Sasfin gears up to grow its business with locally-developed CRM solution

Sasfin Bank, one of only two independent banks still operating in SA, has implemented a South African-developed customer relationship management (CRM) system that is expected to revolutionise the way the 52-year-old organisation operates.

The company, whose unique spread of business units, from niche banking and stockbroking to insurance, medical aid and asset finance, has rolled out nVisionIT`s Charisma CRM suite having evaluated market-leading global solutions.

"What we got was a lot more than CRM," says Peter Oeschger, Chief Information Officer, Sasfin, referring to the fact that Charisma, which also facilitates service help desk, document management, workflow, business intelligence, knowledge management and the sharing of information across disparate IT systems, enabled Sasfin to integrate its disparate business IT platforms.

"To a large degree it will enable us to completely change the way we do business. Our dealings with clients will be more professional and streamlined. It is forcing us to create a more logical group of business units with a lot more focus and enabling us to gear up our businesses to take advantage of our position as a niche player in the market."

Prior to the installation of the Charisma suite, Sasfin had no real system for handling its client relationships and no means of selling across its extensive customer base that includes individuals, companies and corporates spread across a diverse range of business activities and service offerings.

The primary goal is to drive new revenues from its existing client base, but, aware of the large failure rate of CRM implementations and the damage this could have on a business as customer-focused as financial services, Sasfin spent nearly two years evaluating different systems including all the top global systems.

"Nothing was able to deliver what Charisma can. The main appeal for us was that it was easy to integrate with our legacy back-end systems - some of which were written using Powerhouse 4GL and obsolete languages such as Clipper and which are almost at the end of their lifecycle. The product is unique in that it is pulling information from every single space.

"On pricing, of course, the global solutions could not compare with Charisma, which, as a rands-based development, is very affordable. Even so, what we have is really global leading-edge," says Oeschger.

Part of the new thinking at Sasfin is the realisation that its staff are also clients that need servicing. That was why it opted to implement Charisma`s service desk module. This had to be customised to meet Sasfin`s needs. These enhancements now form part of the standard product which he now rates as being a world-class service desk solution.

Much of Charisma`s leading-edge functionality, flexibility and interoperability are attributed to its development in Microsoft`s .Net environment and the leveraging of technologies such as Microsoft`s BizTalk server, XML and Web services.

Flexibility and interoperability were key to the success of this project, which took about nine months to complete, according to Graham van Zijl, MD, nVisionIT.

"In addition to integrating with the existing legacy systems, an added complexity was that they were not only implementing this solution. They were implementing a new ERP system at the same time and planning to replace their legacy systems incrementally over the next year or so."

According to Oeschger, the whole solution, although in its infancy, is already delivering returns in better targeted marketing, more agility throughout the business, increased sales through cross-selling, more motivated staff and, the all important, enhanced customer relationships.

"We have always serviced our clients well. It`s part of the company`s ethos. But now, we are getting direct feedback from our clients and hearing from them that we are delivering services that they want," he says.