From the Editors Desk Mobile Payments 01. Realigning Mobile Payments: An Open System Solution 05 for an Evolving Industry

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2 Content Preface From the Editors Desk Mobile Payments 01. Realigning Mobile Payments: An Open System Solution 05 for an Evolving Industry 02. Mobile Money Transfers: Opportunities and Challenges 13 in an Evolving Market 03. Mobile Payments: A New Frontier for Payment/ 21 Money Service Providers Mobile Banking 04. Deploying Mobile Solutions- Choosing the Right Partner! The Future of Retail Banking: Mobile as a Core Delivery Channel Achieving Financial Inclusion by Leveraging Mobile Technology 43 Mobile Enterprise 07. Mobilizing the Enterprise - Strategies and Technologies to 51 Drive Organizational Readiness 08. The Role of Mobility in the Regulatory Ecosystem Ensuring Security in Enterprise Mobility Mobility - Driving Efficiencies and Growth in the Insurance Industry Workforce Mobility An Enterprise Perspective The Need for a Truly Mobile CRM (tmcrm) Solution 85

3 Financial Services in the Mobile Age 12 The Need for a Truly Mobile CRM (tmcrm) Solution Sumeet Lakhanpal Senior Project Manager Infosys Technologies Limited Vishal Bhat Technology Lead Infosys Technologies Limited To effectively compete in today's information driven world, it is imperative that a financial institution ensure that its most important resources employees, agents, advisors, customer care professionals, and sales force have access to reliable, real-time customer data. It must also ensure that these same employees are provided this accessibility wherever and whenever they interact with customers or prospects. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) must not only be real-time and endto-end, it must be mobile. Achieving a mobile CRM system is more complex than simply supplying mobile applications to the sales force. Mobility implies anywhere, anytime, and mobile phones are limited in space and connectivity. A Truly Mobile CRM (tmcrm) system integrates Mobile CRM (mcrm) with offline CRM, to create an always on solution for its customer-facing employees. This article examines the need for such a solution and provides an overview of the challenges in implementing a tmcrm platform. Introduction The customer is the prime focus of any business. The overall goals of most organizations are finding, attracting and winning new customers, nurturing and retaining existing customers, enticing former customers back into the fold, and reducing the costs of marketing and customer service. Maintaining strong customer relationships helps to retain and attract customers. CRM is a recognized, widely-implemented strategy for managing and aligning a company's interactions with customers. Effective CRM starts by focusing on the development of business strategies and by aligning an organization to serve customers. These business strategies are then executed, using CRM technology solutions. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes principally sales related activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support. Over the years, CRM has matured and broadened as a concept. Currently, it denotes a company-wide business strategy, embracing all customer-facing departments and even beyond. CRM sales continues to grow as enterprises seek to grow top-line revenues, improve the customer experience, and boost the productivity of customer-facing staff. When an implementation is effective, people, processes, and technology work in synergy to

4 Benefits of CRM Figure 1 CRM tools have been shown to help companies attain: Streamlined sales and marketing processes Higher productivity Sales Increased cross-selling opportunities Enhanced customer service, loyalty, and retention Increased call center efficiency Higher closure rates Better customer profiling and targeting Reduced expenses Increased market share develop and strengthen relationships, increase profitability, and reduce operational costs (see Figure 1). CRM solutions, in banks, help to significantly improve customer satisfaction levels. With advanced CRM solutions, banks have been able to manage their huge customer base, and mine it for information to find out various customer behavior trends and patterns. CRM in the banking industry: Helps provide better customer balance Increases customer retention Adds new customers/ opportunities Helps the sales staff close deals faster Increases efficiency of the banks Simplifies the marketing, sales process Truly Mobile CRM (tmcrm) Communications is the central aspect of customer relations activities. There are various channels through which companies can communicate with its customers. A tmcrm solution should have all of the following components: Traditional CRM products run in-house on corporate mainframes, mini computers, or desktops. They are stand-alone products tied to a specific machine operating system and graphical user environment, and can't be shared over public networks or run on popular web browsers. These solutions are useful for customer service help desk or support staff; with an integrated system that not only tracks communications, but provides the comprehensive overview needed to improve customer satisfaction. However, they have very limited use for sales force automation and marketing. E-CRM leverages the ever increasing power of the Web to deliver the best customer experience. As long as customers or customer service representatives have a browser and an Internet connection, they can use E-CRM products on any computer. E-CRM has 86

