Jim Greene After more than 30 years traversing the globe working with financial services leaders on every continent, Jim Greene has developed a unique talent for spotting industry fault lines and associated business opportunities for financial organizations. These opportunities tend to arise when new technologies, consumer expectations, and regulatory changes create entirely new ways of doing business. Greene is vice president of the Global Financial Services Practice, Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG)—the company's global, strategic consulting arm. Being vice president is the perfect job for a man who has been entrenched in financial services since his start as a consultant at Arthur Andersen LLP to leadership positions at Accenture, Capgemini U.S. LLC, TeleTech Holdings, Inc., and now Cisco. Every step of the way, Greene has combined deep technology expertise with business acumen to help financial services CXOs achieve better business results through innovation.
Today, Greene's passport is replete with overlapping stamps and is a testament to his firm belief that innovation can be found, and created, anywhere. On a recent trip, Jim worked with a major bank in Southeast Asia the morning before flying to Zurich for afternoon discussions with several financial institutions about what they can learn from the likes of Tesco, Wal-Mart, Singapore Airlines, and Carrefour. Those discussions became critical to Greene's vision for a new financial services platform built to take advantage of a fundamental market shift he dubs "connected commerce." For all the innovative risk-taking that has characterized financial services over the years, the future of commerce is being influenced increasingly by an eclectic mix of Cisco customers in other industries. Greene and his team are working with leading retailers, for example, to deploy social networking and other interactive technologies. They are also enabling alternate payment methods, which many consumers consider more convenient and secure than traditional payment mechanisms such as credit or debit cards. The end result has been a new class of engaging, mobile shopping experiences that drive customer loyalty and revenue. These changing consumer expectations and new technologies present financial institutions with a huge opportunity to think beyond traditional "financial products" and offer customers a solution to every need on the connected commerce value chain. For example, a simple request for a mortgage suggests a spectrum of related needs—peer reviews of local realtors, "click-to-chat" capabilities with a bank representative, video tours of local neighborhoods and schools, and the ability to pay for housing inspections via cell phone, to name some. It is an incredibly exciting time, with nontraditional players and emerging technologies creating opportunities everywhere. And it is certain that Greene and his Cisco IBSG team will be working hand-in-hand with the innovators who create this new landscape—and emerge as tomorrow's leaders. |