Stannic, a leading asset finance organisation has embarked on an aggressive re-positioning programme to address the changing local market. It has centralised its administrative operations and created a strong remote mobile sales force.
To empower its new-look sales team, Stannic chose a world-leading enterprise relationship management system, Siebel Enterprise Applications. The system is enabling its sales people to be more effective and proactive.
"It is enabling us to go out and acquire business, rather than waiting for customers to come to us," says Ivan Shutte, assistant general manager: Stannic and Corporate Centre Systems.
"We chose Siebel because it is a best of breed product that is rated very highly by IT analysts," he says. "Andersen Consulting assisted with the matching of a product with Stannic`s requirements. They determined Siebel had a high functionality match to our requirements, and could be implemented rapidly. In addition, we liked the fact that it is a mainstream product with enormous investment behind it, and has embraced Microsoft`s strategic direction."
Stannic, the asset finance division of the Standard Bank Group, provides finance for all moveable goods such as passenger/commercial vehicles, leisure goods as well as capital equipment.
"We are operating in an extremely competitive environment where a number of new players, particularly on the motor vehicle side, are chiseling away at the market," says Henk Vosloo, Deputy General Manager, National Operations, Stannic. "We have therefore re-focused in terms of how we address the market, and have re-engineered our administrative processes."
Stannic is in the process of closing its branch offices and centralising into four processing and service centres in Durban, Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria.
"The most effective way to centralise was to implement electronic workflow and provide remote tools for our sales people, which is why we selected Siebel," explains Shutte.
"Our philosophy is to choose best of breed products. We like to see what works successfully for organisations around the world, and then model ourselves accordingly. Siebel Enterprise Systems is recognised as being a leader in world-class customer relationship management applications.
"It is not easy to fit software packages into the bank`s existing architecture, and we`ve been on some long and arduous journeys in the past," he says. "One of the things that attracted us to Siebel was that it could be implemented in chunks, in a time frame that suited us. The pace at which we could release value from the product was excellent. As an organisation we were changing rapidly, and needed to implement very quickly.
"A lot of our people were package-averse, but the fact that we could deliver an appropriate level of functionality so quickly has really excited them," he says.
According to Shutte, a major benefit of the Siebel system is that the Stannic sales force is now being empowered to move from reactive to proactive selling
"Business acquisition has become a key competence," he says. "Previously our sales people didn`t have all the information they needed to go out and get business. Now they are receiving the capability to work remotely as they are fully informed. They will have the information they need at their fingertips, across the Internet, and the technology to manage the process."
The second major benefit, according to Shutte, is that Stannic will from now on have records of every contact with their customers with whom a long-term relationship is to be established. The Siebel system will provide Stannic with a single customer view, enabling it to move towards a one-stop shop customer focused environment, as it does away with its costly branch infrastructure.
Siebel, the world`s fastest growing applications software vendor, is represented in South Africa by SPL, part of the JSE-listed Dimension Data Group. Another Dimension Data company, Shared Objectives, is doing the systems integration.
The new system is currently being piloted in Johannesburg, and will be rolled out early this year. The centralisation of Stannic`s branches will be complete by the second quarter of 1999.
The Siebel system sits both centrally, on the company`s client/server environment and on the sales force`s laptops. The different databases are all automatically synchronised.
"The product is truly scaleable upwards into the enterprise arena, with attendant functional enhancements," says Joan Roberts of SPL.
SPL is investing heavily to position itself as the dominant player in the provision of total customer relationship management (CRM) solutions in South Africa. It was as part of this drive that the company forged a strategic partnership with Siebel Enterprise Systems. Within the global CRM market, Siebel`s marketshare has risen dramatically from 9% in 1995 to 64% in 1998. Today, the company`s research and development spend is higher than the total revenues of its nearest competitor.
"Siebel has the most successful offering in the sales and servicing areas of the Customer Management spectrum to date," says Pieter Naude, managing director of SPL. "The company is a leading provider of object-oriented, enterprise-class sales information systems. Siebel`s position as a market leader has been acknowledged by recognised industry experts, including the Aberdeen Group, Gartner Group and Ovum Ltd. Its applications are designed to offer users a sales, marketing, and customer service information solution that is functionally comprehensive, built upon a modern technology foundation, and scales to meet the requirements of global organisations with thousands of concurrent users and very large data stores."
Share