That's the view of ASB Securities head Tim Preston, who also believes that an Internet presence alone isn't enough for a successful business.
At a recent Wellington conference on online financial services, Preston extolled the virtues of his own, much advertised operation (broking firm ASB Securities has now been operating for about a year) and commented on how consumer preference was driving e-business development.
"ASB's site use is heavily skewed towards performance, price and stock recommendations, but I think that will change over the next couple of years. When you're looking at the US market now, you're looking at real-time sentiments. (The Internet) really has put the pressure back on broking and put the power in consumers' hands."
"I also think that a big force going forward will be push technology and WAP (wireless application protocol). I think we'll see a few WAP sites in the not too distant future, but there are problems at the moment with security issues."
Preston says ASB Securities hopes to have a WAP site up by the end of the year with shareprices, portfolio details, company announcements and trading confirmations; "although I don't know if we'll get as far as trades".
As for push technology, that means pretty much what it sounds like. For example, you could go into an online broking site and enter a set of outcomes (such as, tell me when Telecom's share-price hits X or when my cash management account balance reaches Y) and then be advised by email/cellphone/whatever when these happen. All that stuff you hope your sharebroker calls you about anyway.
But back to Preston: "You'll notice that a lot of other web-sites are bringing in share trading and financial information but, at the end of the day, are you going to go to these sites to make financial decisions?
"We believe that, no, you'll have financial portals and then other sites - that you'll want to go a specialist financial site to do all your bits and pieces."
Another speaker at the conference, Leone Purvis, cited an American prediction that 80 per cent of online portals would be vertical rather than all things to all people. "That can be customer-specific or industry-specific, such as financial services portals."
Purvis, who heads KPMG's eBusiness team, says that the online financial services currently on offer "are very much me-too".
"Noone has been prepared to stick their head up, noone is playing in the full interactivity space. On the positive side, there's a great opportunity for someone to take the high ground."
KPMG has been doing e-business strategy in New Zealand for the past three and a half years and Purvis says that, when the firm first started working in this area, many financial organisations didn't even have web-sites.
"Now, obviously, they have some runs on the board, but many are struggling with the internal aspects of e-business."
Her advice? "E-business will cannibalise (distribution) channels: get over it."
"Don't develop new products or services for traditional channels: develop them first for online channels and think second about how they will adapt back for your traditional channels. And don't let business as usual intervene. Be pretty much bloody-minded about what you want to achieve."
"You may not give them (your customers) a breadth of things to start with, but everything is excellent.
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