Two major financial institutions are piloting a customer support automation system designed to provide better customer service.
Banco Nacional De Mexico, known as Banamex, the largest banking operation in Mexico, and Residential Services Corp. of America, the parent company of Prudential Home Mortgage Co., have installed the Customer Resource Planning system from Aurum Software Inc., Santa Clara, Calif.
The system consists of four applications that run in a client-server environment: telemarketing, field sales automation, customer service, and quality management.
The applications are Windows-based and use a central data base.
Nationwide Reach
Residential Services, which originates mortgages in all 50 states, and originates home equity loans from one site in Minneapolis, licensed TeleTrak, the telemarketing product, after researching several vendors.
Banamex, based in Mexico City, licensed TeleTrak; SupportTrak, for customer service; and QualityTrak, for quality management.
Both institutions have been testing the applications, which have been customized for their businesses.
Residential Services plans to fully implement the system by the third quarter of 1994. Banamex plans to be fully up and running in September.
Open Environment
Officials at both financial institutions said the system's open computing environment was a determining factor in their decision to use Aurum software.
Willem Nieuwkerk, vice president of home equity lending at Residential Services, said the system's open architecture will allow the company to improve its sales force's efficiency by merging telesales and production functions.
Telesales describes the marketing of home equity lines of credit by phone. Production involves taking applications and follow-up work.
Mr. Nieuwkerk anticipates that integrating the two will improve customer service.
50 Clients in Network
The telemarketing application will run on an International Business Machines Corp. RISC 6000 server, with approximately 50 Windows clients connected through a computer network.
At Banamex, the system's open architecture distinguished Aurum from proprietary competitive offerings, said Javier Reynoso, manager of the bank's call center.
Banamex operates 700 offices around the country, and plans to expand to 800 branch offices by yearend. Until recently, all of the offices - including the headquarters in Mexico City - were operating on what officials refer to as a "homegrown customer support application."
No Connections
Although every office used the same application, none of them were connected. This limited the potential for the homemade system, said Reynoso.
The Aurum products will allow Banamex to have a single data base with information that can be used by all offices to solve customers' problems quickly and efficiently, he said.
Initially, the applications will run only in the corporate offices in Mexico City, but Reynoso said Banamex hopes to expand the program so all the branch offices will be linked with Aurum's products as well. The Banamex system will operate on a Hewlett-Packard 9000, with 60 Windows clients.
