The Big Bank, Davos and Enterprise SaaS

Too Long; Didn't Read

I have never been to Davos. The closest I got was running into our senior partner in the queue for coffee at London City Airport at 5.45am one morning. He was on his way to the Swiss junket looking as miserable as everyone else at that hour. Nonetheless I do have a Davos story. 6 or 7 years ago, I helped organise a discussion between one of the world’s largest mobile operators and the retail division of a global bank. My firm advised both companies and we wanted to explore ideas on how they might co-operate in mobile banking. The upshot was a small dinner in a room in the bank’s London offices. I brought along a regional sales director from the mobile operator. The global head of retail from the bank attended along with 3 or 4 hangers on. Everyone there was a committed leader, smart and engaged. We threw around a lot of ideas and it is fair to say the senior guy from the bank was blown away with the outcome. This nearly didn’t happen. Andy — the mobile guy — started talking about their coolest new ideas. The bank did not respond well to this kind of cutting edge stuff. But Andy was a good listener and dialled it back to more routine solutions. Some of these were already being used by the bank’s competitors and that really got the conversation flying.