Bank of America Corp.'s patient approach to customer relationship management has been paying off, an executive says.
CRM software its global corporate investment bank started using nearly three years ago helped boost market share in underwriting and mergers and acquisitions more than 40%, said David H. Weaver, the Charlotte company's managing director of CRM services.
In addition, experience with the software has led to its use in three commercial customer groups and, earlier this year, in the company's private bank, Mr. Weaver said in a June interview.
Its Web-based CRM system, built on software from J.D. Edwards & Co. of Denver, was first used to give about 2,000 employees access to an existing database of corporate clients. Since then the system has been enhanced several times - and 8,500 employees can use it.
"We've gone through a series of very careful iterations, growing our capabilities along the way," Mr. Weaver said in a June interview. "We would rather roll out something that people are ready to use and get good adoption."
A big challenge has been to make the customer database useful to salespeople when they go out on sales calls. "It must be easy enough that they will actually use it," he said.
Another key has been making sure the most appropriate sellers are assigned to accounts, Mr. Weaver said. "It's one thing to know or guess what the client's needs are. It's another thing to get the right people aligned against those needs," he said.
One strength of the system is that it can draw information from multiple databases, Mr. Weaver said. "It's more of a portal than it is a single integrated application. You want things that will sit on top of the legacy platform."
The corporate investment bank's needs are diverse, since it handles tasks from underwriting credit to advising clients on merger deals to providing treasury management services.
The 8,500 current users include relationship managers and product support staff as well as salespeople. An unusually high 60% use the system regularly, Mr. Weaver said. "That's pretty close to a saturation number," he said.
J.D. Edwards, meanwhile, has been in the crossfire of Oracle Corp.'s hostile takeover bid for PeopleSoft Inc. of Pleasanton, Calif.
