Citizens National Bank CRM Implementation - Case Study

Citizens National Bank’s

CRM ImplementationBy: Benj Arriola

Case Study 2 – Aug 10, 2011

MBA BAUD683

University of Redlands

Information and Knowledge Management

Prof. Phil Lawrence

4/7/2023Citizens National Bank’s CRM Implementation – Case Study 2

BAUD683 – MBA – University of Redlands – Benj Arriola

Table of Contents

Citizens National Bank’s CRM Implementation................................................1

Table of Contents.............................................................................................2

Citizens National Bank CRM Implementation...................................................3

The Benefits of a CRM for Citizens National Bank.........................................3

Speed of Processing – Faster Approvals............................................3

Better Insights – A study of customer behavior...............................4

Lower Operations Cost..........................................................................4

The Challenges of CRM Implementation.......................................................5

Complex vs. Simple...............................................................................6

Adaptation and Users Resistant to Change......................................9

Data Integration...................................................................................10

Conclusion..................................................................................................10



Citizens National Bank CRM Implementation

A CRM or Customer Relationship Management system is one of the many

types of enterprise information systems mainly focused on customer

relations. It helps share information between departments and helps give

different informed decisions by each individual department. So the CRMs

value to the sales department may be different from the customer support

department. Sales is more concerned in the tools that help them in selling,

which customer support is interested in the tools that help build the

relationship with the customer after the sale has been completed. People at

the executive level may also be interested in the CRM but their purpose may

be different as well where they may concentrate on the profitability of the

company as a whole, as well as the efficiency of individual employees and

monitoring performance.

The Benefits of a CRM for Citizens National Bank

A CRM has many benefits to a company in general and we can drill down the

benefits by looking at this at every department level and employee level, but

to hit on the main points why Citizen National Bank wanted to have a CRM

system was mainly based on the benefits of: Speed of Processing, Better

Insights, and Lower Operations Cost.

Speed of Processing – Faster Approvals

In the case study on Citizens National Bank in Chapter 13 of Management

Information Systems by Laudon & Laudon, it was stated that one of the

reasons why the bank sought for a CRM system was for faster approvals. It

did not go into any specific detail why this would increase the speed of

approval, but just like any other information system that needs some type of

intelligent decision making, this would all be based on criteria rules. Rules in



which can be automated. As long as the required information is entered, this

can be processed using pre-determined criteria rules for credit/loan approval

and the whole program algorithm should take over. From there, the

corresponding output will give them the yes or no to go with an approval or

not. This give more time for the relationship banker to handle more task to

increase their efficiency and productivity.

Better Insights – A study of customer behavior

In any type of database, all you need is a good collection of data. And it is up

to the reader of the data what types of insights can be drawn from this.

Although this was not mentioned in the case study in the book by Laudon &

Laudon, this is pretty much a given in almost any CRM. With all the data

gather from one customer to another, buying behavior can be observed.

Common buying habits that occur across the board can be tabulated and

further examined with statistical analysis. This can solve many issues like

finding solutions to the top common complaints, improving on factors that

often close a sale, see hidden opportunities that have higher revenue, but

low sales. What type of product is often sold in different specific geographic

locations and a lot more. All these types of information, if used correctly to

arrive at good actionable items that increase sales or improve customer

support would definitely be beneficial to the company.

Lower Operations Cost

Although implementing a CRM is an additional expense of the company are

you have to pay for the CRM where it can either be a one-time payment like

when you are buying software packages that runs within your company, or a

SaaS type of implementation that involves monthly fees. Either way,

subscription payments or one-time, the whole system should be able to save

more money in the long run. As efficiencies are improved in the various



areas of the business, this increases the amount of work done with less

effort, thus saving on the cost of manpower.

The Challenges of CRM Implementation

As much as CRMs are intended to help companies, save money, increase

work output, it is usually a large challenge just to get everything up and

running for any type of company and changes do not happen overnight.

Several different independent research groups that have done their own

studies on CRM failure rates since 2001 to 20091 have some surprising

statistics.

