I want to say that sharing is not easy

Introducing a new technology to a group of old-fashioned but high-performing sales reps, allowing them to share important customer information, was like opening a Pandora's box. To avoid this situation, you have to take a patient and careful approach.

Better Traditions Change

That's what Mellon Financial thought about 18 months ago. At that time, the company first proposed to use several years to build a cross-departmental, information-sharing sales culture through the collection and sharing of customer relationship information between different business areas.

This program dates back to early 1999. At the time, Chairman and CEO Marty McGuinn decided that the New York-based company needed to make a formal move, selling financial services products to institutional users in four main business areas. McQueen found that Mellon Financial's relationship managers had to work with colleagues to gain a complete picture of each client's overall relationship with the firm. The key to this approach is the collection and sharing of information.

The potential benefits of the program are clear: Mellon Financial can strengthen its client relationships, expand sales opportunities, and develop new business. But the existing business process and company culture have been successful, and challenges are inevitable to break ground on it.

Like other financial services institutions, Mellon Financial has captured a huge market share by offering sales and services of various financial products. These products range from cash management to complex financial instruments such as financial derivatives. Many companies know that the hardest things to change are often the things that are already successful. Mellon Financial Corporation must integrate customer relationship data in multiple business areas without affecting the service quality of each business unit, and the company has 1,500 sales experts who sell products and provide the above services!

With more than 9,000 institutional clients, the stakes are too high. Any negative impact on a company's personal relationship with its customers is immeasurable. Think about how embarrassing it would be if a high-end client or VIP walked through the hallways of Mellon without being recognized by salespeople. This mistake can be made up for. But if you're dealing with an institutional investment giant, any blunder in sales can have serious repercussions for the entire relationship.

Within three to five years, Mellon plans to invest heavily in application development and other areas to build the infrastructure needed to collect and share information company-wide. By building a system that can change the way it does business, grow its business, and ultimately achieve a satisfactory return on investment, the company will be on the right track.

Mellon Financial identified three areas for change:

Technology. The company needs to develop a plan to bring the necessary data into the database for data mining through the "Business Objec-tive Query Tool". Over the years, this data has been scattered all over the place, even in written reports.

Tools. Companies need to adopt new, easy-to-use applications that provide their sales managers with useful data so they can better serve discerning customers.

Process. Companies need to establish new sales and service processes to enable true team competition.

A Relationship Manager Pioneering

In addition to the essential aspects above, the most important thing is to take it step by step and ensure that every small step is successful. Mellon is wary because it faces a very professional, very skilled, and extremely well-paid cadre of salespeople who may feel their way of life is threatened.

The company selected about 60 employees. They are nothing like the salespeople in the call center, or the people that a consumer product or service company assembles to implement a customer relationship management (CRM) strategy. Mellon refers to its salespeople as "relationship managers" because their work is so personal and human. So when it comes to transforming the information tool and the next steps involved in it -- changing the sales process -- companies think they need to be adequately compensated.

Much of the company's huge revenue from institutional clients comes from the efforts of these managers. Because of this, you can't just pull out a few doughnuts early in the morning and say, "Man, we've got a great system, and the data is pretty good, let's try it out." Companies have to be patient. , meticulously persuade these people. At the same time, companies must select the right "model" team for the new information resource.

In December 2000, the company decided to start with two types of managers: unconventional but highly successful newcomers to the industry, and more importantly, recognized innovators with years of consistent track record. If both groups of people can accept the company's reform plan, then the entire company can gradually transition to the right track.

The Mellon Company held its first meeting in a secluded leisure center. The central question of the meeting was very simple, and it was repeated at the meeting: "What information do you need to excel at all stages of the sales process?" It took four months to figure out where the information was in the system, and to identify the gap between the company's existing information system and the ideal information system.

To expedite the process, Mellon turned to outside consultants. The firm selected Deloitte Consulting LLP's financial services and change management teams because they appeared to have a good grasp of the concepts of people and behavioral reality in the Mellon project.

During several lively information-gathering sessions for its first participants, Mellon was surprised to find two types of information urgently needed by all salespeople: the various relationships the company has with any customer, and the List of people who have visited clients. The need for this information outweighs all other needs.

June 2001 was a time for a company-wide "roadshow" of new information resources. A standard database appeared in front of the entire company, providing a comprehensive picture of customer relationships, and powerful tools for mining this database emerged. Mellon had to demonstrate that two very simple information tools could not only provide richer data and lead to better sales performance, but also shorten the sales cycle. It goes without saying how helpful this is for sales reps.

