Who is MLC, what does MLC do?
MLC is one of the largest wealth managers and financial services businesses in Australia. MLC is the wealth management team within the NAB Group.
Which of those parts use AWD?
AWD is actually used quite extensively throughout the business today. Certainly within the insurance business where I look after operations, AWD is a critical tool for us in terms of work management and workflow. Our platforms, business, and MLC wrap uses AWD, as does our corporate superannuation business Plum.
What are the benefits of AWD?
I feel that the solution provides a number of benefits to our business. At its core, AWD is helping us to organise the work for our people and understand how the work moves through the organisation end-to-end; from receipt by a customer, to execution of the request and issuing documentation for the customer. Within that, there are efficiency aspects and quality aspects that AWD helps us with. On that journey, we have exposed the system through reporting online to our customers so that they are getting an insight into what is going on in the operations area and that has helped them better understand how to engage with us.
Does AWD provide a competitive advantage to MLC?
AWD has allowed us to drive a competitive advantage in our service proposition. I guess in today's day and age, there are not many differentiators out there anymore, and two of the areas where you can differentiate - one is on relationship management and the other is on service. So having a tool that allows you to have a strong foundation in terms of understanding where your service levels are and gives you confidence around the promises that you make to customers and being able to deliver on those promises, is particularly important. That is at a macro-level. If you dive in a little bit more micro, we are constantly looking at ways to evolve the way that we use the tool. For instance, we have done a lot of work on advisor segmentation and the way that we have set up our operating model is to align it to that. The AWD system facilitates the movement of work to specific administrators within our business aligned with the adviser segmentation model, so our customers are getting a more specialised service. They are getting to build a stronger relationship with a small group of people within our team, and we are also able to hold our people more accountable to outcomes for specific customers, which they are enjoying because it is enabling them to build a relationship with specific customers.
What has the relationship been like between DST and MLC?
It has been a very positive relationship. I think the base level of capability has been strong and I think one of the features that has stood out for me is reliability and the stability of the system. So in 15-odd years, I think I could count on one hand the amount of times that we have had a system outage, which gives us a lot of confidence, and we have certainly scaled up the volume of business that we are pushing through the system, so there is a proven capability there in terms of the scalability of the solution.
Then from a customisation perspective, whenever we have wanted to evolve the solution, whether it was an interface to one of our underlying line of business systems, or whether it was to deliver some specific reporting, for instance around the segmentation piece, the team has always been there to work with us and has always delivered within the timeframes that we have expected, to meet promises that we are making to our business and to our customers. So, overall, it has been one of the more positive relationships that I have experienced.
How do you think AWD10 can further enhance some of MLC's processes?
The most exciting part of AWD10 for me is exposing reporting such as workflow status tracking to customers. It is really the tip of the iceberg in the way that you would want your customers to engage with you, and I think, in particular, the thin client option has me thinking about a number of possibilities where we can have our customers engaging directly with us, be it the advisor or the end-consumer. I think that, again, there is a win-win for both of us here in that I think we can create a more efficient, higher quality service out of some of that capability, but at the same time drive efficiencies for our business. If you can do both of those things with any solution that you are looking at, then it has got to be a good thing for your business.
View the full video testimonial on the DST Web site at: www.dstglobalsolutions.com/awd.
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