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PSU banks also bitten by CRM bug: SAS India chief

BS Banking Bureau

Public sector undertaking banks have now started looking at data warehousing and data mining for better customer service in the backdrop of the road map drawn up by the Vasudevan Committee for the same.

Most of the foreign banks and the new private sector banks have been using data warehousing and customer relationship management for cross-selling products and risk management.

According to SAS India's chief executive officer & managing director Gourish Hosanagady, "The new private sector banks and foreign banks in the country are extensively deploying CRM products. About half a dozen public sector banks have now also shown interest in our products in view of the Vasudevan Committee report asking the banks to go in for data warehousing."

As per the committee report, all banks were to put in place their data warehousing strategy by January 1, 2001. It had also recommended that banks with a large number of computerised branches should start their pilot project by warehousing certain categories of data by April 1.

CRM basically is a single integrated view of the customers transaction with the bank through various touchpoints such as Net-banking, credit cards, automated teller machines, branch banking etc.

"All the transactions of the customers have to be captured and integrated so that any officer of the bank gets a full view of the customer. It also helps in capturing external data of the customer," added Hosanagady.

Some of the customers of SAS in India include the Reserve Bank of India, Citibank, Standard Chartered Bank, SBI-GE, Coca-Cola and Hindustan Lever. SAS is selling a combination of datamining, data warehousing and e-CRM in Bombay.

CRM help the bank to take both a proactive and reactive approach. It can help banks to retain their better customers and set up preventive measures against undesirable customers. It can also help the banks to know which are its top customers that bring big business and what is their probability of purchasing another of the bank's products, he said.

He added through enterprise marketing automation, a product of SAS, a person in the call centre or a loan officer can get the whole profile of the customer and also the probability of the customer defrauding the bank.

The market for data-warehousing in India is at present at around $50 million. "However, this market is growing at the rate of 30-40 per cent per annum. More and more companies are looking at CRM-based solutions. These solutions are also used by insurance companies worldwide for risk management. These packages will also help companies who have been affected," said Hosangady. s

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