Sydney, Australia – 31 March 2015: One of Australia’s largest customer owned financial institutions, Beyond Bank today announced that Microsoft has been chosen to help the customer-owned mutual bank achieve its goal of becoming a customer-centric organisation while keeping customer data secure.
Following a successful pilot scheme of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online within Beyond Bank’s Community Team, a combination of Office 365 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online will be implemented across the organisation.
Beyond Bank, which evolved from credit union Community CPS Australia into a mutual bank in September 2013, is a major challenger brand in the Australian banking market and aims to differentiate itself from competitors through its customer-first strategy. This has focussed on improving services through better products and services for its customers and support for communities.
In order to maximise this customer-based approach, Beyond Bank have put customer data at the forefront of all their decision-making processes. This puts CRM Online and Office 365 at the centre of Beyond Bank’s strategy. For instance, the social listening applications will enable Beyond Bank to assess the social sentiment of their customers and identify customer service opportunities, address issues proactively and analyse the social buzz created by marketing campaigns.
“Providing customer centricity it is about being able to deliver a consolidated view of the customer and deliver services based on the insights gained,” explained Robert Aitken, CIO at Beyond Bank. “The single customer view is the key challenge. Being able to pull together different data sources to provide the total view of the customer will enable us to analyse their behaviour and needs and then provide quality, insightful advice.”
Beyond Bank’s Community Team were the first to integrate the new systems, and found collaboration of customer data through CRM Online while on the move made them a more productive workforce. The team often works remotely within the community, helping not-for-profits and community groups achieve their goals, and found that their days were made far easier by being able to log information on the go rather than return to the office.
Implementing Office365 and CRM Online will not only help Beyond Bank heighten its customer service but will also ensure security over the large amounts of customer data it holds. By having Office 365 hosted within a local Australian data centre and not travelling across borders, Beyond Bank’s customers can be assured that their data is secure as possible.
Mr Aitken added, “With the growing compliance culture of the financial industry, data sovereignty and security is a primary objective when we set about any technology implementation. As we build our reputation around customer service it is important that our customers have peace of mind that their data is safe in our hands, and having it hosted locally within Australia is a major step towards that.”
Working with UXC Eclipse and other business partners, Beyond Bank will replace its existing Lotus Notes infrastructure with Exchange Online and SharePoint Online to improve collaboration between teams. Beyond Bank will also use Dynamics CRM Online, integrated with the core banking platform, to replace an old, legacy CRM Solution.
Mr. Aitken concluded: “This isn’t just a technology upgrade, it is the centre piece of a business strategy. The only way you can successfully implement a project on this scale is to get buy-in from across the business. By using the pilot to show the business gains we will now been able to put the customer data from Microsoft CRM Online and the collaboration of Office 365 at the centre of our business and provide a service that differentiates us from the other banks.”
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