Everyone, David Aronson, senior product marketing over here at Shields, here with Grant Blue sales manager at shield. How are you doing today, Grant? Doing great, David. How about yourself? Oh, awesome. Okay. So this is this we’re actually kicking off a really cool project here. This is our new financial compliance in focus. Because who wants to sit for a webinar for about an hour and thirty minutes. Okay? So we’re gonna try to keep things snappy over here. We are gonna talk today about mobile communications financial compliance. Hot topic. It’s always been a hot topic. It’s probably always be a bad topic. Yeah. I mean, and it’s it’s been like overtalked about. I think at this point, like, oh, the fines and what does it mean next, but but somehow, like, you know, we’re still kind of In this question mode, like, we don’t see necessarily a whole bunch of people buying up all these solutions. It’s a there’s some weird stuff going on. So I I’ve got a question for you Grant today. Why isn’t everyone solving this? Every vendor claims that they can easily solve it is not solved. What’s up with that? No. And I think you bring up a great point earlier. Right? This is a question that’s been going on for my twelve years, in mobility and compliance. And I think you really have to start with the big question, you know, how do we message clients? That’s what we’re asking. That’s what the industry is asking, and we all want to solve that. But you have to take a step back and and think about, you know, the means in which we communicate in both in business, both internally and externally, has greatly changed. You know, gone are the days when voice calls were the primary means. Ben came email, which is obviously still relevant. But now it is all about mobile messaging. You know, I think about the estimated monthly numbers of six billion people using messengers, which includes iMessage, text message, signal, WhatsApp, Telegram, and all the others. And then the fact that over twenty percent of that communication is business related. And this is the channel that’s not going to weigh it. Not gonna be going away and it has to get resolved. So next phase of that is the governance of all those channels, and it’s seemingly nowhere to be found which leads to enormous disparities and specifically two gaps in both compliance and data ownership. And I think that’s why many firms still forbid mobile messaging completely. But that isn’t the answer either because frankly that mobile messaging is the preferred means of communication. For the large portion of ours. In fact, as I read in a study done by, I think it was Jennifer Acre, at Stanford Graduate School, I believe, And they found that there’s a significant increase in the likelihood of closing a particular deal if there’s a mobile messaging engagement with the economic buyer. So I understand why the want and really the need of the Salesforce to use this channel of communication. And when you look at it from a business perspective, there are numerous benefits and results. You think about the percentages I mentioned a second ago, you know, there is value economically and from a productivity standpoint for every organization. I put it in, you know, a personal, spotlight and, think about it. I hate to admit it, but my phone is is next to me twenty plus hours a day. It’s there when I wake up. It’s actually what wakes me up with the alarm clock. When I’m when I’m on vacation, I still have my personal phone, which has my work email on it. So I’m always plugged in. Whether my wife and kids think that’s so great is another story. But you get my point that because I have my phone and mobility, I’m more productive. And to say all this, because I don’t believe the majority of messaging is intentionally used for malicious purposes. I think of it more as from the sales perspective that messaging provides significant opportunity and flexibility, and furthermore value. So, that that said, you know, there are bad actors and regulatory requirements that we have to be aware of. And what we must solve is those two big gaps I mentioned earlier. Data ownership and compliance. Yeah. I think that’s that’s such an interesting insight. Right? I mean, you’re saying, like, This is a sales tool. I need this to sell. You know, and and, you know, we’ve actually we were just talking about this before the call. About, like, from, like, the data side. So, like, let’s say you didn’t have all these problems. And somehow, like, you did, like, magically you know, solve all this, then you’ve got, like, even more problems because, like, now you’ve got all this new data now pouring in. And whatever the data structure that’s coming in. Yeah. So now you’re gonna have to, like, first of all, you’re gonna have to archive and capture an archive, you know, and then you gotta actually, like, survey in and got, like, wait a second. So now I’ve got all these. I’ve got my, all, my false positives on doing it anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Oh my gosh. What’s this gonna look like? And we hear this a lot from our own customers, you know, like, okay. What’s gonna be on the other side? We need to be careful because it’s a problem both ways. If you don’t capture and you do capture it. It really is. What’s the solution? That’s the proverbial million dollar question. Right? And, two point one billion dollars worth. Yeah. Yeah. Precisely. Precisely, we’ve seen that so much lately. I think it starts with each individual organization and and clearly defining a policy around mobility, you know, whether you wanted to employ a corporate issue roll out or a BYOD strategy, there has to be a strong plan and policy in place. And then furthermore, you take it one step and say, What’s the training on these policies and procedures? We work, you know, with financial institutions around the world, and they have to adhere some of the most stringent regulations of any industry. They have experienced IT teams, They know the risk and the need for compliance, but because of the beneficial economic factors I mentioned earlier, there’s really some kind of unspoken influence on how to manage. I wouldn’t say there’s a blind eye turn to it, you know, per se. But because of the complexity of messaging, every organization is searching for know, this perfect solution. And and I don’t think it’s their area. Yeah. And the fact is, look, I mean, that avalanche of data that we keep talking about. Like, no matter which way you look at this, we have to solve it. And I think we got to this point the conversation now where we have to do what I like to call our five and five. We’re gonna ask five questions. And we’re gonna pretend, like, I have a clock, and we’re gonna try to get, like, one minute under each one. Okay? So speaking of slowly Before before we do that, let’s talk I wanna talk bit about, like, kind of the, you know, really