American National Bank and Trust Co., a subsidiary of First Chicago NBD Corp., said it has bought "data mining" software to support its marketing and profitability analysis.
The system was developed by KPMG Peat Marwick and Salesoft Inc., the Columbus, Ohio, company that sells Pipeline Management software.
The jointly developed system, called Mobile Solutions for Banking, is designed to let relationship managers tailor commercial and personal products and services for middle-market, private banking, and trust customers.
The software connects with numerous data bases and can make relevant data available on office computers or at remote sites.
Chicago-based American National, which specializes in the corporate middle market, will equip about 250 account managers with the software. It hopes to become significantly more competitive in addressing customers and prospects.
"This is a great tool for servicing existing customers, increasing cross-sell opportunities, and performing new-business development," said Alexandra Scoulas, head of the bank's information technology and business consulting group.
The bank said it serves one-third of the 14,000 middle-market companies in the Chicago area, which are defined as having annual sales of $5 million to $150 million.
Terms of the deal between American National and the software's developers were not disclosed, but officials said the software costs banks about $1,500 to $3,000 per user.
The software, which took about nine months to develop, was conceived in the Chicago offices of KPMG Peat Marwick. Consultants there were seeking a product that improved access to, and usefulness of, the customer information in banks' data bases.
Neal Levin, a partner at KPMG, said the industry is becoming more adept at managing data bases itself, in part because it could not find commercially available systems to help.
"Banks have all this information out there already in separate systems," Mr. Levin said. "We bring it together in one warehouse that is sent out into the field."
"Instead of searching through a multitude of legacy data bases," said American National president David Bolger, "our bankers can access a consolidated view of every customer and their needs from the office or the field."
The client-server software is being targeted at the top 100 U.S. banking companies. American National has already begun training its cash management sales force and expects a complete installation by yearend.
In initial research in 1994, KPMG began looking for a banking partner but found most large institutions in various stages of integrating their own data bases. American National, a $6.7 billion-asset unit of First Chicago, was open to a partnership.
The bank compiled a list of what it would want the software to do, said Troy Gardner, a former banker at Citicorp and First Interstate Bancorp who joined KPMG as senior manager to help develop Mobile Solutions.
Mr. Gardner said KPMG brought in Salesoft to do the systems work.
"Whereas automated teller machines and branch automation already have transformed retail banking," said Salesoft president and CEO Gregory A. Miller, "Salesoft and KPMG intend to be first to market with the tools to revolutionize commercial and private banking."
