
05 May The first step: CRM in the bank
We found in one of the banking projects that the implementation of CRM concept and tools can make major changes in how the bank treats prospects and clients. Moreover, without making any measurements in this respect, we can say that it has contributed to raising the bank’s income. Implementing CRM is clearly a value-added project.
Going forward with this idea, all banks should have this project at least on the list of priorities, but things are not exactly that. The reasons are simple: they have a wrong idea about CRM or do not know what the first steps are.
A first step is really to change the wrong idea about CRM!
A very good way to do this is to organize a CRM vision workshop. It aims to define the bank’s vision for implementing the Customer Relationship Management concept. Practically, such an action must be present in the bank’s decision-makers room – people who cover various areas of activity: marketing, call center, sales, project management, etc. The most difficult part is to discuss issues related to the Customer Relationship Management concept and to motivate them in the workshop. This for an audience that starts from the belief that it does not need any change in that. Being decision-makers, they have to see the benefits of two important areas: increasing the bank’s revenue and optimizing the way in which internal resources are used. At first glance, a concept and a customer relationship management tool can not make any changes visible in any of the attractive areas, but here the CRM consultant has to intervene to highlight benefits. That’s why the success of this first step depends very much on the knowledge of the CRM consultant – the moderator.
Typically, such CRM initiatives come from IT & C market players who often bring a CRM solution consultant rather than a business one. Still many initiatives remain in this phase, some of them being resumed even a few years.
Another great advantage brought by this workshop is that with long-term vision all actions, larger or smaller projects will be in line with the defined vision. This will reduce the redundancy effort.
The delivery of this meeting must be a document approved by the bank’s management. It has to be translated into a CRM implementation strategy and then into projects that are linked to each other by the same objectives.
Defining CRM vision is a healthy way to start implementing in a bank-sized organization, but it’s just a small step towards defining CRM strategy.
CRM Directory | Ionel Dinu | May 2009
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