The life of a (squeezed) product mgr part 2

What happens when you have a great product, but don't know the true production cost? Or know the true cost of production, but don't know the details? Or, when you know the details, and it's driving you nuts?!

This is the second part of the blog post series The life of a (squeezed) product manager, and this time it's about the interactions with Sales!

Quite often in my previous role as product manager at a bank (read: at least once a week) I got one of the following questions from a frustrated Sales rep:

- Why are your payments so expensive?
I know for a fact that the payment system only cost x cents per payment, and Swift is included since we have a fixed fee, so why does each payment cost x EUR? 

- If my client only sends payment that goes STP, can I get a cheaper internal price?
Or what is actually driving the costs? 

To be able to answer these questions (but not fix the underlying issue; that would be taking things a bit too far!), me and my colleagues spent a lot of time finding out the true cost of a payment and to create what we called a transparent internal price. What did we find out?

• A payment that is sent through file or initiated online, that goes STP, doesn't hit any sanction filters, and is received and credited to the bene account at the beneficiary bank without repair fees, is very very cheap.
• If a payment ends up in repair the cost is 20x higher
• If a payment is returned the cost is 100x higher!

"I wish there was a way for me to prevent all the incorrect payments that are sent out just to be returned!"

(Hint: Read about Movitz's Payee Verification service that can help a bank avoid sending at least 75% of all rejected/returned payments here!) 

"I wish someone could help me with a business case so that I can prioritise fixing the problem with failed payments instead of just focusing on being compliant!"

(Hint: At Movitz, we have have helped several banks with detailed business cases for what services to introduce and in what order to turn a compliance gap into an operational efficiency catalyst! Drop us a line and we'll get back to you asap)