Westpac Improves Sales Leads with Teradata-Siebel Combo

Who says competitors can't work together? It just takes a littel pressure from the customer, in this case Westpac.

Super-empower marketing with a CRM system that draws on a data warehouse from Teradata and analytics from Siebel running off transactions on Oracle, says Maree Lipscombe, senior manager of Westpac Leads, the marketing effort that has driven 4 million new leads at the Australian bank. The bank brokered a cooperative deal between Teradata and Siebel, which is now owned by the database rival Oracle, she said during a presentation at Teradata’s User Group conference in

Las Vegas

.

Now bankers can talk to customers about their needs, rather then leading off the conversation with a description of bank products. The data warehouse is populated by information generated in bank conversations with customers, and from in-bound service calls, which the banks treats as a marketing opportunity, in no small part because the Teradata information makes the CSRs smarter since the bank can aggregate customer information from legacy systems for a comprehensive and real-time customer view.

Because the bank is building on best-of-breed packages, it is not stuck in a legacy world and has created scalable solutions.

Information from CRM, which Westpac calls Relationship Builder, gets passed to Westpac Leads and then goes to bankers, which is sometimes the weak link.

"The aim is to transform 9,000 staff from order takers to a sales force that can act on customer needs anytime, anywhere."

The bank started small to make sure its technology would enable staff rather than frustrate them, but has now rolled it out from an initial pilot of 12 to all 9,000.

"We have moved from compliance-driven customer contact to capturing future customer needs through conversations. Then the information is captured electronically in a single source that can be shared by all the bankers. Customers don't need to repeat information and any banker can get the information and continue the conversation [on a subsequent call].

And the leads can be tracked, delays spotted and acted upon, and sales staff can see their own performance, and managers can see team performance.