5 A Truly Mobile CRM Figure 2 E-CRM mcrm Mobile and Laptop. Offline Access Truly Mobile CRM Components boosted the options for self-service activities. Two different types of services can be provided. Reactive service - the customer has a problem and contacts the company. Proactive service - the manager has decided not to wait for the customer to contact the firm, but to be aggressive and contact the customer himself to establish a dialogue and solve problems. mcrm takes E-CRM one step further and allows customers or managers to access CRM systems from a mobile phone or PDA with internet access, resulting in high flexibility. Mobile technologies promise sales representatives and field service workers an efficient, fast way to stay current with their accounts. The theory behind mcrm is that through Web-enabled phones, PDAs and other tools, mobile professionals can access the latest information they need to better serve their customers. mcrm could be defined as services that aim to nurture customer relationships, acquire or maintain customers, support marketing, sales or services processes, and use mobile networks as the medium of delivery to the customer. mcrm has provided multiple benefits to organizations. It allows for a more versatile, mobile workforce and faster access to information (see Table 1). mcrm in banks has helped sales, marketing, and service departments to provide enhanced personalized customer service anytime, anywhere. mcrm is a solution that extends the reach of customer relationship management applications to any user, whenever and wherever needed. Obviously, the need for such a solution has only grown, as more and more employees work remotely. However, mobiles have various challenges and limitations. Handheld devices equipped to work with mcrm solutions have limited storage capabilities. Though new trends in database technologies, and availability of high-speed Internet connections have quelled some concerns. There is a challenge in matching device capabilities to appropriate tasks and activities of the CRM solution. 87

6 Benefits of Mobile CRM Table 1 Faster and easier access to data Real Time Data access, most current, up-to-date information available. Information about the client or lead can be known immediately via phone, laptop, PDA, or other mobile device. Amazingly easy to use and takes much of the stress off of professional sales people. Central data center Allows access to all the information all the time. Provides simultaneous and immediate access to all the information even if there is any changes in the client or lead. Leads stay hot--allowing for a highly mobile work force Makes it easier to ensure the lead gets nudged down the pipeline gently but effectively and ends up in the correct place. Professionals are no longer confined to the office; they can leave for an appointment or business trip and still remain totally connected to the workplace and their clients. Access to critical information anytime, anywhere Allows access to the information in the central database from anywhere in the world at any time, provided one has access to a mobile device that works. Conducive to sales professionals who travel a large part of the time. Competitive advantage and reasonable price Offers a competitive advantage because it provides a way to reach more customers than just using a traditional CRM system. Once priced ridiculously high, mobile CRM systems are now more reasonably priced, and this has added to their growth in popularity. A mobile solution has to support multiple platforms available in the market. Wireless connectivity is not available everywhere. Offline CRM: The final piece of the puzzle For the on-the-go organization, in many situations, mobile and online CRM solutions do not suffice. Consider a scenario where an organizer returns from a remote meeting where there was no online access to a CRM system. With him is a sign in sheet, listing 10 names with phone numbers, postal addresses and addresses that need to be entered into the CRM system. He has to perform the following tasks: The meeting itself needs to be entered One of the new contacts is a family member of an existing member (and they share the same house) One person on the list has indicated that their phone is temporarily disconnected All new entries should be coded to indicate that they were first contacted at the meeting One of the members has paid their dues - they need to be entered and have their dues payment recorded 88

