional Web Forms model. It's based on a well-known design pattern (MVC stands for Model-View-Controller) that many popular, modern web frameworks are based on (Ruby on Rails, Django, CakePHP). It's often been described as "driving stick" when compared to Web Forms, giving the developer total control over their web applications.  Unlike Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC doesn't try and pretend your web site is built like a desktop app, but rather it embraces HTTP and CRUD principles. Best of all, it provides nice, clean, SEO-friendly URLs, and lots of help in creating AJAX-enabled websites. It's about time Microsoft woke up and smelled the Web 2.0 coffee. Yum.

Virgin's announcement that they'd be starting an online bank in Canada (Virgin Money) speaks volumes to an apparent opportunity to zig where others zag. Sir Richard Branson is a savvy marketer (as is Andrew Black, Virgin mobile's Canadian CEO with whom I worked years ago), so what might Virgin be planning? I talk with a lot of financial services companies about their business and the Web and their efforts to differentiate their brands. The conversation invariably starts with "What are some new things we should be doing online?" Loosely interpreted, the question becomes "What shiny new piece of 'eye candy' can I put on my Web site that some but not all folks are doing, that will help differentiate my brand?" It's a worthwhile consideration, but perhaps framed in the wrong way.

Gadgets aren't the way to go. Witness the proliferation of avatars or their evolution to video 'talking heads' (Web site tour guides, whose role is sadly assumed by company CEO's like the head guy at Gowlings). With some notable exceptions like RBC's online bill payment demo, these are often good examples of using new technology for the sake of technology, not a compelling business reason. 

Differentiating on the basis of product in the financial services is tricky too, since market performance is the ultimate distinction, and therefore outside the control of any marketing manager. Besides, any good new financial product can be reverse-engineered by a competitor and on the shelf inside 3 months. In an increasingly homogenous industry in which customers can't tell the difference between one mutual fund company's product and the next, differentiation is getting tougher to do.  

Financial services firms doing business online need to focus on...are you ready...service. Customer service will set your firm further apart, on a more sustainable basis, than any product attribute or fancy Web site gizmo. And what better forum is there than the Web for creating that outstanding customer experience? So don't throw roadblocks up in the way of your customer or distract them from their online mission with the latest shiny new thing. Unless it's fundamental to the user experience, leave it out. Figure out what customers need, consider what they may want additionally, and then present them with the most intuitive route to their objective. I don't know what Virgin has in store for us, but I bet the customer experience will be the top priority. I also bet there will be ample steak, and just enough sizzle. 

Why does it seem like every passing day there's another "sure-fire, can't miss" way to get your page ranked #1 on Google? An article I read recently indicates that the latest and greatest tricks may not be so great after all and it went on to compare SEO experts to "snake oil salesmen". Definitely some more critical thinking is required before following the hype.

The developer mentioned that she was just recently at Google and involved in the search-engine strategy team in some way. She said she knew about SEO. I mentioned this trick, the long URL, and I swear she almost laughed in my face. She told me the idea was bogus, period.

The reality is that to truly get the best results, you'll want to follow what the top dogs at Google suggest - rely on quality content over "optimized" content to artificially score higher on searches.

Nowhere does it say that long URLs or lots of key words crammed into the URL is preferred. Basically, it suggests you create a well-organized site with well-written content. Shouldn’t that be the goal of any web site?

You've just been the victim of a vulnerability that is appearing more and more frequently on social web sites.  Had this blog post contained malicious code I could now have unauthorized access to your computer, steal sensitive data from it or even initiate a phishing attack.

This particular vulnerability is known as a cross site scripting (XSS) attack.  This is fancy developer-speak for putting hidden, malicious code on a victim site.  These attacks often use the tools provided by the victim site for it's users against those users.

For example, consider a site with publicly accessible discussion forums where anyone can leave posts.  Most users visit this site to read about their favorite breakfast cereal (Cap'n Crunch) and some leave posts indicating why those people are wrong (heresy).   However a malicious user could leave a post that superficially discussed his/her cereal preference but hidden within that post could be malicious code.  Then other viewers of that post would be subject to the code hidden within.  If the post is particularly controversial (consider the ongoing Golden Grahams vs. Cinnamon Toast Crunch debate) and receives a lot of traffic, then the victim count increases proportionately.

Preventing these types of malicious users from accessing your site at all is next to impossible.  The best defence against these types of attacks is closely examining the content posted by all users for malicious code.  Fortunately Microsoft provides a library that allows developers to quickly and easily add checks for this type of malicious code to the sites they manage.

It's sad that honest developers (like me) have to spend increasing amounts of time worrying about the actions of other (not so nice) developers.  But that's the price of the social web.

