Case Study: How to create CRM for the banking sector

Today’s customers have fully embraced the convenience of the digital age in the banking industry. Not only do they prequalify for a loan on their laptops, but they explore credit card options via smartphones. Moreover, they could have their mortgage through one financial institution and several credit cards through another. According to recent surveys, about 95% of customers trust their banks and are convinced that their banks protect the online banking platform and customer data. Around 39% of consumers use banking apps as their primary method of online banking, as these platforms provide an end-to-end customer experience and meet customer needs. That’s why banks should adopt a customer-focused approach to their services by switching to a feature-rich customer relationship management (CRM) solution. Let’s dive into the details and find out how to create a CRM solution for the banking sector.

What exactly is a banking customer relationship management (CRM) solution?

A banking CRM is similar to a traditional one that helps manage and build relationships with potential customers through automated workflows, customization options, social media tools, etc. However, banking CRM differs in use - it streamlines key financial processes and workflows such as account onboarding, portfolio modeling and claims processing, provides closer integration with financial accounts and offers easy access to all data. Not only does it help banks serve customers better, but they can also provide a more personalized journey for their customers.

What are the types of CRMs?

A great number of businesses apply different approaches to interacting with their clients more effectively and use different types of CRM software that serves this purpose. Let’s take a closer look at them below!

• Industry-specific (vertical): this type of CRM is designed specifically for companies in a certain industry (real estate, finance, transportation, hospitality, etc.) and equipped with out-of-the-box functionality to streamline common industry workflows and processes.
• Multi-purpose (horizontal): this type of CRMs performs a broad variety of functions and is useful to nearly all business processes and workflow. In addition to that, it can be customized and linked with other back-end solutions.

Why do you need a banking CRM?

Today’s financial organizations and institutions need technologies with complete functions to bridge the gap between business workflow and customers. That’s where the CRM system comes into play. Here are some points that can be good justifications for implementing a banking CRM.

• The need to build loyal relationships with clients;
• The need to retain existing clients and ease the onboarding of the new ones;
• The need to keep all customers’ info in one place;
• The need to automate financial processes and workflow;
• The need to drive new business opportunities by expanding the customer base.

How to create CRM for the banking sector

Creating a successful and well-designed solution requires a step-by-step implementation plan. Let’s take a closer look at how to carefully plan the process and avoid common pitfalls.

1. Align goals with the business requirements. Before you start the development process, you need to identify your business goals and ways to contribute to them with the new CRM. In addition to that, it’s imperative to define the list of the requirements and functions of the final CRM solution.

2. Identify and involve stakeholders. Only by involving both front-line and back-office personnel in the process can you collect their opinions and needs. This will help you identify how your CRM should look and work, what business processes in your organization have to be re-defined or automatized.

3. Find a reliable IT company. You need to choose the right software provider for a successful CRM rollout. Once you select an IT company, you can explain and come up with the best vision of your banking CRM solution.

4. Educate your staff. It’s essential to prepare your employees to switch to a CRM system. Not only should you tell them about CRM implementation timelines, but you need to provide relevant training and keep them informed about possible changes in business processes and responsibilities.

5. Support and improvement. Once the CRM solution has been implemented, you need to collect real-time feedback from your staff. This will help you identify areas that should be improved or changed.

What’s the idea of the project?

Currently, leaders in the banking sector aim to save their companies from bankruptcy and retain existing clients as well as simplify the onboarding of new ones. That’s why banking can’t go without CRM. In addition to that, employees will have all the necessary tools to gather clients’ data that helps them deliver more personalized services and increase customer engagement.

With our extensive experience, we can develop and implement a variety of software solutions for companies in e-commerce and e-learning, logistics and booking, fintech, healthcare and recruiting sectors. With banking CRM, financial companies and organizations can increase productivity, improve employee efficiency and speed up business processes. In addition to that, the CRM system addresses the following:

• enabling better storing and using the information on potential and existing customers;
• enabling visualizing information;
• generating a variety of reports to gain in-depth insights;
• streamlining document management;
• minimizing the number of mundane administrative tasks.

Having that in mind, our development team has come up with a great concept in developing a CRM to meet all the business needs and requirements in the banking sector. Let’s delve into the details below.

The development process of the banking CRM

The banking CRM development process goes from concept to production, as described below.