Use the tools to see the benefits

During a six-month pilot period, the company had relationship managers research and use the tools. Then, encourage them to speak their minds and see if the tools provided by the company are useful.

Like its overall e-commerce strategy, Mellon's CRM technology investments follow the company's overall business strategy, not the other way around. The company decided to develop its own tools and keep it entry-level at the beginning of the project, while staying away from the overly touted CRM and knowledge management software.

At each step, Mellon is very careful to ensure that the data that affects product quality and service levels is unstructured (an enterprise's data is divided into two types: one is structured data, which refers to the data in the database in the form of tables Records and entries in the form of records and entries; another type of data in the form of text and web pages, this is unstructured data, which includes text, images, images, etc. ---Editor's Note), this type of data is completely different from income information , Income information refers to the performance of investment funds, and investors and the public can easily obtain such information. Once an institution contracts with Mellon, it no longer needs to check many transaction processes and data points.

Data points can drive "hesitant" customers to make decisions, and can also make companies resistant to the dangers of storing data only in salespeople's heads, PDAs, or correspondence . Data in the consumer space is more about how people spend their money and time, while Mellon's data is unstructured. In the institutional-oriented financial services market, the ratio of unstructured data to structured data varies greatly. Mellon has 65% unstructured data and 35% structured data.

After Mellon entered the data of financial users and old users into the same database, the database could barely do various mathematical analysis and provide intelligent judgment. Companies must find new ways to collect and distribute this information more efficiently.

A typical example of unstructured data is the current and past employment history of each client: What company does the client come from? Where did potential contacts go? Mellon's relationship managers believe that this kind of information can lead to new business development, even if you spend money you may not buy this valuable information.

The query tools used by Mellon quickly created an effective sales and analytics platform. Today, the tool is used in four major business areas and two corporate employee groups, and has become a standard tool for marketing and field sales support activities. At the same time, it is also an important basis for the company to formulate annual planning.

This tool enables querying of customer information data models and assists in generating optimal customer analysis, sales analysis, sales listings, regional analysis and simulation scenarios. The tool also answers the vast majority of questions critical to developing high-end customer relationships. By providing an overview of new customers, Mellon's sales list can determine the priority of customer visits.

No turning back on the road to change

The next step in Mellon's transformation plan is to try to improve its relationship management process by collecting unstructured data about customer relationships. Although some data has been acquired on relationship management and sales automation information systems, the company will also develop document scanning technology to collect data from the large volume of paper documents that many companies still rely on today.

As with the rest of the project, this work will proceed steadily, with only a small number of salespeople involved at a time. The company plans to select some retailers to take part in this late stage, but only those who truly understand the difficulty of the system and will be wary of customers who are not keen on process changes. Simply put, what Mellon needs is a retailer that can treat its external customers as the company treats its internal users.

Mellon has been cautious in describing how this potential technology would work. Given the ever-present trust issues between field salespeople and technicians, Mellon's explanation is succinct: The company's application of this technology is in full swing to improve customer relationships in a proven way.

What has Mellon achieved since taking the above steps? The company's relationship managers have said its ability to generate leads has improved. Through the initial trial operation, the customer's attitude in telesales gradually changed from indifference to enthusiasm, and then developed to face-to-face interviews. This shows that Mellon's reform direction and measures are correct.

The company expects that the technology strategy, which will be in place by the end of this year, will allow the company to achieve sustained business growth over the next three years. This strategy includes the selection of preferred retailers, the collection and storage plan of structured and fragmented data, and the interconnection of data and systems. The company recognizes that the best CRM tools are worthless if salespeople are reluctant to use them.

When designing the programs and technologies that are best for salespeople, it is imperative that salespeople be involved from the start. Only then will the results be as you want, a smooth transition to new business processes, information sharing, and cultural change. Steady progress is important, and attention must be paid to the quantifiable results of each step, and never let the technology stagnate. Companies should make their salespeople feel good, so that the rest of the company will be happy too.

This original text is reproduced with permission from Optimize magazine, a CMP Media LLC company (Manhasset, NY). all rights reserved. Translated by Su Yong.

Kristine Reed is the Senior Vice President of Customer Information Management for Mellon Financial's e-commerce division.