At a time where the banking world is becoming more competitive, it is critical for financial institutions to take a microscope to the individual needs of customers, and cater specifically for these. It is against this backdrop that Absa has managed to stay one step ahead with the use of SAS' Customer Intelligence (CI) software.
Speaking at the recent SAS User Forum in Johannesburg, Antony Hlungwane, general manager of analytical intelligence for Absa Group Information Services revealed some of the lessons learned on Absa's CI journey and how it has used the SAS technology to mould its strategies towards a customer-centric environment.
Goals and challenges
“The motivation for using SAS Customer Intelligence was for Absa to create the capacity for better understanding our customers, thereby enabling business to act in a purposeful manner resulting in higher customer satisfaction rates, improved staff motivation, reduced costs and increased revenue,” says Hlungwane.
“Learning from the implementation process, Absa realised Customer Intelligence should be seen as a continuum, where creating an intelligent workspace is key. It needs structured thinking to make it work and an environment where everyone in the company is striving towards a common goal.”
Some of the major challenges that Absa faced during its implementation included duplication of activities across functions, data quality issues, shortage of skills as well as change management. Hlungwane says the skills shortage also resulted in highly skilled staff doing menial jobs resulting in low job satisfaction.
“We also realised that our business partners lacked awareness about the technology and capability that we had built and thus our deliverables were not always embedded in the business,” adds Hlungwane.
The benefits
“In spite of these challenges, we worked closely with our business units, SAS and our technology partners to overcome each one as they arose. The result of which has been a highly successful project that is yielding phenomenal results.
Absa now drives key campaigns through the SAS Customer Intelligence solution; it marries this with its data and is able to target campaigns at an individual level. This includes the ability to target LSM population statistics, geographical footprint, and even social lifestyle.
The bank is able to analyse behavioural patterns and have alerts for altered behaviour, signalling a change in an individual's patterns which may impact their status in the system. These triggers and tracking enable Absa to more effectively deploy cross-selling and up-selling techniques designed to encourage customer retention.
“After deploying the solution, we experienced a phenomenal increase in demand and ended up running more than 200 campaigns a month, and we now benefit from not annoying customers with information that is not relevant to them,” states Hlungwane.
In addition, Hlungwane says Absa has managed to overcome skills shortages by running intern programmes for university- and school-leavers, enabling it to continually grow the internal resources needed to work on the system.
The end result
“We can now look at the behavioural patterns of our clients, have set up alerts for changed behaviour and have triggers that enable us to up-sell and cross-sell to our customers, giving them the best banking solution for their needs,” ends Hlungwane.
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