Team

To develop and implement a banking CRM system, we needed the following specialists:

• 1 Business analyst (BA)
• 1 Project manager (PM)
• 1 UI/UX designer
• 2 Front-end engineers
• 2 Quality assurance engineers (QA)
• 2 Backend engineers
• 1 Android engineer
• 1 iOS engineer

Methodology

To create a banking CRM, we proposed the use of the agile methodology in terms of its ability to respond to change and deal with uncertainty. Not only did it help us identify what uncertainty we faced, but we could also figure out how we could adapt to that and balance the workload. As a result, we needed 24 sprints to demonstrate the work done and complete the project successfully.

Development

At the very start, our Business Analyst had an interview with stakeholders to elicit all the requirements for the future solution. Only by gathering all the essential information can the BA specialist prepare the functional specifications for the project. Based on the functional requirements specification, our team could define the users’ roles, their journeys, features and functionality, etc. The system includes user roles such as Procurement Manager, Financial Director and Administrator. Banking CRM has the following features:

• Contact Management
• Lead Management
• Customer Engagement
• Marketing Management
• Pipeline and Funnel Monitoring
• Integration Capabilities
• Workflow Automation

According to the documentation, the Project Manager provided stakeholders with a preliminary estimate and suggested the roadmap for the development process of the banking CRM. After approval, our PM broke down the planned scope of work (so-called Backlog) into smaller chunks named 2-week sprints. In addition to that, the Project Manager reported to the client and stakeholders, mitigated risks, etc.

Then the team selected features from the backlog to be developed by the end of this sprint and started the design, development and testing process. Generally, QA engineers worked together with front-end and back-end software engineers in close collaboration to detect any potential issues. Only by fixing all the bugs could we launch the banking CRM and make improvements based on the client’s requirements.

User Roles

• Personal Banker: a user who is responsible for reaching out to leads and potential customers to expand financial services offered, providing advisory services, etc.
• Banking Managing Director: a user who is responsible for managing bankers, monitoring their performance, developing/executing the company’s business strategies and providing strategic advice.
• Administrator: this role covers all administrative functions (approve the email addresses, customize fields, set up user roles, etc.) within the banking CRM system with the inability to create records for accounts, leads, reports, etc.

Personal Banker Dashboard

You can sign in as a Personal Banker and land on the Dashboard page. Here you can discover Reminders, Tasks, Recent events, Pipeline, etc. There is also a navigation bar on the left. It is made up of tabs labeled to represent the information that it links to. In addition to that, the available tabs depend on your user role. As a Marketing and Sales Manager, you can see the following tabs: Dashboard, Leads, Campaigns, Customers, Activities, Notifications, etc. Let’s take a closer look at them below!

Leads

The Leads feature allows you to collect lead and customer information, identify what works and what doesn’t, forecast and analyze the activity. In addition to that, you can easily update the status of leads and add important documents. This will help you keep leads information up-to-date and better concentrate on the tasks. Moreover, you can identify what action you need to take to bring your leads to the next stage in the pipeline. Generally, the pipeline includes the following stages - New, Contacted, Qualified, Unqualified, Converted.

Accounts

The Accounts feature allows you to display all the important data about the leads converted into accounts within the system. On this page, you will see the following tabs - Details, Financial Accounts, Relationships and Goals. On the right, there is an activity feed showing your recent actions within this account - an event, a task or a call.

Opportunities

With the Opportunities feature, you can simplify your business workflow and accelerate overall service productivity within an opportunity cycle. The opportunity cycle includes the following phases - Assessment Needed, Proposal, Negotiation, Closed Won. Not only does it help you visualize the steps within your sales process, but you can also identify the chances of winning the deal.

Reports

The Reports feature allows you to be in the know about your performance. Apart from seeing your sales progress, you can also discover your sales performance. In addition to that, you can find out the top open opportunities and opportunities in the final stages to take the right steps and make a deal.

Notifications

The Notifications feature provides you with the latest information about leads, activity feed, recent events, assigned tasks, etc. Therefore, you will not miss out on any essential information or task that needs to be completed by the end of the day. Undoubtedly, you can take significant advantage of this feature.

Banking Managing Director Dashboard

Once you log in to the banking CRM system as a Banking Managing Director, you will land on the Dashboard page. Here you will find the following information - Accounts Opened and Closed, Accounts by Type, Deposits to Goal, Expenses to Budget, Non-Interest Income to Budget, Pipeline by Stages, highly customized.

