Vertical Markets : Financial Services Benefits

Business Problem Definition

Financial services firms are facing increasing competition for acquiring and retaining high margin customers. Continued success will be dependent on an integrated and rigorous approach towards prospecting, acquiring, servicing, and retaining customers, while reducing the costs of each customer interaction and transaction. While considerable progress has been made in high volume retail banking, higher end commercial, trust, and private banking services often remain highly manually intensive and expensive, while not necessarily translating that higher expense into improved customer service. This has resulted in a number of areas that may benefit significantly from a rapid analysis of the workflows, business processes, and associated document handling associated with functions that exhibit the following characteristics:

• High dollar / low volume services
• Highly compensated sales and support personnel
• Long call or transaction cycle times
• Manual and automated processes with a high communication component, including multiple call backs and use of multiple communication channels

Services that meet these conditions provide the following opportunities:

• Opportunity to significantly increase sales and the sales effort through redeployment of highly compensated officers from support to sales functions, implementation of a more effective sales process based upon "best practices", and automated implementation and enforcement of that process through enhancements in the system.
• Significant labor savings or labor cost / transaction savings due to reduction in the complexity or steps in the current process, a reduction in the skill level required for a given task, and leveraging currently available data and systems.
• Increase in the margin per customer through enhanced determination of the relationship margin and Net Present Value of the customer and customer relationship.
• Significant automation support opportunities, often through improved use and integration of existing or currently available data and systems.
• Significant customer service and revenue opportunities through reduced customer communication requirements, service quality improvements, ability to utilize multiple communication channels, ability to complete transactions through multiple customer service representatives, and improved cross sell and up sell opportunities.

Solution Approach

A rapid analysis of the current processes and infrastructure to quickly identify candidate savings, measure the savings and revenue objectives , and implement the changes required to achieve those objectives:

Service / Products Needs Analysis and Configuration

Objective: To reduce the cost and increase the effectiveness of the sales process, through recognition of product and service needs and the identification of the proper pricing strategy to maximize relationship revenue and margin.

• Identify the sales process including key tasks, processes, customer contact networks, etc. Formalize the processes, data, and resources required for a successful sale.
• Identify the key business rules associated with customer needs analysis and the proper pricing and relationship of the products and services required to fit those needs.
• Optimize those tasks through identification of what would be required to reduce the number of steps, increase the accuracy and repeatability of the steps, and reduce the cycle time and costs associated with those steps.
• For the key sales and configuration tasks identify the automation support required including access to consolidated information, access to information relationships, and support for standard workflows and sales task assignments.
• Develop the business and automation support estimated costs, and work plan to implement the change. Aim for 30-60, 90, and 180 day milestones, implementations, and investment returns.
• Implement the changes utilizing internal, Coreclusion, or third party resources.

Contact center workflow / process optimization and automation support to
reduce the cost and increase the quality of call center response.

Objective: To clearly understand the cost, time, and resources associated with each contact center process. Understand the added value of each process and its association with the business objectives and customer value.

• Identify and design, the changes required to achieve savings in costs, cycle time, customer communication requirements, and the skill level requirements associated with each process.
• Identify current call centers and call center "like" functions in the organization, i.e. a group of support personnel in Trust may act as a contact /call center, even if they are not considered that in the company.
• Identify the key business objectives of the call center.
• Identify the key customers and contact points, internal and external of the call center.
• Identify the processes required to complete the major call center tasks including benchmark costs.
• Identify the current customer / constituency communication types, costs, and volumes for each major function.
• Optimize the process to reduce call cycle time, function completion time, number of calls required, etc. to reduce cost while maintaining or improving service.
• Implement the optimized process, concentrating on rapid payback enhancements.

Business integration and process optimization

Objective: To align and optimize the key business processes with business objectives and their underlying automation support.

• For a given department identify the business objectives and identify the key services and metrics associated with that goal.
• For those key services or functions, identify the most critical from a cost, revenue, or critical path perspective, and analyze the services in terms of tasks required, data required, communication and communication methods and costs required, etc.
• Identify the current cost of the process and the possible reductions in cost and/or increase in revenues possible through intelligent optimization of the process.
• Optimize those processes by identifying what is required to improve the level, decrease the cost, decrease the communication tasks, or increase the customer satisfaction within the process. This could include improved use of imaging to reduce cycle time, improved integration with existing databases to reduce required customer entry sand communication, etc.
• Develop the business and automation support requirements, estimated costs, and work plan to implement the change. Aim for 30-60, 90, and 180 day milestones, implementations, and investment returns.
• Implement the changes utilizing internal, Coreclusion, or third party resources.
  

Sales Process / Sales Configuration / Identification of customer Net Present Value (NPV)

Objective: To understand the complete customer relationship and maximize lifetime value.

• Development of rapid, order of magnitude models based upon existing data and cost figures.
• Provide a guide to bank officers for the level of discounting and bundling required to meet margin targets.
• Identify customers of high end commercial services that require additional attention to ensure their retention due to competitive pressures.

Benefits

Tactical

• Decreased labor cost per transaction
• Decreased cycle time
• Increased available capacity
• Improved profitability
• Improved margins
• Increased customer retention
  • More informed customer service, fewer calls
  • Less hassle, less entry of data required for key services
• Decreased sales cost per revenue dollar
• Increased sales through :
  • Increased customer NPV
  • Decreased churn
  • Increased effectiveness of customer acquisition
  • Increased customer service quality

Strategic

• Alignment of investments with business critical processes and functions
• Enhancements integrated into a comprehensive architecture and plan

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