more or less to answer your question directly. What is the solution? And I think whether we want a minute or not there, there is, you know, the blanket no text and policy is is not gonna work. Right? Employees are gonna circumvent the policy, and that may be simply not knowing or carelessness, as I mentioned, bad actors. But I don’t believe that as I met as I said, most of the messaging is is malicious. And and I think most employees would be fine with capturing and storing business conversations. Right? And that’s where the data ownership comes into play. But the the issue becomes when the compliance requirements become too much of a burden to make the channel a communication valuable. Right? There are a number of solutions, that provide some form of capturing these messaging channels. You know, four off the top of my head, I think, you know, you have network integrators. Where they get a copy of your messages and calls directly from the operator network side, which then that excludes IMessage. You have dual phone number options where there’s personally a business number on a single device and all business communication is captured. Which you received pushback, obviously, from the field because they wanna use the same number that they’ve had for the relationship with their customers and clients on. There’s bots that can be added into these native messaging apps as a third member to capture the information, which is a little cumbersome. And then lastly, you know, You’re seeing more and more now that there’s these options that have a consumer version and an official version of the same app on devices. Which requires the user to use the appropriate app at the appropriate time. So I think no matter what solution is deployed, the important question that arises, to what she said, what do we do with all this data? Are we partnered with the right archiving surveillance and supervision vendor, that can ingest and then intelligently alert on these communications. The lasting risk management and compliance, as you know, that they want is more false positive alerts. And then being able to have a holistic approach of organizing the conversation timelines and looking at multiple channels as there is channel hopping inevitably for e discovery purposes. So, I’ll leave you at this and we’ll jump into the five by five. I really wish that there was some easy, you know, Nervana approached to it. Here’s the solution. We’re good to go. It’s just not the case. But I think with the right policies, procedures, and ultimately training in so you can’t make an effective, solution for your organization. Aren’t you just like a ray of sunshine today? I mean, we do have some solutions. Right? There are ways to do this. Yep. There’s there’s a little bit of, like, how and and which way to do it, and there’s a pros and cons and and like you said, we also need to really keep an eye down the road. Like, what happens if we actually do this? What’s gonna happen to to all of our compliance teams? Okay. So long term picture. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Alright. Let’s do the five and five. Question one. Have we banned mobile out of existence? No. Mobile messaging’s here to say. And it’s only growing, right? So, getting a plan in place. As I said, the note texting policy is not gonna work. It’s it’s a preferred channel of communication and, and it’s only gonna grow moving forward. Sales tool. We need our sales tools. Yes. Okay. So policies now didn’t work for banning. Do they still have a place? One hundred percent. And I think that really starts, with kind of creating a, an an internal focus team that brings stakeholders from every role to say, Hey, what does the landscape look like? What do we need to do? What’s gonna be best for our organization and then clearly defining that? So that it is digestible, and then reinforcing it on a consistent basis at all levels of the organization, to really ensure that there’s you know, that first layer of the of the user compliance, before you can do it. You can have all the policies in place, but if our, you know, our teams aren’t aware of it, It’s it’s really not doing a whole lot. So everyone and their grandmother has announced that they have a solution. Okay? And there’ll be another one tomorrow. I’m sure. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So you’ve told us the pros and cons to each one. So so what do you do? Yeah. I think once you’ve, you know, identified internally, through these stakeholder conversations, what’s gonna be best plan in place. You have to partner with the right vendor. There’s, you know, I’ve mentioned kind of the four routes you can go earlier. But ensuring that, the vendor you ultimately select meets this checklist that you’ve clearly laid out in, you know, in a mobility assessment, we’ll say, is checking all those boxes. And then really What is that vendor’s outlook going forward? Are they innovative? Did they have, you know, a a unique approach to solving some of these problems. And are they gonna listen to your feedback as an organization of, of what, are your pain points and, and, and working together to find those solutions? So what other factors should we be looking at? The usability, I think the UX and the UI of any of those systems, the user experience, that is simplified. It’s usable. It’s not, you know, putting additional hurdles in this communication channel. The governance of it. What’s our long term strategy? You know, what if the API shifts, product road map, things along those lines as far as the innovation and and understanding all that? Okay. The ultimate question, is there a gotcha that people need to look out for? Well, how much of a mess do you wanna clean up after you ingest all this data. Right? And so I think that gotcha is once we do get all this data, we have our plan in place. We know mobile messages here to stay. We’ve got a plan in a policy. We’ve selected our vendor. We’re looking at the long term, you know, perspective. How are we ensuring that once we have this data, that it’s in a digestible format that we can, you know, utilize surveillance e discovery and supervisions. You know, what’s coming out the other end? Is what you really have to look at and and and once you’ve kinda gone down this pecking order of what we need to accomplish from a mobility, landscape. Amazing. Thank you, Grant. This was an awesome conversation. Let’s keep the conversation going. Yeah. Let let’s keep this going. You know? Hit up our website. Let’s have chat. There’s a lot to discuss, you know, we’re we’re here to help. This is shield financial compliance in focus You didn’t spend an hour thirty. You got a lot out of it. I think this is this is the way of the future. This is innovation. Am I right, Greg? That’s right. Out. Hundred percent. Thanks for spending some time, David. Amazing. And thank you for watching.