Microsoft Corp., is working hard - particularly among community bankers - to soften its predatory image.
Addressing the Independent Bankers Association of America's annual convention, a Microsoft official said the Redwood, Wash., company wanted to be a technology provider, not a rival.
"We're not in the banking business," said John Neilson, vice president of Microsoft's organization customer unit, "we're in the business of creating software that our bank customers can use to serve their customers in return."
Mr. Neilson added that those bank customers, more than ever, should be the smaller institutions, namely those between $100 million and $600 million of assets.
Speaking to reporters earlier in the day, Mr. Neilson and Michael C. Rawding, Microsoft group manager of financial services, explained that while the company has worked with large institutions on their delivery systems, it sees more opportunities for broader applications with community banks.
The reason: Smaller institutions haven't yet broadly applied the more technically advanced back-office and delivery systems that the giants have been laboring over for several years. And, they're convinced that small banks can implement such systems cheaply and more effectively than larger banks with more bureaucracy.
"It's about execution," Mr. Rawding said. "The barriers to implementing these systems effectively don't exist at small organizations."
Microsoft has already hired a new marketing coordinator, whose sole responsibility will be to focus on the needs of small banks. The company also plans to use 16 marketing representatives to target community banks in each of the company's subregions in the United States.
Meanwhile, Mr. Neilson's speech met with approval from many of the conference's 2,600 attendees, many of whom still harbored some memories of Microsoft chairman Bill Gates' controversial remark in 1994, when he referred to banks in a Newsweek article as "dinosaurs."
"Microsoft probably is one of the best software companies in the world, whether you like them or not," said Tim Grefe, vice president of Triumph State Bank, Trimont, Minn. "If they are going to make a commitment to work with banks, and if you want to use one of the better companies, you'll have to deal with them."
While much of the competitive worries about Microsoft involve its forays into on-line services, Mr. Rawding said his group's main push into banking will be through its array of already existing software programs.
The Microsoft executives said the new Windows NT platform will allow the banks to run any necessary software, whereas in the past no single software system could support all of those needs.
