Drive Click Bank: Revolutionary Changes in Customer Service Automation with SberCRM

Drive Click Bank (formerly Cetelem Bank), using the SberCRM solution from Sberbank Business Software, not only decided, but also gained new opportunities for business development by automating customer relationships at a new technological level.

Drive Click Bank is one of the famous names in the private lending services market. Representative offices of the bank operate in more than 70 regions of the Russian Federation and, due to the competent use of informatization tools, provide high quality services. The Bank is one of the leaders of the Russian car loan market thanks to many years of expertise in this segment.

The bank's business model is distinguished by a high level of customer orientation: the corresponding agreement can be issued directly at the car dealership (do not specifically visit the bank), the decision to issue a loan is made promptly, and the debit card with borrowed funds can be taken away the very next working day.

Obviously, the customer relationship management (CRM) system is one of the key for the bank, and its selection is carried out with particular care. So, in 2015, the bank automated the management of the partner network Oracle using the Siebel CRM (Partner Relationship Management) PRM system. This allowed Drive Click Bank to automate the entire process of interaction with retail chains and car dealers: from connecting new partners and concluding agreements with them to multifactorial calculation of remuneration and coordination of their payments.

However, the needs of import substitution forced the bank to search for a new CRM platform.

Looking for a new CRM solution

In search of an answer to the new challenge, Drive Click Bank implemented a pilot project to implement an open source CRM solution. Bank employees say that the experience of pilot operation has shown that a completely different level of solution with broader functionality is required to provide high-quality support for the business process of customer service.

Indeed, in order to successfully manage the conversion of loan applications into a transaction, selling departments required a high degree of automation of manual processes, and these automated processes should be built into a single end-to-end chain of actions: from receiving an application to issuing a loan. However, work was carried out in a small CRM system and individual applications, and the working time of employees went to switching between tabs, searching for data, which significantly reduced the speed of processing applications and complicated communication with customers at different stages of the transaction.

At the same time, the support of omnichannel in sales channels turned out to be a critical requirement for Drive Click Bank. "A striking sign of this time was the rapid development of electronic sales channels, the emergence of new sources of applications for car loans, which, as expected, led to the demand for omnichannality," says Pavel Pitsik, Director of the Business Development Department of Drive Click Bank. He explains: "The cycle of selling a car is long, averaging up to one month from the moment of establishment and approval of a loan application. At the same time, a client can open an application in the Sberbank Internet Banking System (SBOL), then come first to one, then to another car dealership, change the choice of car or credit program, for example, instead of a new small car, choose a higher-class used model. All this time, the bank must be in contact with the client. "

I must say that the geographically distributed structure of the bank does not matter much for CRM selection. Another feature of the business is much more important - both employees on the corporate network and employees of car dealerships who get access there via the Internet should work in the system at the same time. The architecture of the new solution should take into account this specificity and provide appropriate cybersecurity requirements, says Pavel Pitsik.

We conducted a comprehensive analysis of the experience of operating and developing a solution based on open source software. And, based on the findings, we found a suitable mature product from Sber Business Software - SberCRM, - notes Daniil Stepashkin, business partner of Drive Click Bank in the field of CRM implementation and integration. - The solution is based on Russian/opensource components and is included in the register of Russian software. The capabilities of this system provide the required support for end-to-end automated client service processes, both in terms of workflow and data source integrations

In order to guarantee the transition to the new system on schedule and without escalation, Sber Business Software, which has the appropriate expertise and proven experience in product implementations, was also involved in solving the problem of deploying the system in the cloud, implementing and migrating data.

Features of the implemented SberCRM solution

The set of ready-made modules in the SberCRM product ensured the automation of the sales process using electronic channels, and the implemented integrations support communication with telephony and internal systems of the bank.

At the same time, as Nadezhda Oberemok, General Director of Sber Business Software notes, the process of replacing the old solution cannot be called simple. In the previous system, business functionality was implemented in the form of several systems built on the basis of the classic client-server architecture and related integrations. The architecture of the new system combines the most modern technologies, providing ease of scaling and flexibility of modifications of any complexity. In particular, containerization mechanisms, microservices with hosting in the cloud are used, DevOps tools are deployed.

A comprehensive approach to the implementation of SberCRM made it possible to take into account the special requirements of the bank for network architecture and cybersecurity requirements. All these problems were successfully solved, - notes Pavel Pitsik.

Thanks to the experience of specialists, all data transfer measures during the commissioning of the new system went absolutely smoothly, Daniil Stepashkin notes and adds: "The experience of implementing and primary operation of the SberCRM platform has shown that we were not mistaken with the choice. Moreover, we have implemented a platform that can be easily refined to meet the growing needs of the business. "

For this purpose, the SberCRM solution has configuration options in the Low-code/No-code format. With this toolkit, you can make various settings directly from the administrator panel, for example, add the desired filters, tables, task queues, related events, update the role model, etc. This allows you to quickly implement new functionality. Moreover, any business analyst can make changes, because for this it is enough to understand the business processes of the company, and it is not necessary to attract development resources for these tasks. And to configure additional integrations, it is convenient to use the integration designer from the Low-code arsenal. It allows you to add integrations with other systems in just a few minutes.