2001 Gartner Group: 50% 2002 Butler Group: 70% 2002 Selling Power, CSO Forum: 69.3% 2005 AMR Research: 18% 2006 AMR Research: 31% 2007 AMR Research: 29% 2007 Economist Intelligence Unit: 56% 2009 Forrester Research: 47%

The most quoted research based on number of search results in Google

when you search Butler Group CRM Failure Rate, shows more results than

the rest above which is past the 3,000 mark, as of the time this paper was

submitted in August, 2011, probably because of the large dramatic number.

Although we cannot compare apples to apples when looking at these

numbers since they were performed by different companies. Each even has

their own definition of failure. Some call it failures if the customer experience

was not good. Some call it failures if the company employees experience was

not good. Others have even more different definitions of failure, but the

bottom line is once you implement a CRM, it is not necessarily smooth sailing

1 CRM Failure Rates: 2001–2009, 2009 ZDNet IT Project Failures URL:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/projectfailures/crm-failure-rates-2001-2009/4967



after implementation, or even worse, it never gets implemented by how it

supposed to be.

Citizens National Bank had several challenges and its first implementation

with Siebel CRM, now owned by Oracle, was a $500,000 failure. And

everything got better when they decided to move on with a different CRM

platform that was not even that much popular in the CRM space, which was

Intuit’s QuickBase. This does not necessarily mean Siebel is an inferior

product, but it definitely looked like it was not a right fit for the banks needs

which led to its failure. 3 areas where the failure that came in with Siebel and

QuickBase did a better job can be viewed in the following areas of failure:

Complexity/Simplicity Adaptation Data Integration

Complex vs. Simple

Every company runs differently, different products, different services,

different internal production processes. This makes each company unique in

what they actually need in a CRM platform. In the case of Citizens National

Bank, Siebel was just too complex for them. Siebel is a very powerful CRM

that many large enterprise-level companies use, such as Johnson & Johnson2,

Pepsi-Cola where on their job opportunities listing always has something

about Seibel people needed3, Reuters4 and more.

Some factors that can be critical in the successful implementation of a CRM

are:

2 Johnson & Johnson Solidifies Security, 2003 Mesmer , Ellen; Network World URL:

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2003/0519jj.html

3 Siebel Jobs at Pepsico, URL: http://careers.pepsico.com/key/pepsico-siebel-jobs.html

4 Reuters, Siebel Pair Off, 2002 Cox, Beth; InternetNews.com URL:

http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/1141231/Reuters+Siebel+Pair+Off.htm



UI DesignSometimes complex software packages that are made by well knowledgeable software developers. All they consider is what are the inputs and what is the required output and if these are not carefully built from a user interface point of view, sometimes enterprise software can be less intuitive on how to use it. This makes the learning curve a lot steeper. More time is spent on training and education but if everything was as user friendly as possible to the very minute detail, this decreases the training time and productive work can happen at an earlier time.

In the case study of Citizens National Bank, it was stated that $350,000 was spend on integration and training of Siebel and was the most expensive type of CRM education they ever had. This is a clear indication that their CRM software was not easy to use at all. And it was not intuitive to learn without any type of training. This can be an issue with UI design.

While in the QuickBase implementation, it was stated that the platform was a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) and was excellent in Rapid Application Development (RAD) and needed minimal training. This is an indicator that their system was more intuitive. And when software is more intuitive, this is a good signal that the UI design was excellent.

Data EntryRelated to UI design, but not on the software as a whole but mainly in entering input items. Some issue may include confusing forms, non-ideal copy and paste process, no mass import of data, inappropriate type of selection form. Like select option box versus a massive list of radio buttons. Is it better to have a very long form or a multi-step set of short forms. How does the enter button behave? Does it submit the form or does it move from one fill-up field to another.

Citizens National Bank’s Relationship Bankers, who were the sales people were incentivized to perform work better and their performance was based on the amount of sales. Siebel was more of a hindrance to use. That old traditional methods just worked better. Time was spent too much on using Siebel then actual work and this goes back to the whole complexity. QuickBase being simple and customizable but not



complicated, working on QuickBase was not a hindrance to work and really supported their work.