7 One of the members facilitated the meeting, which should be recorded In this scenario, one has to note down all these tasks in a notepad and then manually type them in an online CRM system once internet access is available. Offline access to the CRM system would have saved him time and effort in performing these tasks. A truly mobile enterprise CRM solution should support offline access capabilities also. The offline support will help reduce the dependency on network connectivity and reliable bandwidth allowing an employee to work in real-time and be confident in the fact that changes were reflected accurately on both ends (see Figure 3). In some circumstances, mcrm may be able to get the job done. However, unreliable connectivity and limited capabilities - with regard to space and performance - makes using mcrm less desirable when compared to a robust, mobile, offline CRM solution. Taking all these facts into consideration, it's imperative to have a tmcrm solution that's available on desktop/ mobiles, as well as laptops with offline access. Such a solution gives users access to data through a variety of devices and interfaces. Challenges in Implementing a Truly Mobile Solution The challenges while building tmcrm solution can be broadly categorized as (see Figure 4): What goes where? Customization/ infrastructure support for components Synchronization strategy Data security Benefits of Offline CRM Figure 3 Maximize use of time while travelling - perform your tasks by taking them offline Access to account contact history information when on the go and not connected Add key account data As soon as you have information available and synch up later Cultivate stronger sales relationships by working sales leads in offline mode. Offline CRM Benefits Increased penetration in the emerging markets Improve customer service By having information available even when connection not available. Update account information No need to create notes and perform all activities again in online mode. Flexibility to employees to work from anywhere and Synchronize later - saving time and bandwidth 89

8 Challenges to Implementing a Truly Mobile Solution Figure 4 What can go on Mobile, Laptop, Offline Customization/ infrastructure support for components Synchronization strategy Data Security Challenges Ahead What can go on the Mobile, Laptop, and Offline? The most important question to be asked when building a tmcrm system is what features can be implemented on each component. A mobile solution has to perform differently than a solution on desktops. mcrm solutions are built on the understanding that a mobile sales representative doesn't need to carry around a whole lot of data with him. What he needs is access to the latest information, most likely to be needed by the customer. Similar decisions must be made when implementing the offline component, as a sales representative doesn't want to end up in a situation where the information available in offline mode is not synched up yet and refers to old information. Let's suppose a bank has launched a new product or modified the details of an existing one, and in front of a customer the sales representative is still showing the old product line because information was picked while accessing the system offline and the information available isn't up-to-date. In offline, there is no need to take the whole CRM database. The user needs to decide specific subsets of data to work with offline. Data filters can be defined to ascertain which records can be taken offline - such as My Active Accounts, My Active Cases, and My Recent Activities - and what cannot be taken offline. Examples of activities that should not be taken offline are: Assigning records Reports Sharing Workflow Customization and Infrastructure Support for Components Two types of components needs to be taken care of for any mobile solution: Client Side Server Side There are a significant number of mobile devices and platforms in the market today, with each having its own features, strengths and weakness, market share, and, most importantly, people acceptance. Therefore, a mobile application should be able to run on any environment that the end user may have. All these platforms have a different GUI and operating platforms. Also, to support comprehensive sets of mobile components, the server side infrastructure has to be designed taking care of these aspects. 90

9 Synchronization Strategy and Data Security Synchronization will play an important role in a tmcrm solution implementation that supports offline access. The handheld devices need to have data synchronization capabilities that include data push and pull and application updates. Important considerations in implementing a synchronization strategy will be: Conflict Strategy Conflict strategy is needed to ensure data integrity. The same set of data should be made available to both offline and online users. A user can have access to the record in online as well as offline mode, and changes done in both modes need to be reconciled at the time of synchronization to avoid data loss/ duplication or stale data integration. When and What to Synchronize When to synchronize online and offline data needs to be carefully planned, as the bulk of the data will be synced by the offline resources and this may affect the performance of the online systems. Infrastructure Support Data transferred over the network will contain specific customer data and information. Synchronization should happen over a secure network, with a proper authentication mechanism. Enough architect consideration should be given to track safe and secure synchronization completion and logging issues, if any. Security Consideration Smaller devices are more liable to be lost or stolen. The ability to cancel accessibility or destroy data on a device that falls into the wrong hands must be built in. Conclusion A tmcrm solution is necessary for a successful CRM strategy. By providing customer facing employees with CRM access on-the-go, anywhere, and anytime, a financial institution improves the efficacy of the interaction. Customer satisfaction is improved, and the prospect-to-customer transition is streamlined. Developing a tmcrm system requires the integration of mcrm, E-CRM, and offline CRM a task which is complicated by the need for data integrity and security. However, the payoff is worth the effort for the modern financial institution. References 1. relationship_management 2. Articles/Web-Exclusives/Viewpoints/ CRM-Customer-Relationship-Mobile aspx 91

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