Transformer

Multi-Channel Integration

Gomathy Subramanian

About the author:

Principal - Banking Solutions

Gomathy has over 25 years of business and IT experience in Consulting,

Financial services, Airlines and retail industries gained in Australia, Hong
Kong, US and India. She has led large initiatives in Strategic Planning, Core
Banking, CRM, Bill presentment and payment, Infrastructure, Independent
testing and Outsourcing.

Introduction

Time, ease of operations and costs influence business in today's

world, and the financial services industry is no exception. Customers
in the financial services industry are mature, savvy and technologically
better equipped than customers of most other industries. Whether it is
the baby boomers, Gen X or Gen Y, the proliferation of the Internet has
increased the level of technological awareness and customer
expectations. Financial services companies are now embracing multichannel integration (MCI) as a key initiative to acquire, retain and
service their customers.

MCI refers to the simultaneous and consistent delivery of information,

products and services by an organization on all or some of its
channels, such that customers derive a seamless experience when
they switch channels during their purchase and service activities. The
term channel refers to the various transacting, marketing, servicing

and communication media used to interact with customers. These

include branches, call centers, secured emails, mobile devices,

internet, ATMs, Kiosks and paper-based media like product
brochures.

Some scenario examples:

1. A customer wishing to buy a product obtains product information

on the web, starts with the application over the web, walks up to
the branch or a Kiosk to continue the process, provides required
documentation, and obtains approval status on his mobile phone.
2. A customer calls into the call centre for a financial transaction,
when completed is offered a credit card limit increase which he is
delighted to accept. An outbound call is saved here.
3. A customer updates his contact details at the branch and the
information is immediately available on other channels.
Some of these resemble a CRM strategy; however a CRM is more

focused on managing relationships, while MCI is a wider concept

managing sales and services in a consistent manner. MCI is a valueadd to CRM.

In Business terms, MCI focuses on the totality of customer experience

and operator experience. In Technology terms, its thrust is on a

Get the same and consistent level of service across all channels
Purchase any product through any channel.

2. Competition

Intense competition has made it imperative for organizations to focus

on being market differentiators by offering MCI as a further step in
customer satisfaction. An increasing number of players have entered
this space by offering products and servicing them effectively through
newer channels such as mobile phones (SMS), Internet and call
centers.
3. Cost optimization

With systems becoming more complex, the costs of developing and

maintaining multiple delivery systems out of siloed applications
become prohibitive. Companies are focusing their energies on
optimizing such costs.

4. Third party channel products integration:

As organizations move towards 'buying' off-the-shelf software rather

than developing systems themselves based on speed, cost and other
considerations, the need to seamlessly integrate such acquired
software with back-office systems is increasing. This is another major
driver towards building a multi-channel integrated platform.

5. Technology advances

The recent technological advances in connectivity, bandwidth,

communications, security have simplified channel integration. Eg.
Video communications can now be embedded in channel
communications through use of improved compression technology,
firewall mechanisms, etc. whether it is with customers, partners or
employees.

What is involved?

A transformation in the technology landscape would result in the

following changes:

1. Products: Organizations would be able to offer products across

channels. The product information will be consolidated, maintained

and delivered from a common store.

framework-driven integration of products, services and information

2. Services: Companies would be able to service customer requests

technological agility, reducing technology clutter and costs.

from one channel and carry it through another without duplication of

both at the front-end and the back-end to varying degrees, bringing in

What are some of the Business drivers?

1. Customer knowledge and expectations:

With improved awareness, customer expectations are also increasing.

Customers want to be in a position to
o

Choose the channel to transact with a bank

Obtain information from any channel (eg. Product details, terms

and conditions, calculators)

through multiple channels, would be able to pick up the interaction

effort or customer inconvenience. The hand-offs will be seamless to

the customer.

3. Master data management: All data related to products,

customers and other information will be aggregated, stored and

accessed from a single repository. This means that the information

from disparate applications will need to be deduped, updated and

maintained in a central database. A common reference data store

needs to be maintained to access this data.

4. Content management: All content and data enrichment delivered

to sales and servicing will be stored and managed from a common
platform. Content will include canned audio or video clips that could
be used as assistance in self-service scenarios. There could also be
live sessions with experts for special categories of customers
facilitated through the framework.

5. Business and workflow rules: A common framework for

business rules, workflow rules, and integration components would
enable banking processes to be optimized for various channels, and
define preferred customer-product-channel associations.

6. Communication: Communication through various channels both

internal and external will be integrated.

What the benefits and how do you measure them?

1. Costs: Cost efficiencies can be achieved through multi-channel

integrations. Not only are the development and maintenance costs

reduced, the timeframes are also substantially reduced.
The costs will essentially vary according to

o Number of channels, number of back-end systems

o Maturity of front-end and back-end applications

o Number of data stores, contents and de-duplication efforts

o Availability of integration components, common rules and content

engines Typically a large component of costs namely travel is
reduced through the use of video enablement. This in itself could be
a significant contributor to ROI.

2. Speed-to-market: A common framework and common services

through integration provides ability to reuse services and allows faster
product launches and services delivery across multiple channels.

3. Sales: Cross-sell measures, campaign effectiveness, lead closures

and pipeline leakages are some of the benefits from targeted marketing
and effective lead management across channels.

4. Service: Customer satisfaction (CSAT) score is a key measure of

evaluating customer service. Companies can improve CSAT scores
by anticipating a customer's need, offering the same services and
consistent information across multiple channels, allowing the
customer to transact on a channel of his choice and eliminating
duplication. Improved sales and service would lead to lower attrition,
referrals and brand loyalty.

5. Self-service capabilities: As self-service capabilities are built and

more and more service requests are handled by the customers
themselves, support and help desk costs can be significantly reduced.
Eg. A bulk of incoming calls has to do with balance enquiries. This
could be offered through every channel, and particularly over the
mobile phone, saving costs or releasing the time of contact center staff
for more complex transactions.

What are the challenges?

1. Technology risks: The technology framework would involve

centralized components and data store may pose the risk of being the
single point of failure. Redundant structures need to be built to mitigate
these.

2. Common framework: The business groups have to spend energy

on streamlining processes, business rules, and contents to enable
MCI. The commitment to do this may wane if the process is longdrawn.

3. Single source and sharing of data: Aggregation of data from

disparate systems, de-duplication and data cleansing will pose
challenges, especially from legacy and commercial off-the-shelf
applications, these need to be worked through.

4. Compliance and privacy considerations: The magnitude of

compliance and privacy considerations need to be evaluated in depth
before exposing information across channels

Multi-channel integration can enable significant productivity

improvements in employees through simplified processes,

knowledge-worker collaboration and reduced support.