The overall theme I’ve picked for this presentation is street art. I’ve always loved creative ways of expressing yourself and street art is one of the greatest examples of it and also because I believe that Savings and finance are like street art, completely misunderstood.
Presentations don’t need to be serious as long as they get the point across..
And Internships don’t need to be a coffee making, photocopying experience
What you guys have here is different. Plenty of banter and enjoyment but when it comes to it, things get done.
Over the last two months I’ve done some great work for you guys, so let me take you through the highlights.
Over my time here I worked on 8 main projects
I Did Research on engaging with the ‘female saver’ and how to encourage them to save with us!
I looked at SME related Whitepapers our competitors have created for an Ebook Brian is making
I reviewed the SOS website, walked through it and gave my criticisms and compliments
I audited our competitors social media platforms and compared them to Rabo’s.
I analysed our competitors savings products
I Debugged the new blog.
With the help of Thomas I analysed the Rabo website and shared my findings on a bimonthly basis.
And every morning I updated an excel with the previous days activations and registrations from new and activated customers
I’m not going to bore the pants off you with everything in great detail. So I will just give the important points.
one of the first things i worked on here was looking at the savings habits in women and I found some interesting things.
Women, are being called the CFO of the family household. I definitely feel there are ways of taking advantage of that.
I have picked out three crucial stages in a women's life where saving becomes a necessity, split them up, analyzed them and gave recommendations on how to target them. The first having just left college and entering the big world, Then starting a family and finally planning for retirement.
College
When leaving college women have few goals outside of their own preferences, and saving Doesn’t tend to be one of them. We need to get them to understand that if they start putting away a small amount each month from the age of 25 they will comfortably be able to support themselves in later years.
And as this age group are very tech savvy, I need to mention the huge need rabo have for a Phone app.
Without one I feel it makes it look like rabo are falling behind digitally.
Family
Women starting a family are always taking on increasing leadership roles with purchasing power and a lot of decision making. When children come into the picture all that is tenfold, with education costs, clothes and food.
Rabo should consider workshops Aimed at helping people who feel overwhelmed with financial responsibilities.
Things like record management budgeting and pension planning can be daunting without the right support. And we can be there to help
Retire
Finally I have talked about the women aged 45-55 who are sitting on huge nest eggs and are sceptical about keeping it locked away in a bank. For women this age safety is a number one priority with their money. That is why Rabo need to make it known that they are the 10th safest bank in the world. Definitely something worth bragging about. That and the fantastic customer service you have here. Older women need their hand held when opening accounts online and if they knew that we had one of the friendliest staff among irish banks here at rabbo they will feel more inclined to save with us.
Women have been underappreciated through the ages and havent been able to achieve their highest potential in the financial world.
But now, as times have changed for the best we here at rabbo need to empower them to take advantage of their growing financial prowess.
This is second project i am gonna talk about was given to me by Brian to keep my workload busy
He, with the help of the SFA is going to be creating an SME related Ebook. I was asked to do some research on what irish banks were doing in that space. and then give my opinion on them. I quickly realised that there wasn't a whole lot going from them in this space.. I found there was just a lot of talking about products and what they are doing for SME's. Tooting their own horn basically. So I decided to recommend a theme that would make Rabo's ebook stand out amongst the others.
I noticed that some of the Ebooks from internatiol banks had been talking about SME’s involvement in Poor and underdeveloped countries. And how they are becoming the Backbone of these places,
Similar to the this, but on a much smaller scale are the rural areas in Ireland, who have been hit just as hard through the economic crises. it has been the home-grown small and medium enterprises playing a huge role in keeping these areas alive.
So I recommended talking about SMEs involvement in these areas, being a catalyst for growth, and empowering rural communities to achieve sustainability through SMEs. And finally what Sme's can do to help these areas thrive and survive
It’s not enough for SMEs to just have a presence in rural ireland, They need to reach out a helping hand for their communities,
For example, incorporating a corporate social responsibility programme into their work or pledging a certain amount of jobs each year to the local area.