At a time where Agile Development is an oft-repeated buzzword (and doctrine) in many companies, it was refreshing to read the following paragraph from a recent post on Joel on Software:

There are so many development organizations where specs are a monument to mindless bureaucratic paperwork that entire movements sprung up organized around the idea of not writing specs. These people are misguided. Writing a functional specification is at the very heart of agile development, because it lets you iterate rapidly over many possible designs before you write code. Compared to code, a written spec is trivial to change. The very act of writing a specification forces you to think through the design you thought you had in your head, and helps you see the flaws in it quickly so that you can iterate and try more designs. Teams that use functional specifications have better designed products, because they had the opportunity to explore more possible solutions quickly. They also write code faster, because they have a clearer picture when they start of what’s going to be needed. Functional specifications are so important one of the few hard and fast rules at Fog Creek is “No Code Without Spec.”

At VAULT we've always held up the importance of writing functional requirements documents, in the face of 'trendy' code-first methodologies like Extreme Programming.  As so very well put by Joel above, they make us more agile, not less.

I checked out Stack Overflow yesterday (a great alternative to Experts Exchange in that it doesn't suck), searching for 'ASP.NET CMS products', and someone had recommended Umbraco, a free, open-source CMS built using ASP.NET.  So I went to www.umbraco.org, and saw a beautiful, 'Web 2.0' site:

It reminded me of sites for products like Basecamp, and the marketing blurbs on the site really drew me in.  Could this really be a compelling alternative to commercial .NET CMS products like Ektron or Sitecore?  I was curious.  I wanted to know more.  Luckily, there was a Tour button!  I eagerly clicked on the link, expecting to see screenshots, maybe a video or two.  There was nothing of the sort, just more marketing-speak, and more textual descriptions of what the UI looks like. How could a free product be so secretive about its look and feel, when all you needed to do was download it and install it?  Well, it turns out to see any documentation, videos, or any real explanations of stuff, you've gotta pay.  For a business, that could turn out to be as much as 1500 euros a year.  I don't know, this seems kinda backwards to me (remember when news sites used to charge you to see news?).   But the product itself is great, right?  Maybe it's so great it doesn't need documentation (hah!).

Alas, no.  I installed it as part of the Microsoft Web Platform install package, which incidentally, is a great way to get up to speed on the latest .NET technologies and tools.  Let's just say I was profoundly disappointed.  It's extremely barebones in functionality, and dependent on community-sourced plug-ins to add any real value.  But what can I say?  It's free, and it might work for smaller CMS implementations...but I'm pretty sure our clients will want more out-of-the-box.  Umbraco might have the Web 2.0 look down, but Web 2.0, as I understand it, is more about substance over style.

Hello!  I'm Richard Kim, one of the developers here at VAULT Solutions, and I have a few thoughts I'd like to share, especially around technology and how it relates to the challenges we face at work every day.  Sometimes I'll rant, sometimes I'll rave, but today I wanted to inform: XBRL is here, and it's our future.

So much of our daily communication is organized into standardized elements that help individuals and businesses 'talk' to one another.  Take this web page you're reading, for instance.  Without protocols like HTTP and a standard format (HTML), it would be extremely difficult to transmit this information from one computer to the next.  If you work in the healthcare industry you may be familiar with HL7, or Health Level 7, a framework for the exchange of electronic health information.  Usually, the goals for creating document or messaging standards are to a) ease the exchange of data and b) expose data that would normally be buried in stacks of paper.

But there's a lot of data out there that's still buried.  In particular, financial-related data.  That's where XBRL, or eXtensible Business Reporting Language, comes in.  XBRL, which is based on XML, 'tags' financial data in a highly structured way.  Most importantly, XBRL is an open standard and adopted internationally.  XBRL enables the electronic exchange of financial data, making it more accessible.  This is nothing short of a breakthrough, and the benefits are clear: investors, analysts and regulators can easily obtain, analyze and compare financial data.  It reduces the cost of collecting and reporting information.  Financial reports become language-independent, removing impediments to foreign investors, thereby levelling the global playing field.

I'm not here to announce XBRL - it's been around since 1998, and in some countries filing statements in XBRL is already mandatory.  I'm here to talk about XBRL in the context of today's economic climate, where increased regulation and transparency is not only encouraged but becoming a legal requirement in the financial industry.  Investors need further disclosure on the complex financial instruments they're purchasing.  Currently, this type of information is provided in paper format, and if electronic formats are desired, PDF or HTML documents are offered as common alternatives.

However, filing PDFs or web pages still effectively 'buries' information.  Their data is tied to the format of the document, and to extract meaningful data for other purposes would be an expensive process.  In the software world, a common theme is to separate data from its presentation.  XBRL enables the financial industry to do exactly this, and through the use of software that can display this data in a dynamic, user-friendly manner, regulators and compliance professionals can help increase the transparency of financial products.

