Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in financial services

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Abstract

Today, many financial services organisations are rushing to become more customer focused. A key component of many initiatives is the implementation of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. Our research has highlighted that most institutions take a rather narrow view of CRM and as such, benefits have been limited. While second generation CRM has emerged to embrace the total organisation (hence Enterprise CRM), success in general has still not been widespread. In the paper, a framework is presented which is based on incorporating ebusiness activities, channel management, relationship management and back-office/front-office integration within a customer centric strategy.

Section snippets

Ebusiness

There has been tremendous hype surrounding the concept of ebusiness,4 much of it fueled by technology vendors and a media feeding frenzy, the like of which has not be seen before. One only has to pick up a newspaper to see the variety of `e'-related stories and advertisements. While there is a changing world out there it is important to maintain a

Channel management

Technology provides the financial service organisation with the capability to reach out to their customers through a variety of different channels. The advent of the Internet, Digital TV, smart cards, GSM phones and Kiosks holds the potential to radically alter the distribution channel landscape for retail financial services. No longer is it necessary for the banking business of the retail customer to be conducted in the high-street branch. Interactive televisions in homes across Europe,

Relationship management

The origional focus of CRM was to forge closer and deeper relationships with customers, `being willing and able to change your behaviour toward an individual customer based on what the customer tells you and what else you know about the customer' (Peppers et al., 1999). The premise being that existing customers are more profitable than new customers; that it is less expensive to sell an incremental product to an existing customers; customer retention would be maximised by matching products and

Management of the total enterprise

The experience with early CRM forays is that it is imperative to have total front-office/back-office integration. Customer-facing functions such as sales, marketing, call centres and other on-line support must become organisationally integrated with back-office processes.

Unfortunately, many banks operate as a string of carefully shielded fiefdoms, using individual departments setting up software and systems to handle core function that may or may not interact with other functional areas. For

Conclusions

The oft made statement that all economies need a banking system but not necessarily banks is beginning to come to fruition. Many players in today's financial services industry are non-banks and non-financial service organisations; just look at players like Marks & Spencer, AT&T, Intuit, General Motors, Virgin and British Gas. Consumer electronics giant Sony have recently announced their intention to provide online financial services through their Dreamcast electronic games consoles (Kunii, 1999

Web addresses of sites/companies mentioned in paper

  • Abbey National www.abbeynational.co.uk

  • American Express www.americanexpress.com

  • Banco Santander www.bancosantander.es

  • Bank of Scotland www.bankofscotland.com

  • Bank One www.bankone.com

  • Bank 24 www.bank24.de

  • BankAmerica www.bankamerica.com

  • Britannia Building Society www.britannia.co.uk

  • Charles Schwab www.schwab-europe.com or www.schwab.com

  • Citibank www.citibank.com

  • Datek www.datek.com

  • Deutsche Bank www.deutschebank.de

  • DLJ Direct www.dljdirect.co.uk

  • E*Trade www.etrade.co.uk

  • Ebank www.ebank.com

  • Egg www.egg.com

JOE PEPPARD, Information Systems Research Centre, Cranfield University School of Management, Cranfield, Bedford MK43 0AL, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

Joe Peppard is Senior Research Fellow at the Information Systems Research Centre at Cranfield School of Management, and also on the faculty of Trinity College, Dublin. His current research and consulting focuses on how organisations can leverage value and benefits from information technology. He is also Non-Executive Director of Managed

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    JOE PEPPARD, Information Systems Research Centre, Cranfield University School of Management, Cranfield, Bedford MK43 0AL, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

    Joe Peppard is Senior Research Fellow at the Information Systems Research Centre at Cranfield School of Management, and also on the faculty of Trinity College, Dublin. His current research and consulting focuses on how organisations can leverage value and benefits from information technology. He is also Non-Executive Director of Managed Solutions Corporation, a leading solutions provider to the financial sector.

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