Leads

The Leads feature allows you to easily track and distribute leads in terms of requirements or other criteria needed. In addition to that, you can get a clear view of the pipeline and the next actions. Not only does it help you keep track of the personal bankers’ activities, but you can also monitor where they are within the pipeline.

Accounts

Thanks to the Accounts feature, you are in the know about all the leads converted into accounts. Such information as Details, Financial Accounts, Relationships and Goals allows you to collect and analyze this data. Not only does it help you forecast customer behavior, but you are also aware that information is up-to-date.

Opportunities

The Opportunities feature allows you to discover deals in progress. Not only can you track information about deals, but you also can identify which accounts they’re for, who the personal banker is and forecast the steps to win. In addition to that, you can monitor deal statuses and be informed about any updates.

Reports

Thanks to the Reports feature, you are in the know about all sales forecasts. Whether you want to track team performance or view sales history, you can create reports with a simple click. With customized reports, you can check key business metrics and get all the essential information to identify required steps and close deals faster.

Administrator Dashboard

Only by registering as an Administrator can you land on the Dashboard page. It is the main hub of navigation within the banking CRM. Here you will see the breakdown of information and key widgets.

Users

The Users feature allows you to view information about all users within the CRM solution. To better navigate, you can find a well-structured table with the following columns: ID#, First Name, Last Name, Email, Mobile Phone, Status (Active/Inactive), Last Login, Actions. Also, you can use a search option to find a user or apply filters and make any changes required.

Accounts

The Accounts feature allows you to review all the information about accounts used by staff in their day-to-day work without changing any records. However, you can change a password or confirm who has access to appropriate accounts. Here you will find the following table: Account Name, Full Address, Type, Source, Phone, Actions.

Integrations

With the Integration feature, you can integrate banking CRM with social media, automated platforms or any other third-party services. This will add additional opportunities to improve communications, launch highly customized email campaigns or inform clients about upcoming events quickly and easily.

System Settings

This feature allows you to maximize the benefits of the banking CRM and meet the needs of your organization. Only by customizing the default settings can you monitor and control sign-on, connections, language, environments, user roles, password information and set up available third-party solutions.

Key features of the CRM for the banking sector

• Contact Management: with this feature, you can easily store and retrieve clients’ contact information such as names, phone numbers, addresses, transactional data, current account balances, etc.
• Lead Management: thanks to this feature, banking employees can automatically qualify, analyze and nurture the leads to be converted into new banking clients.
• Marketing Campaign Management: with this feature, you can identify the strategies and create, design and run marketing campaigns that meet your business goals.
• Pipeline and Funnel Monitoring: thanks to this feature, banks can monitor funnels and pipelines, estimate effectiveness/ineffectiveness and make appropriate changes.
• Reporting: with this feature, you can have a better understanding of how your business is going on and make wise decisions.
• Sales Automation, analytics and forecasting: with this feature, you can automate a plethora of time-consuming and paper-based processes to direct future strategies and make more precise forecasts for specific audience segments.
• Integration Capabilities: this feature allows you to connect applications, APIs, and devices across your banking organization to organize a more efficient and productive environment.

Benefits of the CRM solution for the banking sector

Here we have outlined key benefits you can derive from implementing a banking CRM. Keep on reading!

• Increased productivity: you can greatly boost the productivity of your teams, streamline the banking workflow by completely automating essential business processes in your financial organization.
• 360-degree view of every customer: you can get detailed information about every customer account and gain in-depth insight into their journey and experience with your bank or financial organization.
• Better forecasting: with customized reports, you can gain a much deeper understanding of your customers and make data-driven decisions to anticipate their needs as well as close more deals.
• Enhanced communication and collaboration: teams can quickly share information about the deals and leads. Not only does it help you make the process more efficient, but it also enables teams to communicate and collaborate faster.
• Increased customer retention: with a great amount of data available right at your fingertips, you can deliver more personalized services to your customers and foster long-term relationships with them.

Bottom line: Ready to switch to banking CRM?

The digital transformation has significantly changed the ways financial organizations interact with their clients and operate internal processes. Moreover, the growing number of financial organizations have forced banks to run more customer-driven businesses. That’s where the CRM system is crucial for your company in the banking sector. Only by creating and implementing CRM software within your company can you establish strong connections with your clients, increase staff productivity, reduce operational costs and deliver more personalized services. Don’t hesitate to drop us a line if you plan to transition to CRM.