For the past ten years, it’s been myprivilege to lead the Mercator Advisory Group and its exceptionalteam of industry professionals, who serve our clientele throughsubstantive market research content and senior-level strategicexpertise. In a period of great change for the banking and paymentsindustry, Mercator Advisory Group consistently delivers fact-basedinsights and advice as a direct result of our research andconsulting business model to help our clients succeed. This model,coupled with our deep payments industry expertise and establishednetwork of contacts throughout the industry, enables us to deliverexceptional value for our clients year after year.
In order to maintain the highest level of advisory services, ourcore team and service offerings continue to evolve. It’s mypleasure to highlight some recent changes that demonstrate ourcontinued commitment to providing the industry’s best-in-classservice.
New Senior-Level Industry Practitioners:
• Pradeep Moudgal, Director, Emerging Technologies AdvisoryService
Moudgal has over 25 years of experience in commercial andsmall-business banking, private banking, marketing, productdevelopment, and management specializing in treasury management,cards and merchant services, international banking, and lendingservices.
• Amy Hoke, Director, Commercial Payments AdvisoryService
Hoke has a broad view of the financial services industry and itstechnical needs and has had hands-on experience guiding companiesin developing strategic use of technology to meet businessrequirements. She has been the co-author of several payment systempatents filed over the years.
• Ron Mazursky, Director, Debit AdvisoryService
Mazursky’s career in financial services spans more than 30 yearsand covers a wide array of payment products. His global experienceincludes product strategy/implementation, product and markettrending, customer and general market research, product and servicedevelopment, portfolio management and new account acquisition,litigation support, rewards and loyalty, and vendor/partnerevaluation and support.
New Senior-Level Relationship Executives:
• Peter Johnsmeyer, Senior Business DevelopmentExecutive
Johnsmeyer is responsible for Mercator Advisory Group’srelationships with clients and prospects in the Northeast UnitedStates and in the United Kingdom. He has over 30 years ofexperience managing and selling informational, subscription-basedproducts in the financial services, media, publishing, and Internetindustries.
• Michael Bergman, Senior Business DevelopmentExecutive
Bergman is responsible for Mercator Advisory Group’s relationshipswith clients and prospects on the West Coast, in the Asia-Pacificregion, and in Australia and New Zealand. Bergman’s background isbroad and diverse, with sales, marketing, and management experiencein retail and financial/insurance services and over 15 years inhigh-tech product and services sales. He’s provided strategic andtactical sales and marketing consulting services to emergingtechnology product and service companies.
Executive Management Team New Vice President:
• Patricia Hewitt, Vice President and Managing Director, ConsultingServices
Prior to this recent appointment, Hewitt was director of the DebitAdvisory Service. Since her career in financial services began in1982, Hewitt has held senior leadership positions in companiesacross the payments industry, including Tier 1 commercial banks,Fortune 100 technology companies, and as principal of her ownconsulting firm. (Ron Mazursky now leads the Debit AdvisoryService.)
Communications and Segmentation Expert:
• Karen Yetter, Director, Communications and ClientSegmentation
Yetter will drive Mercator Advisory Group’s communications effortswith particular emphasis on e-communications and mobile channels.This role encompasses all areas of Mercator Advisory Group,including Membership Services, PaymentsJournal.com, and clientsupport for webinars, teleconferencing, and marketing partnershipinitiatives. Before joining Mercator Advisory Group, Yetter servedas Vice President of Customer Experience for Aberdeen Group, whereshe oversaw Marketing Operations, Creative Services, ProgramManagement, and Customer Services.
New Corporate 2.0Website Enabling Interactive Capabilities for Mercator AdvisoryGroup Clients:
• Mercator Advisory Group has a new website, which was developed ona highly advanced content management system.
• Enhanced blogging, event tracking, search, a modern interface,and advanced functionality support greater client engagement.
• Client landing pages present summary views of new MercatorAdvisory Group research available on the website. Service pagesoffer blogs from service directors available only to members of theservice.
Mercator Advisory Group’s CMSS (CustomerMonitor SurveySeries) Increases Primary Data Offering with Expanded NationwidePanel:
• Starting this year, our biannual CMSS surveys are being fieldedto 3,000 consumer respondents.
• These consumer behavior surveys delving into key issues in thepayments industry and providing cross-tabs and analytic reportssummarize the major trends to support payments industry strategiesthat focus on overall customer experience issues and drive forselected behaviors.
• CMSS has increased its partnership engagements with leadingindustry trade groups to perform joint studies, gather data, andperform analysis on many datasets throughout the paymentsspace.
PaymentsJournal Strengthens Position as the Leading Free IndustryInformation and News Portal:
• Our platform and information model, based on free uploads ofcontent and sharing of information to drive the best, most seniorlevel traffic, is establishing itself as the dominant news andinformation portal model in the industry.
• The platform allows a forum for our clients to engage in B2Bmarketing and drive brand awareness among the key stakeholders ineach sector.
• Sponsored Strategy Sessions continue to grow and to provide athought-leadership based content approach not found in otherplatforms and push its sponsors to the forefront of topics.
It’s been a very busy year so far for Mercator Advisory Group, andyou can expect to see continued evolution and growth in ourorganization as these foundational changes take effect. We are veryconfident that our organizational activities this year will addsignificant new capabilities and value basis to our relationshipsin the years to come.
On a personal note, the evolution we experienced this year has beena direct reinforcement of our brand promise to our clients and myvision for the company as whole. In this context, I believe thatevery research or consulting engagement with Mercator AdvisoryGroup should funnel directly into research, information, andresources that are dedicated solely to the payments space. This isour key market differentiator in that our peers in the researchcommunity cannot promise nor deliver this to their clients, just asour peers in the consulting community aren’t making investmentsinto research and data. It is the synergy between these activitiesthat underscores our value in the market.
If you are a membership client and have questions, please contactyour primary account manager. If you are not a member and wouldlike more information about Mercator Advisory Group, please contactus at 781-419-1700.
As always, if there is anything I can do to help support you oryour organization, please feel free to reach out to me directly atrmisasi@mercatoradvisorygroup.