Report VisualizationA table of data can be overwhelming. Graphs and charts are ideal, but using the wrong graphs can also be problematic. What is basically needed is the best type of data visualization that would give more insights that can be translated into actionable items to improve the business process. Different departments are also interested in different types of reports to see.

Although report visualization was not really mentioned in the case study, it did mention that Siebel CRM was beneficial to the bank, but not to the sales people. This is telling me, it provided data reports that the bank executives were more interested in. There were probably financial profitability reports, and employee performance metrics. And it probably did not give information that the sales people and customer support people would be interested in which is where QuickBase did a better job. This tie into the next item where CRMs should be designed with different user levels.

Types of UsersAny CRM system should always consider the type of viewer of the system. Thus data entry forms and report dashboards should be customized to the type of user using the CRM. So Sales, Marketing & Executive departments may all see something different.

In smaller type of companies where employees tend to wear different hats have different roles. This is where more simple type of CRM platforms works. In larger corporations where there are several employees, these employees tend to be more specialized and may not necessarily wear multiple hats. This is where robust enterprise systems like Siebel may work since they are not overwhelmed by the system as each employee only touches a small part of the system, only in the area of their specialization.



Adaptation and Users Resistant to Change

Being in the web design & development space since 1997 in companies large

and small, I have seen how many employees would typically be resistant to

any kind of change in project management systems. But this should be

overcome by appropriate training and if the system is really easy to use the

more successful you will get people to use the system.

When Citizens National Bank first implemented Siebel, they were

overwhelmed with features and started turning off many features that were

not needed. Training was a steep learning curve and it was a challenge just

to get on the same page with everyone. Clearly it was not only a CRM

platform failure, but also a CRM consultant failure which was initially handled

by Small Business Solution. The CRM consultant that handled the QuickBase

implementation was Jim Davis of Deloitte Consulting. Implementation was

done in a phased rollout which makes training less overwhelming. It would

still be a problem for employees that are just resistant to change no matter

what, so a new position was created: Admin Assistants. Admin assistants

helped out in data entries who were training in QuickBase making the

transition period a lot more streamlined.

Data Integration

Citizens National Bank’s legacy system was running on a Kirchman Core

Banking Application. For a bank that existed in the 19th century, even if

computers were not widely used then, a large amount of data should be

within their current legacy system. Something that manual labor of moving

the data would be extreme impractical. Thus these data systems should

integrate data well between each other. Siebel seemed to have many

incompatible points with Kirchman, and one of the specific areas mentioned

in the book was the database schema where First Name and Last Name were



combined in Kirchman, but were two different fields in Siebel. Intuit’s

QuickBase integrated properly with their Kirchman legacy system by making

them meet halfway in the same standard format, which was an XML file.

Have the same format, daily updates were moved from one platform to

another to sync up the data.

Conclusion

Consumer Relationship Management systems are very ideal in small

business to large business. It increases efficiency and shares information

within other departments, but only showing data that is pertinent to their

departments.

Although in any CRM, it seems it is not always a 1 size fits all type of

situation. Depending on the company needs would dictate the type of CRM

platform ideal for the situation.

Large very expensive CRM platforms seem to work well also with large

corporations with many employees specialized in certain areas. And in small

companies, this tends to be overwhelming since there are many data touch

points a single employee may need to work with as smaller company

employees tend to have multiple task in a company. In this case more simple

CRM platforms may work better. And in some cases, software that is not

even popular as CRM platforms, might be sufficient already.

Citizens National Banks implementation did not need a complicated system.

QuickBase which is simply an online SaaS database platform was sufficient

enough. There were some customizable template forms for various purposes

from project management, sales management, customer relations

management and more. The SaaS model and pricing also was beneficial to

Intuit since once it creates a single application, and every customer company



may use it differently. But in the end, it teaches Intuit how to improve the

implementation that may benefit other clients. The low pricing is also more

inviting to use where only a minimum set of modules can be installed to

make it less overwhelming.

Citizens National Bank CRM Implementation - Case Study

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