Vanguard CIO On Mobile, Innovation, Voice Biometrics

"The number of mobile users hitting our Website has doubled in a year and we expect it to nearly double again," Vanguard CIO John Marcante said in an Internet Evolution radio interview yesterday, available now on-demand.

Wonder what that means numbers-wise. Given that Compete reports that Vanguard.com attracts easily more than 2 million visitors a month, it's worth taking a moment to ponder. If you think that your firm's shareholders, investors, advisors who use your products are similar in any way to Vanguard's clients and prospects, you might want to check your own mobile analytics.

And, then listen to the rest of the half-hour interview in which yet another executive provides a peek at the enviable Vanguard culture.

Marcante discusses IT's six-person innovation team and the work it does with more than 150 crew volunteers. With 2,000 internal communities sharing 3.5 million files, Vanguard's crazy for communities, it seems. Marcante reflects on what's being learned about the collaboration possibilities of information-sharing via communities of defined contribution and defined benefits clients, as an example. Authentication by voice biometrics is also a recent initiative with the potential to delight—a Vanguard IT objective.

At the risk of seeming hopelessly idealistic (just a continuation of yesterday's blog post, some might say), you could send the link to the interview to your IT team and see if it prompts a conversation.