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Allied Irish Bank Case Study

The Benefits

• 287% increase in sales with first sales campaign
• 40% increase in sales conversion rate
• 10m euro additional revenue for the business
• Dramatic increase in speed of campaign to market resulting in a new campaign being generated within 48 hours
• Real-time access to customer interaction information within seconds of interactions taking place

The Customer

AIB Group, with assets of almost €81 billion, is Ireland's leading banking and financial services organisation. It employs more than 24,000 people in more than 800 offices around the world.

The Challenges

In 2000 AIB's Direct Banking Group identified the need to adopt a more consistent and professional approach to sales campaign management and improve their customer interaction processes. The driving business objective was to increase AIB's direct marketing capability. As such, AIB needed to:

• Develop a more consistent and professional approach to sales
• campaign management
• Increase sales revenue
• Increase the number of customer contacts
• Increase customer loyalty
• Provide ability to up-sell and cross-sell AIB banking products
• Efficiently execute multiple, concurrent sales campaigns
• Most critically, empower sales and marketing business users to generate IT-driven campaigns without technical assistance

Direct Banking recognised that to achieve their ambitions, they needed to change their sales strategy from the current product driven sales strategy, which reacted to inbound campaigns, to a more proactive, customer-centric approach that created outbound campaigns tailored to meet customer needs and establish or strengthen valuable customer relationships.

In addition, it was apparent that the underlying and disparate IT systems and platforms could not support such a vision and that the initiative needed to focus on a selection of technology capable of supporting the Direct Banking Group current and future objectives.

We are getting better information presented to the operator which allows us to make more calls, more contacts and more sales. We are getting better MIS, which means we get better control of our staff.

Jim Kidd, Sales and Development Manager
AIB Direct Banking

The AIB Strategic Response

After two years of investigation, AIB selected Sword Ciboodle as their solution provider and system integrator and Sword Ciboodle's business process management suite was selected as the framework for the sales project.

The factors which led to the selection of Sword Ciboodle included:

• The process-centric architecture of Sword Ciboodle
• Architecture focussed on high volume solutions
• Experience in customer sales and service implementations
• Legacy system integration capability
• Model based configuration providing an exact match to AIB's sales business processes
• Support for multiple-channels
• Flexibility to adjust to the inevitable evolution of sales business practice

The Approach

Committed to delivering innovation, Sword Ciboodle has always adopted a collaborative and integrated approach when working with clients. AIB recognised the ease with which Sword Ciboodle could marry the AIB strategic acumen to the strong Sword Ciboodle execution capabilities to help drive the prosposed change program.

Sword Ciboodle was selected to implement the system in conjunction with internal AIB staff. The solution was to be created by combining Sword Ciboodle's quick start processes with custom-built business processes to provide a 100% fit to AIB's requirements. Sword Ciboodle consultants supported these efforts by conducting a series of process-driven workshops with AIB staff from every level of the organisation in order to ensure a comprehensive understanding of requirements.

From these discussions, it was agreed that the system (entitled CRM Direct) would be delivered in three controlled phases. The first would be delivered in four months; the second, six weeks later; and the third, a further six weeks on.

Regular meetings ensured that all initiatives as well as ongoing relationships with key stakeholders were continually reviewed. This strategy allowed Sword Ciboodle to gain unrivalled insight into AIB's processes and to position itself as a partner which, based on its experience in other sectors, added value to those processes, not simply a partner that implemented a solution.

We consider Sword Ciboodle a trusted advisor, delivery partner and solution builder.

Jim Kidd, Sales and Development Manager
AIB Direct Banking

Sword Ciboodle's framework allows AIB to:

• Develop and implement sales campaigns without the need for IT assistance
• Consolidate customer data from disparate systems real-time to match and model AIB's products to suit customer requirements
• Separate business logic from integration services - Sword Ciboodle's Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) templates allow business rules to directly control AIB's telephony systems (Aspect ACD and Avaya Mosaix dialer)
• Provide a single model of business rules and a single view of customer interaction data
• Reduce training costs by providing data-driven frequently asked questions (FAQs) and scripts to guide the less experienced agents through the sales process
• Leverage investment in existing legacy systems
• Support rapid iterative development
• Support incremental delivery aligned to strategic objectives and priorities

Most importantly, Sword Ciboodle has given AIB the pathway to process-driven customer sales through the application of BPM principles. The solution is business-defined, flexible and cost effective.

The Solution

Sales Engine

In order to support AIB's many business and technology goals, Sword Ciboodle is powering a suite of sales business processes and customer interactions across multiple channels, platforms and integration points:

Sales Processes

• Campaign Builder
• Campaign Execution

CRM Infrastructure

• Product Catalogue
• Universal Agent Desktop
• Agent Management
• Contact Management
• Workflow Management
• Exception Handling
• Exec Dashboard and Reporting
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Channels

• Assisted Voice In / Out
• Email In / Out

Integration Points

• Aspect ACD Telephony system
• Avaya Mosaix Dialler
• Call Recording Product
• Performix - An MIS and agent reporting system
• Core Banking Platform CIF (Customer Information File), the AIB backend system run on an AS400 mainframe
• MQ Series Middleware

The Benefits

• Separate business processes from integration services
• Graphically modelled business rules and a single view of data
• Leverage investment in existing legacy systems
• Support rapid iterative development aligned to strategic priorities

Today

The CRM Direct initiative was considered a resounding success: it was delivered both on time and under budget. What's more, CRM Direct continues to provide AIB with direct marketing capabilities for the sale of banking products (including savings & investments, credit cards, personal loans, holiday insurance and mortgages). Commenting on the success of the implementation;

I was very surprised that Sword Ciboodle could give me all that I wanted. In the timescale, I cannot believe what you have been able to provide. My expectations have been surpassed

Jim Kidd, Sales and Development Manager
AIB Direct Banking<

• Increase sales and to capitalise on cross- and up-selling opportunities to existing customers through inbound and outbound channels
• Link campaign delivery with data warehouse analytics so that AIB can proactively use customer information to handle sales more efficiently
• Execute and tightly control multiple campaigns in parallel, and to monitor effectiveness through online dashboards
• Maximise revenues generated from campaigns by linking complementary products and allowing agents to match these products against a customer's profile and current product
• Deliver consistent branding and service across each campaign channel
• Achieve targeted cost savings and efficiency improvements
• Reduce training time and improve employee attrition rates
• Achieve competitive advantage through business agility and process innovation
• Future-proof its technology investment

AIB has moved from merely selling products, to considering individual customers and delivering products and services that directly meet their needs.

Effectively, we are getting better information presented to the operator, which allows us to make more calls, more contacts and more sales. We are getting better MIS, which means we get better control of our staff

Jim Kidd, Sales and Development Manager
AIB Direct Banking

Tomorrow

The success of CRM Direct led to a further implementation of Sword Ciboodle, as the solution was rolled out to First Trust, AIB's subsidiary in Northern Ireland. Sword Ciboodle went live there in 2004 and has already increased sales significantly. Sword Ciboodle continues to work with AIB Group's CRM team in process excellence and visionary workshops. Maura McEvilly, Head of CRM, describes the experience,

We found the Sword Ciboodle team excellent to work with in that they very quickly understood our key business priorities. They adopted a collaborative approach to providing solutions and demonstrated a common sense approach to enabling our end state vision

Maura McEvilly
Head of CRM, AIB Direct Banking