Bringing Commercial Customers into Focus
Órla O’Sullivan · ABA banking journal · 1997
It's not often that a bank has an opportunity to buy museum quality software, but this month Union Bank of California becomes the first licensee of an apparently unique system for commercial calling officers, which was jointly developed by American National Bank & Trust Co. and KPMG Peat Marwick LLP. The system, which was for American National's exclusive use until last july, combines an integrated view of the customer relationship with customized contact management software that can be easily accessed by sales staff who are out of the office. The system, Mobile Solutions for Banking, might not sound like such a big deal. The Smithsonian Institute, however, recently deemed it distinguished enough to be included in the permanent collection of exponents of technological innovation, at the National Museum of American History. To boot, Microbanker, a publication focused on Pc-based banking systems, gave one of its annual awards to American National last year. Paul Blake, first vice-president in charge of market research and planning with American National, emphasizes that the predominantly commercial Chicago bank didn't exactly invent anything. American National is drawing on the same information as everyone else, he says. What's unique is getting it all together in this package. Very few banks integrate their various systems into one package, especially on the commercial side, says Blake. Mobile, and informed Alexandra Scoulas, a former colleague of Blake's and now a manager at KPMG, agrees. Scoulas, who led the Mobile Solutions project at American National, says it's rare for a bank to have formed an integrated picture of a commercial customer, though a few really huge banks have done so. What is unique, however, Scoulas believes, is to have access to such a system from any location. Wells [Fargo] is the only bank I know of up and running with something similar to American National's, but I don't know of anyone besides American National that has cracked the mobile piece in banking, Scoulas says. Mobile contact management software is commercially available for other types of sales personnel, and in developing the sales automation component of American National's system, KPMG customized a generic package, Salesoft, after having bought the code from the now-defunct supplier. While in the office a banker can pull information on any of the bank's customers or prospects or, while out of the office, just information pertaining to his own customers and prospects. One way the calling officer benefits from the portable database is that while on one call, he can see what other prospects are based nearby and, possibly, kill two birds with one stone. Also he sees exactly what bank products a customer has to date, so he can adapt his sales pitch accordingly. One of the things Union Bank wants to do, when it starts to test the system this December, is to link it to Union's proprietary electronic appointments book for all staff. (Union was just concluding contract negotiations for the product at the time of writing and, therefore, was not contacted for this piece.) With $29 billion in assets and 1,160 staff slated to use the system, Union's implementation will be far bigger than American National's. American National is a $9.5 billion-assets subsidiary of First Chicago Bank, with just 500 users -- 300 relationship managers and 200 support staff. One of the reasons KPMG's Chicago office approached the local bank as its development partner was that American National has a long history of painstaking data collection. That was particularly important given its clientele -- middle market companies, or those with annual revenues of between $5 million and $150 million. (American National is Chicago's leading bank in this sector, with about one third of the market.) About 80% of middle-market companies are privately owned, so there's very little information on them available for purchase, Scoulas explains. …