Bluewolf - Financial Services

4 Things to Consider Before Implementing Salesforce's Financial Services Cloud

Kory Bowlin — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 15:43:04 +0000

The new Financial Services Cloud by Salesforce offers a brand new data model with pre-built features that bring information to the fingertips of wealth managers quickly. Due to this cloud’s early stage of release, it holds some limitations to be considered and a requirement for careful implementation. However, the earlier you adopt this technology, the more influence you will have on the enhancements of this cloud over time and the faster you can gain an advantage in your industry. Before implementing, these are the four questions you must ask to ensure adding this new technology will be successful for your firm.

How Many Currencies Does Your Firm Manage?

The current version of the Financial Services Cloud does not support multi-currency or language localisation, however this is changing in the summer release. Some limitations will still apply so check the release notes for more detailed information if you manage global accounts.

What Is Your Current IT Debt?

A common issue we see during implementations is that clients are still running very old versions of Internet Explorer due to legacy IT builds. Financial Services Cloud requires the use of Internet Explorer 11 or later. If your IT debt has you locked into old technology, implementation of this cloud will carry the additional cost of the time required to update your browsers to current versions.

Additionally, the Financial Services Cloud requires the new Lightning Experience. Any custom development in your current Salesforce version will likely need to be converted into Lightning Components before being Lightning friendly. This isn’t the most difficult task though - and let’s be honest, you should be doing it anyway.

Is Your Data Ready?

Putting data into the hands of users is only valuable if your data is accurate. Putting the wrong data into the hands of your advisors will make for some awkward conversations at best and losses of client trust at worst. To this end, perfecting the integration to populate client holdings correctly is crucial to the success of an implementation. While the features of the Financial Services Cloud are fairly easy to set up within Salesforce, you will need to go through multiple testing cycles during integration in order to catch and address any discrepancies within your source data.

Are You Ready to Support This Level of Change?

Financial Services Cloud allows users to decide how individual client information is rolled-up and summarized. This gives users a lot of control over their processes, but also means they must be properly trained to utilize this powerful data. Implementing these new features without proper training as to how best to leverage them, poses the risks of lower ROI at best and a completely failed roll-out at worst.

Also keep in mind that even if your firm has used Salesforce previously as your CRM, Financial Services Cloud was built with the Lightning User Interface, so it looks very different from the Classic version of Salesforce. Training will be key to your success.

If, after considering these points, you decide your firm is ready to begin using the Financial Services Cloud, you are ready to be on the leading edge of technology-enabled wealth management. If you’re ready to begin, connect with us. We can do a Financial Services Cloud Readiness Evaluation and help set you up for a successful implementation.

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Salesforce World Tour in London: Preview for Financial Services

Kory Bowlin — Mon, 02 May 2016 21:10:04 +0000

Flowers are blooming, the constant rain has retreated, it’s still light when you grab your first pint after work. You know what this means... it’s time for the Salesforce World Tour! This year’s tour promises to be especially interesting for Financial Services – here are the top things to check out if you are part of this industry:

Financial Services Cloud

Since this is Salesforce’s latest cloud to be released, expect demonstrations of its functions either during the morning keynote or in one of the scheduled breakout sessions. In a recent blog post, I discussed why the Financial Services cloud is a major step forward for Wealth Management. This cloud comes with a host of new features built in that previously would have required quite a bit of customization. If you are in Wealth Management, Asset Management, Retail Banking or Insurance Brokerage, learning about this addition to Salesforce is important as these new features are sure to make your job easier.
Shared Contacts

This is one of the biggest feature developments that was unveiled in Financial Services cloud. Historically Salesforce users have struggled with how to record contact information for people from different legal entities who you interact with in different contexts – do you create a duplicate record, add them as a contact role, or build a custom object? With Shared Contacts, there is now a native way to handle this scenario by associating the same contact to multiple accounts, and having them appear on each. This feature will likely be included in the Financial Services Cloud demo and it will be available to everyone in the upcoming Summer release.
Analytics Cloud

