Customer Consolidation

As finicky financial services customers increasingly rely on the Internet as a research tool, it's more apparent than ever that the competition's Web site is only a click away.

Plans for Consolidation

As it approaches the replacement of its membership auto system and the creation of a customer relationship management system that will sit on top of its core systems, AAA of Northern California, Utah and Nevada (San Francisco; $2.1 billion in assets) aims first to create a single customer view of its client base, according to Daniel St. John, the carrier's director of IT and customer relationship management. "We are a pretty typical insurer that is dealing with siloed, green-screen, legacy-based systems," concedes St. John, who has chosen San Mateo, Calif.-based E.piphany to help the auto insurance carrier in its endeavor.

Once AAA's three-phased project reaches its planned completion in 2005, the underwriter will have achieved improved servicing capabilities, St. John asserts. For example, customer service reps will be better prepared to help customers who provide their ID numbers when calling the company. As customer data pops up on customer service reps' screens, they will be provided with a 360-degree view of the customer. "They will be able to see the products and services that a customer owns and the interactions and transactions that they've undergone with us," explains St. John. "Such capability will help us to develop a central doorway into AAA."

Another capability that will be enabled by the achievement of a single customer view will be AAA's ability to market specialized offers designed to meet customers' needs, St. John continues. Currently, AAA is working with E.piphany on plans to implement a tool called Interaction Advisor, which would provide screen pop-ups for marketing purposes. According to the vendor, the Interactive Advisor tool combines contextual and historical customer data and, St. John says, when used at AAA, it "will provide lead and opportunity management information and ensure that sales leads are assigned to producers." AAA also hopes to link its single customer view to the rest of the company's core systems.

With the help of E.piphany, AAA will accomplish its single customer view through the "development of an enterprise repository for names, addresses, products that policyholders have, as well as their preferences," relates St. John, who stresses that "In today's world, data is siloed within each of our product systems." Although AAA's product-centric systems will still exist when the repository is put in place, Don Fornes, director, industry solutions, E.piphany, explains how these systems will be populated with information resulting from transactions such as changes of address:

"Once a customer contacts the call center, a profile of that policyholder will be presented to the call center rep," he says. "It will include name, current address, as well as policy zone. The tool will provide an interface so that if an address change needs to be made, after it is entered into the repository, changes are kicked back into each of the back-end policy systems."

So, although a carrier may still have 20 different systems for claims, quoting and policy management sitting on its back end, the systems essentially have been consolidated into one easy-to-use interface, claims Fornes, who asserts that the increased simplicity of systems will reduce call center rep turnover and the need for training on numerous back-end systems.

Growth Through Acquisition = Silos

Similar returns on investment catalyzed Nationwide's (Columbus, Ohio; $113.3 billion in assets) decision to consolidate its data, which had become siloed. "As you grow through acquisition, it's natural that customer data ends up in many different locations," explains Jim Gay, associate vice president of infrastructure solutions, Nationwide Services Co. - the IT services division of Nationwide. "Nationwide wants to make sure that it takes a single customer view when approaching the marketing of different products to different customer segments."

Currently, the underwriter is making progress toward its goal through the creation of Information Broker, which acts as a link among different databases. According to Gay, the Information Broker interface will provide a seamless view of policyholder information that is consistent at the customer service representative level, the interactive voice response level and the Internet service level. But the underwriter's comprehensive strategy does not end there.

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