I found that this subject is not being talked about enough among financial institutions in Ireland and it should really be brought to attention.
Working on this project really got the blood flowing as there was an opportunity that Brian would pitch the idea to the SFA and the theme coming to life.
Next in line was my work involving the SOS campaign. I was told to look at the site and give my critiques and recommendations. I did a walkthrough as a first time customer with my report and I gave a real take on the experience.
The site, which I believe was a huge success seems to have run it’s course and I have given some great proposals to take it to the next level, instead of just letting it wind down and eventually stopping it all together.
Social media is a key factor in it’s longevity because, if done right the content will be supplied through followers rather than yourselves and people seem to get a bit of a buzz from sharing their mad savings tips.
The SOS website is a great original Idea, and I do hope you have plans on keeping it alive. I am sure your competitors are monitoring it closely waiting for an opportunity to jump in and put their spin on the idea.
A bit of a side project given to myself and Thomas was to use google analytics to review the site.
I know you are all aware of the huge need to upgrade your site and that it is currently being worked on – something I really look forward to seeing when it is done.
I did however, find that using analytics to monitor the website was very enjoyable for me. I loved how you can look into each corner of the site and see how it is performing, and if it’s not performing, having to use logic to understand the problems that cause spikes and anomalies in the data.
I was lucky enough to get a crash course in SEO during my time here and that peaked my interest in the subject. and has actually gotten me to sign up for an SEO course towards the end of September.
I was lucky enough to work with john Foley in my time here, and one of the jobs he handed to me before he left was a debugging report for the new rabo blog.
It was about a weeks worth of work and I got to read a good few of your older blog entries about the rabo pro 12 which was quite interesting. The job was comprehensive enough as I had to look at every possible thing that could go wrong on multiple web browsers and phones but I Got it done which was a great accomplishment.
I also got to interact with some of your clients in zoo as there was a daily call with an update on the bugs which really made me feel apart of the team. Even on john’s last day when he could barely talk during it.
One of the less appealing jobs I had to do work on was reviewing our competitors customer savings products through their websites. To be perfectly honest it bored the pants off me, but as an intern you cant expect everything you work on to be full of fun.
I did take some things out of it to recommend for Rabo. When I was looking for rates and charges I found everyone kept very vague about them, or made them difficult to find. This really shows how they don’t appreciate their customers by hiding things in small print or 20 page long PDF’s. If you guys stick to your straight talking no BS policy on your new site and emphasise that everything is easy to find you will stand out amongst the rest.
When I first met Claire we did the usual walkthrough of the work she did but what interested me most was her work involving rabos social media platforms. She introduced me to Hootsuite and thomas and I even got to sit in on a walkthrough of how to use it. The project she gave me to work on was to audit our competitors social media pages and compare them to Rabos.
As I am an avid social media user I found It quite enjoyable because I am so familiar with the sites.
I also found that most of the other banks content seems forced on a non personal level. Especially with the customer service pages which are full of abuse and automated replies. That is where rabo would stand out as your content is relatable to savers and also quite interesting.
I do think you guys should create separate pages for some of your products like a separate business page and Definitely a Scabby or smart page.
Unfortunately I wasn’t here at the right time to experience the Rabo Tweeties but I will be keeping myself updated when you do them again.
And lastly, the other ongoing side project myself and thomas worked on was updating an excell with numbers from the daily activations and registrations. Simple enough stuff, especially because thomas created some handy charts and graphs so I literally just had to take a few numbers out of an email and stick it into the excell.
Not rocket science but it did help me start the morning with a tick on the work completed box!
Working with you guys over the past two months has been an unreal experience and it was really good
To get experience working with a serious bank.
Thankfully the work I was given didn’t bore me to death and the people I worked with made my time here easy and very enjoyable.
You guys have a great internship programme here and I hope you decide to keep it going so people like me and Thomas can get a great experience.
Also, If you ever need a youthful outlook on any future projects you know who to call!
Thanks a million!
