NAB finds gold at end of CRM rainbow

National Australia Bank claimed it had yielded $9.5 billion in deposits and lending drawdowns in the past year -- partly thanks to its CRM implementation.

NAB's internal development team worked in partnership with Teradata, a division of NCR, to design integral parts of the data warehouse -- including the Relationship Optimiser software and Communications Manager System.

The bank said its resulting CRM and database marketing capabilities had generated more than one million targeted customer leads and provided a "superior understanding of customer needs to better advise and deliver appropriate solutions".

NAB's head of customer relationship management Charles Lawoko said the bank had witnessed an “increased share of wallet” in key customer segments.

In addition, the bank was recently awarded an international prize -- the 2003 National Centre for Database Marketing (NCDM) Database Excellence Awards -- for its Teradata system. In winning the award, which was judged by an international panel of executives from IT organisations, Lawoko said the bank was the only Australian organisation to achieve this accolade and was amongst the world's most successful CRM implementations. 

National Leads -- an engine that identified and generated leads based on changes and events in a customer's transaction pattern -- was core to NAB's CRM process. Advanced analytics helped the bank to identify each customer's predilection to buy a product, respond to an offer, and could identify customers who may be switching to another service. The National Leads engine prioritised events and alerted the relevant Relationship Manager on a daily basis so that quick and appropriate action could be taken.

The engine also served as a communications gatekeeper, managing the frequency, content and channel used for customer interactions during marketing campaigns.

In an upgrade to its data warehouse hardware, NAB implemented Communications Manager System (CM3), which the bank expected would yield greater insight and control into its customer relationships, thereby increasing customer service levels, speeding up the sales cycle process and create revenue generating opportunities.

The bank again partnered with NCR in developing and designing CM3 and claimed to be the first institution worldwide to install the product as a production system.

Julian Beavis, Teradata's vice-president of Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia said: "It is significant that in the competitive environment of international financial services, the National has successfully chosen to pursue a relationship-based strategy.” The two organisations would continue the relationship, and aimed to develop CM3's functionality using various off-the-shelf tools as well as purpose built processes that continually improved CRM optimisation.