3. CASE STUDY: There are many organisations that have implemented CRM.

Some have gained profit from it and some have failed in successfully implementing CRM. Here I have considered a Greek bank which succeeded in implementing CRM and gained from it in their management. I have taken this case study from a journal named Customer relationship management: A case study of a Greek bank", Journal of Financial Services Marketing, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 116-124 by Blery, E & Michalakopoulos, M. 2006 The journal from which I have taken this case study have kept the banks name anonymous. So I like to refer to the bank as Greek bank in the assignment. 3.1 COMPANY BACKGROUND: The bank was established in July 1991 in Thessaloniki by a group of famous Greek entrepreneurs. The vision of its founders was to create a modern and flexible bank, which would satisfy its customers by providing best service and would gain a significant share of the Greek banking market. Now the bank is having a network of 64 branches, four bank centres an seven affiliates. This banks main focus is customer satisfaction and it has significantly improved its financial position by implementing many modern management methods. The revenues of the bank arrived at S 192m in 2003 and its profit (PBT) at S 29.6m. It is an innovative bank with modern technologies to provide good service to customers. It frames its strategy on two main aspects: continue to develop and increase its financial results and, to provide better service to customers.

The bank prepared to achieve this by implementing many modern management strategy like CRM

3.2 REASON FOR CRM IMPLEMENTATION: This was not the case of the bank before the implementation of the CRM. In 2002 the bank had only 15 employees not well trained. At that time the customer service centre was very small. The customer had to wait approximately for 20 min to get a response and even then only information customer can get is about their account balance. So the bank faced problem of long queues and the dissatisfied customers were high. Many employees in the service department resigned their job due to long working hours. The cost of service was high. The duration for employee training was more than 2 months which is a long time period which incurred a lot of expenses. The bank was also suffering from high operational cost which affected its profit. The bank considered to higher more employees for call centre but this could increase the operational cost further. So bank was in need of modern and flexible call centre with relatively low cost. This will improve and strength the relationship with the customer by offering them an alternative way service apart from branches and would improve banks service for customer in all area. So bank considered to implement CRM system that integrate all existing application and database. For the new call centre, a CRM solution offering a unique platform was preferred as this will enable integration of all application and database. The discussion for the new call centre was carried out between CRM

vendor, Consultancy Company experienced in CRM implementation and bank. Finally CRM project begun in January 2004.

3.3 IMPLEMENTATION AND BENEFITS OF CRM

In the new call centre all application and database of the bank are integrated. The integration of voice banking helped the bank to make their phone banking more efficient. By phone banking the customer can be well serve of all information that a customer need unlike the previous method where customers are given information only about their account balance. Since customers are well served by phone banking the problem of high quid has been eliminated as they are served by phone banking.

This process reduced cost. Since a common platform for the bank decreased the need for integration, one contact point was established and decreased the need for technical support. As a result the bank came close to the customer. The phone banking manager said before CRM the service offered by the all centre concerned only the account balance, now we can serve our customer with various banking stock exchange and transaction as well as loans. Many operations were transferred from bank to call centre. So bank dont have to hire more hire more employee. The cost of employee in the call centre is half the cost of

employee in the bank. The bank also enjoyed many technical benefits. By integrating all the application and database of the bank there were many benefits like easier architecture for the maintenance aspect is concerned, limited data management is enough as all the data related to a customer are integrated. This is an easier architecture because it incurs only low cost of maintenance and support for one platform. The need for data management has decreased because data are taken from central system so up to date information about phone call appearing on the screen of the employee. The bank enjoyed many corporate benefits. The banks investment in the new phone banking system facilitated bank to transfer operations from the branches to the new call centre and transferred almost 70 employees to sales aiming at increasing banks revenue. As the direct banking manager said CRM solution gave us the possibility to transfer more than 70 employees from other operations to sales, strengthening in this way the possibility for a further increase of the banks financial indices. The volume of phone call increased to 40 per cent. So bank enjoyed many technical and corporate benefits. The successful implementation o CRM has created many opportunities for the bank. It is expected to create a revenue of 10=m in five years. As the it manager states the unique and integrated platform consists of the call centre, G/L, stock exchange services, risk management services etc.Competitons is far behind in many of these So this gives the bank a competitive advantage.

CONCLUSION FOR CASE STUDY The bank had a lot of benefits from the implementation of CRM. The important benefit of all is the reduction cost. The bank has reduced a lot of operational cost by implementing CRM. Another main advantage is the reduction of complexity. Since there is only one platform and one contact point. The bank has increased its efficiency by implementing CRM. CRM enabled bank to come closer to the customer. CRM implementation helped bank to 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. The reason for the successful implementation of CRM can be listed as good project management, a realistic time schedule, perfect programming and not exceeding the predefined budget. This bank has fallowed all these directions for the successful implementation of CRM. CRITICAL EVALUATION OF CRM From the literature reviews and case study it is clear that CRM is not just a management buzzword. Many organisations are investing a lot in CRM. This clearly proves the important gained by CRM strategy in management. The impetus behind the adoption of CRM come from managers who believe that getting closer to customer will result in higher profit in the future (Ryals, Knox, Maklan 1988). Though CRM is a successful strategy some organisations failed in implementing it. So CRMs success dements on its implementation. One of the reasons is inflexible business structure. There are certain organisation structures which are not flexible to adapt sudden change. This may be due to the nature of the business or other reasons. The success of CRM also depends on the user using it. There are three factors deciding the success. The

organisation and its nature, technology implemented, human resource using the technology. There must be efficiency maintained equally in all this three factors. There are also ethical factors to be considered. Since dealing with sensitive details about customers privacy maintained in it. The organisation should also see to it that personalization is not getting too personal.