Flint's Blog

The Importance of Titles

There's a funny episode of Cheers, the old sitcom set in a Boston Bar, where Sam and Woody want a raise and decide they're going to confront their boss Rebecca, played by Kirstie Alley.  Sam goes into see Rebecca first and comes out with no additional money but a nice new title - head bartender.  Woody goes next and Rebecca rejects him as well.  Woody comes out and announces to the gang, you're now looking at the new Chief Head Bartender.  Or something like that.

The point being that titles are cheap and their easy to hand out.  However, just because you can, doesn't mean you should.  At my last company, Paytrust, we had Vice Presidents, Senior Vice Presidents, Executive Vice Presidents, Chief XXXX Officers, Managers, Directors and it became something of a status symbol. So while bestowing titles is cheap, dealing with the people issues related to who has what title is not.

So lesson learned, this time around at Billtrust I decided that we weren't going to do all the different titles.

I broke my rule last week when we announced that Anthony Vigorito was being promoted to Chief Financial Officer.  Anthony came on board two years ago as our VP Finance and has done an unbelievable job for Billtrust.  I posted recently about "knowing what you don't know" and finance has never been my strong point.  Anthony has done everything I've asked including moving us to accrual based accounting, upgrading our ERP system, upgrading our billing process, negotiating lines of credit, etc.  However, the sign of a great manager is being able to do those things that aren't asked.  Anthony has worked with the state aid agencies, figured out better tax treatment for our inventory, and a lot of other things that I would have never even thought to deal with it.  Congratulations Anthony for a job well done. Now get back to work.

Blog Correction / Retraction / Revision

When I started blogging earlier this year, I searched the web for other blogs that were "billing" related.  Finding none, I laid claim to the first blog by the CEO of a billing company.

I consider myself chastised, corrected, and beaten by at least two years, by Manoj Ranaweera and his blog EIPP World.  While the blog is more of an e-Invoicing blog, and has a UK slant to it, those are mere technicalities that blow my claim out of the water.

Therefore, I now claim to the following:

1. The Second Billing Related Blog
2. The First Blog by the CEO of a billing company in the United States
3. The only blog in the universe by a guy named Flint

Anyway, Manoj's blog is very interesting and has a lot of topical information.  We've been exchanging a few emails and he know his stuff.  Definitely worth a look.

Banks aren't all that bad...if you like technology

Banks aren't getting a lot of good press lately, and rightfully so.  They've made bad bets on so many different financial instruments that it's difficult to fathom that there are smart people running the show.

Bank of America has got its problems like the rest of them but they seem to have their act together with technology.  Their web site seems to do everything you could want from an online banking web site with searching, download, check images, etc.  However, I was blown away with what happened at the ATM today.

I had to deposit a couple of checks so I stopped at my local B of A  ATM (they seem to be everywhere in NJ). 

The normal procedure for depositing checks in an ATM is the following:

1. Fill out a deposit slip listing the amount of each check, sum them up, fill out the date
2. Put the checks and deposit slip in an envelope and seal it.
3. Put your ATM card in the machine, press deposit, and enter the total deposit amount
4. (At this point I usually have to reopen the envelope since I've forgetten the amount)
5. You then feed the envelope to the ATM.  Most ATMs start beeping at you right away to hustle it up at which point you get nervous, start looking over your shoulder at who you're holding up, and then jam the envelope in just to shut it up.  (Maybe it's just me)
6. The ATM machine then gives you a receipt with the total amount deposited.
7. About one time out of ten for me, I've summed the deposits incorrectly because I don't carry a calculator, and the bank sends me an angry letter letting me know that I've "been adjusted"

Bank of America does things differently.  No envelopes, no deposit slips, no math.  They're using some slick technology to make an everyday activity streamlined.

They're procedure is:

1. Feed each check into the ATM individually.  The ATM then flashes a picture of your scanned check, the amount that is on the check, and asks you to confirm the amount.
2. After completing step 1 for each of your checks, the ATM displays the total amount deposited and asks you to confirm that everything is A OK.
3. You then get two choices for a receipt, one with the the total amount deposited, or one with actual scanned images of your checks reprinted on them.  I usually don't bother with receipts but I chose the latter option just because I wanted to see what it looked like.  Pretty slick.

From a technology perspective, they're doing a number of things at the ATM that I haven't seen at any other banks ATMs.

• First off they have a check imager built into the ATM that stores a medium resolution image of each check. 
• They then scan the bottom of the image to make sure the check is oriented correctly (i.e. the MICR line is at the bottom).
• Next they use OCR to read the amount of the check which is normally on the right side of the check.
• If they don't get a hit using OCR, they use something called ICR which is advanced OCR for handwriting recognition.  One of the checks I deposited was hand written and it read the amount just perfectly. 
• They then use a better than average printer to produce a fairly legible check image on an ATM receipt.

It's uncommon to be pleasantly surprised by a banks use of technology in a normal consumer offering.  Today I was.