About Forrester
Forrester Research, Inc. is an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and technology.

Alex serves CIO Professionals. His coverage includes business technology strategies, business sustainability, business-driven governance frameworks, process-oriented organizational design, change management, and continuous improvement. He is also a leading expert on best practices for making technology organizations more effective and business relevant through the implementation of service-oriented structures and process frameworks.
Alex helps clients partner with business peers to drive growth and customer engagement; develop business technology people and processes for future success; and adopt business process management (BPM), Lean, and Six Sigma to deliver business outcomes.
Prior to taking on his current role, Alex focused his research on Business Process Professionals' challenges, such as the development of business process architectures, portfolio management capabilities, centers of excellence, and deployment of change management programs. Before joining Forrester in 2005, Alex developed the IT consolidation program and managed the data center of a large European automotive company. Previously, he spent 10 years at IBM and EDS as an executive senior consultant and led several international customer projects in areas such as mergers and acquisitions, IT shared services, sourcing, organizational change, process, and technology management. Alex also worked for five years as a research scientist in the area of high-performance computing at the IBM Scientific Center Heidelberg, publishing in refereed journals and co-editing three proceeding books.
Alex received a master's degree in engineering from the Civil Engineering Institute in Bucharest, Romania, and a Ph.D. in engineering from the Technical University Aachen, Germany. He received a postdoctoral fellowship from Princeton University.
Making The Business Case For Mobile Efforts At Wealth Management Firms
Mobile has become a high priority for eBusiness teams at wealth management and investment firms. In the US, the proportion of online adults who use the mobile channel to manage their investments rose...
Forrester's research shows that a key driver of customer retention and deeper customer relationships is a trait we call "customer advocacy," the perception by customers that a firm does what's best...
Website Quality Is Positively Correlated To More Money From Clients
Advisor-based firms serving the wealthiest US investors have neglected the online channel for years, leaning heavily on the person-to-person channel instead. But full-service firms' clients are...


E-Trade And Fidelity Lead The Pack
With investor expectations rising and substantial business at stake, digital wealth management teams know they need to improve their portfolios of mobile sites and apps. Forrester evaluated the...
Smart Full-Service Firms Will Use The Web To Connect Advisors And Clients
Forrester's data shows that more than one in four affluent US investors express interest in online collaborative advice tools such as co-browsing. In fact, the largest segment of affluent investors...
Our research shows that a key driver of deeper customer relationships among financial services consumers is a trait we call "customer advocacy" — the perception on the part of customers that a...
Social media will have an outsized impact on relationship-based businesses like investment firms, life insurers, and private banks. Some of these wealth management firms are piloting programs that...
With The Launch Of iNomineo, Generali Focuses On A Major Revenue Source
Generali France's iNomineo app for the iPhone offers financial advisors mobile access to client information, details of clients' holdings and past transactions, and graphic illustrations of market...
To Boost Adoption, Executives Need To Educate Customers About The Benefits
The number of investors who receive statements and other account communications in electronic form is up substantially over the past three years. But most investors still cling to paper. Why? Many...
The Wealth Management Firms Each Of Our Nine Investor Segments Use
To understand the behavior of US investor households, Forrester analyzes two dimensions that meaningfully distinguish individual investors: investable assets and self-directedness. We combine these...
Eager to reduce the costs of mailing paper statements and other client communications, investment firms have been promoting electronic delivery (eDelivery) to their customers. It's working: The...
Do you have Net Promoter Scores for US banks?
Using Digital Touchpoints To Enhance Advisor-Client Relationships
In the past, financial advisors and agents typically didn't involve clients in the advice generation process. They worked their magic behind the scenes and then presented clients with the final...
Use Importance And Quality Ratings To Prioritize Improvements To Your Site
Four out of five US online affluent investors visit their investment firms' websites at least a few times a year. What secure-site features do they value most? Account inquiry features —...

We are looking at competitor analysis for strategies and implementation, as well as current capabilities for other US wealth management (USWM) firms in mobility devices (e.g., smartphones and...
Most wealth management firms have gotten a pass on mobile, because the people with the most money – older Boomers and Seniors – are the ones least likely to use the mobile Web or mobile...
Younger Generations Are Just The First Wave Of Mobile and Social Adopters
To date, traditional investment and life insurance firms have been insulated from the disruptive forces of mobile and social technologies because their best clients are older. In countries around the...
Mobile, Social, Video, Advice, And Usability Will Change Retail Investing
Rocketing adoption — by financial advisors and agents as well as investors — is driving five digital trends that will change the wealth management industry. Smart eBusiness managers will...

Segmenting US Investors, 2010
Financial services marketing leaders need to expand their approach to segmentation of their investors. An actionable segmentation of US investors must be built on dimensions that truly distinguish...

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