Stages and features of the SberCRM implementation project

The first (and main) phase of the SberCRM implementation was completed in just six months. The project started in January last year, and in early July the first stage was already completed. During this time, the system has gone through all stages: from the description of business requirements to full readiness for work. According to Daniil Stepashkin, it was possible to build a single system of interaction with clients - from receiving an application to issuing a loan. To do this, the conditions for 10 processes were formalized, 436 employees were trained and processed more than 40 thousand applications. "We have implemented a transparent system of interaction with customers throughout the sales process," says Daniil Stepashkin. At the same time, by automating the sales process, it was possible to simplify the work of managers, as well as debug the process of monitoring the deadlines for tasks by employees. "SberCRM has greatly helped increase business performance," emphasizes Pavel Pitsik. In addition, the reporting subsystem was successfully implemented, automatic events and other advanced functionality of SberCRM were configured.

Six months is great speed for a project of this magnitude. Involvement in the process of introducing functional customers of the bank made it possible to quickly involve specialists of relevant divisions of the bank to participate in the project if necessary. This ensured comfortable working conditions for the implementation team, notes Nadezhda Oberemok.

In addition, the painstaking work carried out by the bank's analysts with the owners of business processes helped a lot. "Starting the project, we already clearly imagined what and how we want to automate, we already had a technical task with worked out business requirements. Therefore, we were able to effectively divide the project into stages, agree on the deadlines with the implementation team and then strictly adhere to them, "says Daniil Stepashkin. He also emphasizes that an important factor in the success of the project was the experience of the Sber Business Software team: "It can be seen that colleagues not only created and develop their product, but also integrate it into the client's business processes. Working with such a company motivates. "

Of course, as in any complex IT project, during the implementation of SberCRM, it was necessary to solve some non-standard tasks, primarily related to integration with other internal systems of the bank. According to Pavel Pitsik, integration with telephony caused the most problems, since it was necessary not only to integrate with the API of the contact center, but also to integrate into the business process of its work, and it involves the use of additional third-party software.

The team's experience helps in the development of such integrations: many Sber Business Software specialists develop and launch large projects for various customers, including in different sectors of the economy. Among them - the financial sector, the service sector, logistics, production, trade.

The project milestones have been successfully completed. It remains to complete several improvements. But it is already clear that cooperation with Sber Business Software will continue in other areas of the bank's informatization.

What the bank received after the introduction of SberCRM

One of the main results of the implementation of SberCRM - the bank received a high-quality proven solution for automating customer interaction processes. To support business processes that were automated in the new system at the first stage of the project, several systems with complex integration logic were previously used, says Daniil Stepashkin: "Transferring all logic to one system made it possible to optimize data flows, obtain consistent information about the client, increase reliability and fault tolerance."

With cloud hosting and new architectural solutions, CRM has become easily scalable. "Now we are ready to serve many times large volumes of business without deterioration of performance and quality metrics, the overall performance of processes has significantly increased," emphasizes Pavel Pitsik. He explains that the system toolkit allows you to quickly implement sets of metrics for business processes, and then track them in dynamics. This makes it possible to quickly identify anomalies, analyze them and take the necessary measures to stabilize the process even before it affects sales volumes or customer service quality. One of the key issues in the development of banking services today is the Time-to-Market factor. In this regard, at the very beginning of the project, it was decided to create a product team for the implementation and support of the new CRM, and one of the requirements for the platform was the availability of tools that reduce the development of new software modules.

The No-code/Low-code toolkit as part of SberCRM ensures the further development of client process automation in-house by bank analysts.

Plans for further development

Already, the implementation and scaling of SberCRM has increased the speed of support and decision-making processes, at some stages several times. The bank's immediate plans include the implementation of a full-fledged integration of SberCRM with internal information systems, with the expected comprehensive effect on the level of customer satisfaction, productivity and convenience of banking and partner processes.

In order to ensure long-term cooperation with their clients, it is necessary, firstly, to know their expectations and, secondly, to increase the value of the LTV (LifeTime Value) parameter, that is, the bank's revenue for the entire period of cooperation with a specific client. And for this you need to understand how their relationship with the bank develops at the stage of servicing the loan, both in terms of speed and quality of service, what needs and difficulties they have, how this affects the dynamics of LTV, - says Daniil Stepashkin.

The bank also plans to develop an intelligent system for managing the queue of employees' tasks, support the provision of additional services and services related to the car ownership process to customers, and use the capabilities of Real-Time Decision Manager (RTDM) decision support systems.

In this regard, the implemented CRM solution will become the basis for the further development of the bank's technology platform, which provides the best indicators for customers, both in terms of service speed and in terms of the quality of transaction support.

Together with the Drive Click Bank team, we did a great job, but this is just the beginning. The bank is constantly developing, processes are improving, product requirements are increasing, "says Nadezhda Oberemok. - The business ambitions of our customers are constantly growing and it is very great that the SberCRM system easily adapts to any changes to solve new problems.