Collin Canright

In today’s ever-evolving business landscape, organizations are constantly seeking effective ways to demonstrate their value to customers. Whether in times of economic prosperity or uncertainty, one strategy stands out as a powerful and invaluable tool: thought leadership. Surprisingly, this approach surpasses the effectiveness of traditional advertising and product marketing methods, according to the 2022 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report from Edleman.

The report goes on to state:
“50% of C-suite executives say that high-quality thought leadership has more impact on their purchase decision-making during economic downturns than when times are good.”

So, What Exactly is Thought Leadership?

It revolves around the idea of sharing valuable expertise, insightful guidance, or a fresh perspective on a specific topic or field. From thought-provoking pieces to research reports, PowerPoint presentations to essays and eBooks, organizations around the globe offer a wealth of captivating content. And the best part? It’s readily available either for free or in exchange for contact information through a simple registration process.

Why is Thought Leadership so Influential?

By positioning your organization as a trusted authority and a source of valuable knowledge, you cultivate a loyal following of customers who see you as a go-to resource. Instead of bombarding potential customers with traditional advertising messages, thought leadership fosters a genuine connection and fosters long-term relationships.

In addition to building trust and credibility, thought leadership offers several other benefits. For example, “61% of decision-makers say that an organization’s thought leadership can be moderately or a lot more effective at demonstrating the potential value of its products/services compared to traditional product-oriented marketing,” according to the Edelman report.

It helps your organization stand out from the competition, showcasing your unique perspective and expertise. By addressing industry challenges, sharing innovative ideas, and offering solutions, you position yourself as a leader in your field.

Furthermore, thought leadership contributes to brand visibility and recognition. When you consistently produce high-quality, insightful content, you attract a wider audience and increase your organization’s exposure. As your content is shared and recommended by others, your brand gains credibility and reaches new potential customers.

Investing in thought leadership is an investment in the future success of your organization. By consistently producing valuable content and sharing it with your target audience, you not only establish yourself as a thought leader but also nurture a community of engaged and loyal customers. In the rapidly changing business landscape, thought leadership remains a steadfast and effective strategy that can elevate your organization above the competition.

To learn more about our services, contact us at collin@canrightcommunications.com

2023 is the year realtime payments come into their own in the United States. Realtime payments, also known as instant payments, promise faster processing times and improved security compared to traditional methods. In addition to the continued growth of the RTP and Zelle services, the Federal Reserve is preparing to release its FedNow service in July.

With e-commerce accelerating, the ability to continually push purchases, sales, and deliveries calls for faster liquidity management. Realtime payments can enable a corporate treasury to maintain flexibility and immediate turnaround on the day-to-day needs of an enterprise.

It’s a significant change in liquidity management. Banks processed payments in blocks at designated times throughout a five-day workweek, which made predicting liquidity relatively easy. Increasingly, transactions can move 24/7, 365 days a year.

Businesses and consumers can both take advantage of immediate payments, either by avoiding late fees for bill payments or receiving good funds immediately. The new instant payment systems may take time to manage effectively, but adoption is expected to continue.

Trends in countries that have adopted faster-payment schemes show generally increasing consumer uptake. There is no reason to think that U.S. businesses and consumers would react differently.

While there’s still a lot of work to be done before financial institutions see cash and paper check transactions continue to fade away, realtime payments are here and ready to be leveraged to transform the way treasurers do business.

Noncash payments in the U.S. continue to grow, with the total value increasing at a rate of 9.5% per year from 2018 to 2021, according to the most recent survey data from the Federal Reserve. The survey also found that the total number of noncash payments increased at a 5.6% CAGR over the same period, primarily driven by increases in the value of card payments and ACH payments.

The Federal Reserve’s FedNow is expected to accelerate those trends. FedNow is a new instant payment service that will enable financial institutions of all sizes and communities across the United States to provide safe and efficient instant payment services 24/7, 365 days.