Here in Canada, I think we've been relatively slow compared to other nations in adopting XBRL, with one taxonomy for GAAP financial statements and requiring only voluntary XBRL filings to SEDAR.  In my opinion, as we face further regulatory requirements around product disclosure, one example being the Point of Sale framework for mutual and segregated funds in Canada, the need for XBRL here will continue to grow.  I believe it represents not just a handy tool for investors, analysts, and regulators, but a solid foundation for the open exchange of information and transparency of business in general, making for more efficient and fair markets.  In the US, regulators have started up IDEA, short for Interactive Data Electronic Applications, which is a portal of information based on XBRL filings that hopes to eventually replace their current EDGAR system. 

Maybe I'm being optimistic, but all the stuff going around the world tells me we'll start seeing more XBRL and software that makes use of it in Canada.  What do you think?

As a Web developer, I’m continually trying to find more intuitive ways to build Web sites that better serve our clients and their customers. Years ago, the advent of content management tools brought the management of web content out of the realm of software developers and in to hands of the actual content authors.  Gone were the days of having to know obscure HTML and CSS, now content authors could compose web content as they would if they were writing a Word document. Highlight text, make it bold. Press enter, start a new paragraph. Easy, intuitive.

While a quantum leap at the time, traditional web content management tools do not provide the flexibility that modern content authors require. It’s no longer enough to just be able to change the content on a web page. Authors today demand the ability to manipulate content placement within a page and change the location of dynamic elements, not just manipulate static content.

The new PageBuilder feature of the Ektron CMS system looks to be able to address this need. With PageBuilder a developer can create “widgets” that content authors can then place on the page. These widgets encapsulate a small piece of functionality (they can represent say a small calculator or a graphing tool). Moving these widgets (and content) around the page seems to be quite simple, just drag it down from a toolbar and place it where you’d like on the page. Think about it, you have a page, you want a stock ticker in the top right with a pie chart showing the Q4 results below it, above the central content block you want a seasonally rotating Flash banner. Each of these components (stock ticker, pie chart, Flash banner) could be widgets. Now instead of calling a developer and (please sir) asking for a page with a stock ticker, pie chart and Flash banner, you just drag these widgets onto the page and arrange them as you like. No fuss, no muss. The developer stays focused on developing new functionality, you stay focused on getting your message out to the users of your site.

Instead of devoting (expensive) developer time to creating pages and having them laid out for you (and all the iterations involved with that) you create the pages and lay them out yourself. Better yet, put this control in the hands of your business users. They get what they want when they want.

Charles here, I'm one of the web developers on the VAULT team. Today I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the environment. The green movement is one that has recently received a large amount of attention, and deservedly so. As people grow more concerned about the state of our planet, we are looking more and more for ways to make our lives greener. Individually we change our light bulbs, coffee cups, cars, all in an attempt to make that important but small difference. But now thanks to companies such as Bullfrog Power, businesses can easily do their part and reduce their environmental impact as well.

Being bullfrogpowered means that all the power used by your organization will be matched with renewable electricity and injected back into the electricity grid. These renewable energy sources - such as wind turbines - displace power from carbon-intensive sources. I'm sure you can imagine if every company were run with renewable green energy, just how big of an impact to the environment this would be.

Also, kudos to TD Bank for being a great example for environmentally conscious businesses out there. They've recently become the largest purchaser of green power in the Canadian financial services industry.

As president of VAULT Solutions, it gives me great pride to welcome you to our blog. I hear you. “Oh great. Another blog.” Just what you need to fill up that spare minute and a half of each day that you've been squandering. But this one's different - in fact, it's the only VAULT blog out there. So why have we decided to open our corporate souls to the scrutiny of billions of readers? Well, we've got a lot on our minds. And there's a lot we want to know. That's where you can come in.

Our whole team will be contributing to this blog from time to time. With about 20 years separating the oldest and youngest members of our team, we've each got different interests, points of view and styles (Not to give away my age - but I've promised my colleagues I wouldn't blog like I email, nor would I throw in too many gratuitous hip expressions so common among the older set.). So here goes, dawgs. Speaking of dawgs, here's a rare glimpse inside my personal life: my 10-year old Lab, Holly.

The blog is our forum for self-expression - round thoughts too hard to contain in the square pages of our corporate web site, our online solutions and the technical papers we produce. It's our chance to tell you what's really important to us, as well as things we think may be really important to you. So it's less about creating a single voice, or consistent brand message. We do that elsewhere.

You can check back here for discussions on trends we see in the financial services industry, the evolving Internet landscape, things affecting the community we live in (Toronto), the environment, life and death. I promise not to report on my 9-year old's hockey playoff successes (though I'd be happy to exchange 'my kid is so amazing' stories with you offline).

I hope you enjoy the read and jump in on the conversation from time to time. If there's stuff you want to talk about that we're not covering, just poke us.