Use Case Corner
At a major national bank, the marketing role is changing from supporter of research and sales to defining market strategy. Traditional IS support is marginal and completely inadequate. The situation is complicated by multiple mergers and acquisitions, with no common data warehouse for all systems.
A project was initiated with a goal of shortening the update cycle on CIF/product data received from outside vendors, from the existing quarterly update to a monthly update cycle. The problem identified was that it took longer to receive, validate, and load an update of customer information from the vendor than the time period the system was targeting. In other words, the targeted time frame was a monthly update, but it took longer than a month to get an update in from the vendor validated and loaded to the receiving database. Hence, there was no way to move from a quarterly update to a monthly update.
Solving this problem involved executing the following steps:
1. | Create a model of the update process. In this step, the team documented all the steps required to create an update file, including activities carried out by the vendor through the actual delivery of data and its verification and loading at the end of the process. A team of investigators visited the vendor site to interview all the team members involved in the process of creating files and preparing them for delivery to the bank. Discussions about how this was done allowed the team to understand the timing of critical steps and where time was spent at every step of the way. The same team of investigators also studied the delivery mechanisms and talked to bank employees about how the update files were received and loaded to the system. These steps were also documented and timing considerations noted. |
2. | Identify variances. Next, the team looks at the overall process document to identify places where the standard steps are not followed, and to understand why these variances are happening. They also identify steps which are performed differently under different circumstances and why. |
3. | Identify solutions: places to streamline the process. Now the team is able to locate stages of the process which can be streamlined, either by correcting variances or by reorganizing steps for greater efficiency. By looking at the total process rather than just a fragment owned by a particular group, efficiencies of scale can be applied. |
4. | Set up test procedures. Finally, test procedures must be identified and put in place to verify that the streamlining changes are applied correctly and that they yield the expected results. |
By following these steps, the team was able to shorten the delivery time for updates of customer information to less than a month. One source of Product and Customer data is available on time, updated monthly, consolidating 60 branches nationwide—easily accessible to all. Marketing is no longer making pricing decisions in the $15-$20 million range without credible estimates of revenue impacts and customer price sensitivity. This is rapid deployment of data and processing while cutting costs through streamlining and consolidation. General Bank estimated savings of up to $2.3 million each year in profit not lost through customer attrition because of pricing and product dissatisfaction.