Businesses and individuals can send and receive instant payments conveniently through financial institutions participating in the FedNow Service, and recipients will have full access to funds immediately, giving them greater flexibility to manage their money and make time-sensitive payments. FedNow was designed to provide market choice for clearing and settling instant payments, in keeping with the Federal Reserve’s historical role of providing payment services alongside private-sector providers.

At Canright, we understand realtime and faster payments and can help provide guidance in the matter. Companies planning and offering realtime payments services to financial institutions and corporations will require training materials and product communication. We can help!

To learn more about our services, contact us at collin@canrightcommunications.com

Process documentation is the practice of recording and organizing the steps involved in a particular process, task, or procedure. It’s an essential part of any business, as it provides a way to share knowledge, streamline workflows, and ensure consistency in operations. In this guide, we’ll dive into the key elements of effective process documentation and how to implement them in your organization.

Identify the Process

The first step in creating effective process documentation is to identify the process you want to document. This could be any task or procedure within your organization, from onboarding new employees to managing inventory. Once you have identified the process, move on to define its scope and purpose. This will help ensure that your documentation is clear and concise and that it covers all the necessary steps.

Document Each Step

The next step is to document each step involved in the process. This includes any inputs, outputs, decisions, and actions required at each stage. Be sure to capture the sequence of steps in a logical and easy-to-follow manner. Use clear, concise language and avoid technical jargon or acronyms that may be unfamiliar to others.

Include Visual Aids

Visual aids such as flowcharts, diagrams, and screenshots can be incredibly helpful in illustrating the steps involved in a process. These can help users understand the process more quickly and easily and can also serve as a reference for troubleshooting or problem-solving.

Test and Refine the Process

Once you have documented the process, it is important to test it and refine it as needed. This may involve running simulations, conducting user testing, or making adjustments based on feedback from users. Continuously refining the process documentation ensures that it remains relevant and up-to-date.

Make it Accessible

To ensure that your process documentation is useful, it must be accessible to the right people at the right time. This means making it available through a central repository or document management system, as well as ensuring that it is easily searchable and discoverable. You may also want to consider integrating your process documentation with other tools or systems, such as project management software or knowledge management platforms.

Keep it Up-to-Date

Lastly, it’s important to keep your process documentation up-to-date. As your organization evolves and changes, so will your processes. Regularly reviewing and updating your process documentation ensures that it remains accurate and relevant, and that users have access to the most up-to-date information.

Effective process documentation is an essential part of any business, and can help streamline operations, ensure consistency, and improve overall efficiency. By following these best practices, you can create process documentation that is clear, concise, and useful to users at all levels of your organization.

To learn more about our services, contact us at collin@canrightcommunications.com

As part of our year-end review, we went through our Google Analytics to see which of our posts and articles performed the best. What struck me most in looking at the top five were their content types, as much as their subject.

1. Analytical Article. Disentangling the Crypto Crash of 2022 is a long-form technology brief we wrote to clarify the difference between digital asset technology and cryptocurrency decisions.  I distilled the analysis from sessions at two conferences. Articles like this demonstrate expertise and can be picked up by or placed in other publications. This version of the article appeared in the TabbForum. 

2. Trend Post. Wealth Technology that Personalizes Portfolios follows a staple of media reporting: the trends story. This piece grew out of a series of start-up presentations at the Morningstar Investment Conference. It provides a list of wealth technology firms while providing market context. We published it in our FinTech Rising blog.

3. Event Coverage. New Horizons in Cryptocurrency covers a session of the Chicago Payments Forum, which our firm produces. We use these articles to publicize payments forum events, establish our expertise in the payments industry, and showcase our event follow-up articles. These kinds of articles help build a community and provide post-event content.

4. How-To Explainer. API Marketing Strategy and Tactics is a blog post that grew out of two client conversations. We summarized the problems and presented some basic research in a digestible format. This post is leading us into a new service offering focused on API documentation.

5. Marketing Sheet. Aligning Business Goals with Technology is a straight marketing piece, and we were somewhat surprised to see it in the top five. Yet good sales pieces educate prospective buyers. Our goal here was to explain the concept of business alignment while showing how we approach it from a communications standpoint.

To learn more about our services, contact us at collin@canrightcommunications.com