CRM-solutions aimed at strengthen­ing and developing the relationships between the company and our clients. The system use allows you to collect data on consumer preferences and customer expectations which, in its turn are taken into account during the development of new bank prod­ucts and services. Thus, CRM enables more effective cross-sell, offers its cus-tomers a desired product in time, and thus increases the bank income.

CRM AS SALES DRIVER

Lending organizations have multiple chan­nels of communication with customers. CRM-system provides the integration of such channels. Technology allows bank employees to handle incoming phone calls (both using the contact center and with­out it), service calls, to create a single cus­tomer profile, which provides available con­tact information and the information on all cleared deals.

"Speaking about the importance of op­erational CRM in the business of a cred­it institution, I would like to draw your at­tention to the fact that it allows you to standardize the work of employees in cus­tomer contact points. A retail bank process­es are of a mass character and the quality of work is provided mainly by the uniform­ity of these processes. CRM-system allows you to adjust them according to the differ­ent types of customers individually, min­imizing or even abolishing paper instruc­tions. The employee training process is also simplified, resulting in their work perfor­mance. The amount of their errors decreas­es and they are more focused on a customer i.e. on service and sales. CRM-system auto­matically generates reports about the cli­ent work stages, i.e. so-called "sales fun­nels". The comparison of these "funnels" generated at different points of contacts al­lows to identify the most efficient processes and share best practices for the entire busi­ness", - says Tatiana Gaidai, the head of customer relationship management depart­ment of "Renaissance Credit" bank.

The expert notes correctly embedded operational CRM which enables you to fix all bank communications with a custom­er: in retail outlets at individual level and in the context of direct marketing cam­paigns at mass level. This information al­lows you to get a full understanding of a credit organization interaction with a cus­tomer that plays an important role in the process of loyal customer partnership de­velopment.

According to experts, the technolo­gy allows you to automate the process of loan applications review and thus reduce the cost of credit decisions. Besides CRM minimizes the human factor influence in such an important bank process as a loan provision approval.

MAIN CRITERIA: BANK BUSINESS OBJECTIVES

Experts emphasize that depending on the business areas - mortgages, consum­er loans, deposits - the requirements to the format and CRM-systems functionali­ty are being increased.

"Choosing a platform for corporate CRM, credit companies tend to perform a great work for system analysis at the Rus­sian market. Our bank is not an exception. The thing is that each CRM-system has its advantages in terms of business func­tionality and IT. There are platforms that contain a large number of pre-configured processes of interaction with clients, con­solidating the best business practices ac­cumulated over the system lifetime period at the market. This feature simplifies the business analyst work for the implementa­tion. There are platforms a key advantage of which is the use of cloud technologies. Such decisions take the load from IT in re­spect of system maintenance and support, which may be very important in the course of its operation. But it is worth to note here that the use of cloud technologies may be indirectly limited by RF legislation regu­lations concerning personal data protec­tion. There are also platforms that may be applied not only to the relations with cus­tomers, but allow to automate a number of other bank business processes, technologi­cally similar to the processes of interaction with customers. By taking into account all these factors, as well as the importance of CRM for the bank business, it is sometimes worth to entrust the choice of a platform to independent experts", - Tatiana Gaid­ai ("Renaissance Credit" bank) shares her experience.

Sergey Zhirnov, the Head of Nordea Bank frontal systems management says: "First, think about the tasks that you want to assign to the CRM-system. If these are initial tasks such as an order restore in a customer base some easy systems with a relatively simple functionality, perhaps in the cloud version will do. If the system is purchased for upgrade to realize numer­ous business processes of client data han­dling, you need the technologies with built-in instruments to implement workflow, the role model of user access and other prop­erties of large industrial CRM. Our CRM-system is founded on this approach that al­lows us to develop its functionality without interfering with instrumental limitations. Secondly, pay attention to the ecosystem, which is around each specific platform (I mean a vendor's reputation); the compe­tences of partner companies implementing the system; the availability of qualified per­sonnel which can be invited to the staff; the experience of other organizations that have implemented the system. They all can help with some professional advice in the diffi­cult task of CRM-system implementation."

WHAT'S THE WAY OF EFFICIENCY INCREASE?

Operational CRM allows you to con-so-lidate fragmented information about clients and to create a single interface to work with it. Thus, the contact cent­er front-office employees will be able to work in one system; therefore, they will greatly improve the efficiency of custom­er service. Besides, CRM introduction in­creases the amount of sales and improves the quality of service, as employees have a quick access to all necessary informa­tion that allows them to develop client interaction process more efficiently. Is there any statistics confirming the grow­ing number of customers through the in­troduction of CRM-systems?

"CRM use should help to increase the number of clients that can be achieved mainly through two types of qualitative changes resulting from its implementa­tion. Automation of manual processes leads to the first qualitative change. CRM­system increases the speed, transparency and control of the client interaction pro­cesses, making them less dependent on the human factor," - Tatiana Gaidai ("Renais­sance Credit" bank) explained. The second qualitative change, according to the expert observations is related to CRM capabili­ties to manage flexibly the business logic of customer relationships. A good system allows to change its algorithms, perform its adjustment according to the most comp­lex business requirements. "Our expe­rience shows that it is possible to gain 30-40% of efficiency after the introduc­tion. These numbers are an attainable goal, as vendors and system integrators have a good expertise concerning re-engi­neering processes", - the expert said.

However, experts point out that ac­cording to CRM value it is more correctly to talk not about the number of custom­ers growth due to the system introduc­tion (this growth is influenced by other factors), but about the lending process efficiency improvement.