Distribution Technology and Focus Solutions have both this week announced new contracts with CIS and HSBC respectively to develop the next phases of the Point of sale technology for these major distributors.

These deals bring in to view the incredible volume of new point of sale projects going on currently in the industry at the moment. Five years ago it use to be considered a busy year if half a dozen point of sale systems were purchased across an industry that had far more distributors than exist today yet today that number is dwarfed.

What is even more interesting is both CIS and HSBC had originally announced contracts with alternative suppliers not that long ago. Indeed it was only in 2006 that Finantix announced it had delivered the first phase of the HSBC deal and yet Focus are already onto their second delivery there.

This fast turn around of deals shows that wrong decisions can be costly but equally it shows that companies that recognise they have made a mistake and that have the courage to change their strategy can still turn things around and bring new solutions to market quickly.

But the stress and cost of getting it wrong is huge so those in the market for new POS systems take care in procurement process:
•Keep the Procurement Schedules tight – you can do this in weeks not months
• Understand the business requirements
• Brief suppliers well and keep open dialogue
• Use the expertise on the market, such as AT8, to guide you to a shortlist – despite the external spend it cuts time and expense
• Understand the positioning of the different Vendors – who can partner with whom – rarely can one vendor can meet all your POS requirements
• Ask for and understand the detail of the proposed costs – this is key to avoiding nasty surprises later on and key to successful negotiations (again industry experts such as AT8 can help here)
• Reference carefully and deeply!

Well Wimbledon is finished and the tennis circuit soon moves on to the hard courts of the US. Every year it strikes me the grass court season is now ridiculously short (although not as brief as the participation of British Tennis players at Wimbledon!).

At work I get the same frustration with the brief amount of quality selling time now available as we seem to lose more and more time to holidays. It doesn’t seen long since we lost half of April to Easter Holidays and had selling time in May limited by two bank holidays, and now we’re entering the silly season of summer holidays. This of course extends beyond the school holidays as people without children take advantage of the cheaper packages.

All this means we have to maximise the key selling periods and for many this time rests in late September/October and early November. These months are absolutely key as budgets are being set for the following calendar year and therefore this is the ideal opportunity to be guiding clients in what they will need to purchase and helping them build their business cases.

The summer months therefore have to be used to ensure everything is in place to hit the streets running in September. Market propositions must be clear, sales and marketing plans finely honed and appointments booked. Don’t treat this as dead time but as the opportunity to align every little detail to ensure a tremendous Autumn of sales.

I would also add, don’t give up on sales in the summer as well. While mass market activity may not be possible, if your proposition is compelling and targeted you can still get some traction in the summer. Most success though will come with propositions that are small and focused, avoiding a large list of signatories. Focus your efforts and you can still have a profitable summer.

So, the much leaked and speculated-about FSA Discussion Paper concerning the Retail Distribution Review was published on Wednesday (27th June). DP07/01 to give it its correct title, sets out the observations of five ‘focus’ groups comprising industry movers and shakers and covers the following topics:

• Sustainability of the distribution sector
• Impact of incentives
• Professionalism and reputation
• Consumer access to financial products and services
• Regulatory barriers and enablers

These august groups describe, in their opinion, an industry that has a fundamentally broken distribution model and try to set out their vision of the future for intermediated distribution.

The proposals set out to create tiers of advice, ranging from full market to limited, minimal advice. As expected, the removal or severe curtailment of initial commission as a method of remuneration has generated the most amount of comment.

As you would expect, there has been an explosion of reaction from the IFA sector, with many commentators predicting the end of the IFA sector, with mid-tier intermediaries unable to change their remuneration models. In addition, the proposals set out further barriers to entry to the full market advice model by requiring further professional qualifications.

What is clear is that should the proposals be enforced by the Regulator, the current building of distribution by the Banks and larger institutions would be in prime place to gain – perhaps that is the underlying motive, especially as the capital adequacy requirements are to change also, again arguably in favour of larger enterprises.

There is no doubting the resilience of the IFA – I’ve been involved in this industry for longer than I care to remember, but I have learnt never to under-estimate the stalwart characteristics of the sector.

We’ve a long way to go on this topic….