This cloud was demoed in previous years, but it is finally ready for the EMEA market now that it supports multiple-currencies. My excitement from when Salesforce first acquired EdgeSpring is finally being realized now that they have worked out some of the kinks and priced the tool more competitively. Will this cloud replace your big in-house BI team and satisfy your data scientists – no. What it will do is make powerful, usable analytics accessible for execs and managers wherever they are without having to hassle the IT team.
The Exhibition Floor

While it may seem obvious, the exhibition floor is my favorite part of the event because it offers an opportunity to get under the hood of products I’ve watched online demos for. This is where you can find all of the new products hitting the app exchange that are pushing the envelope in one place. While you are on the floor, stop by the Bluewolf booth to have a chat with me about what you are seeing. Enjoy the show!

For more information about how Financial Services teams are using Salesforce, read Jeff’s latest blog and download our special report, The State of Salesforce

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Salesforce's Financial Services Cloud Is a Step in the Right Direction

Kory Bowlin — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 16:08:38 +0000

The power of Salesforce for sales teams is old news by now. Historically, wealth managers in the area of Financial Services have been left out of this movement because of their unique role as both salespeople and advisors. Salesforce was missing functionality that this industry relies upon to do business. This is changing now with Salesforce’s release of the Financial Services Cloud. The importance of this release for wealth managers is simple - prior to this release, the standard Salesforce Sales Cloud did not provide a workable model to build out the complex relationships that are at play in Wealth Management. Here are the benefits and downsides to the new cloud.

Industry Specific Features

The Financial Services Cloud combines traditional functions of the CRM with new features that are customized for wealth managers. Person Accounts, which allow contacts to be linked to specific accounts, have been re-labeled as Clients. Brand new features include the ability to choose how to roll-up financial holdings to both a household and client level.

Lightning Capability

We’ve seen multiple client projects where it was necessary to build out custom models to capture data on a client’s financial holdings, then build visualforce pages to display the data in a usable fashion. Salesforce released Financial Services Cloud with Lightning capability built in. This removes the cumbersome task of building a customized instance of traditional Salesforce in order for wealth managers to begin using Lightning. This also means there’s no need to write triggers to roll-up different data for different clients or update visualforce pages in order for them to be compatible with the new Lightning UI.

Changes Needed

Before Financial Services Cloud is a truly comprehensive CRM for this industry the way it is for traditional sales teams, additional functions are needed. Multi-currency support and Shield’s data encryption capabilities are requirements before the larger wealth managers that operate internationally will see this cloud as a solid investment.

This release is an important step in the right direction for an industry that has historically not been able to thrive with the standard Salesforce offering. This model, while currently aimed at Wealth Managers, can be a huge step forward for Asset Management and Insurance clients with a few tweaks. Combining the Financial Services Cloud with a Customer and Partner community could also provide huge benefits to all parties involved.

To learn more about custom Salesforce solutions, connect with our experts.

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Enterprise Bank and Trust

admin — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 05:29:09 +0000

A Referral Management Solution Reshapes Selling Behavior

Enterprise Bank and Trust

Background

Enterprise Bank and Trust (EB&T) has been serving the financial needs of privately-held businesses and their families for 25 years. They operate in a variety of financial sectors, including business banking, personal banking, private banking, and wealth management services. EB&T’s success comes in large part from a unique entrepreneurial culture where innovation flourishes. Now with over $3.5 billion in assets, they’ve helped over 15,000 families in the St. Louis, Kansas City, and Phoenix areas.

The Problem

EB&T sought out a business consulting partner after an intense period of acquisitions which tripled their deposit accounts. They needed a solution that would help them capitalize on growth by increasing cross-selling efforts inside the organization (approximately 40% of their customers had only one product; for example, one loan or deposit). Keeping their sales team engaged meant solidifying their sales management best practices and powering a referral solution that changed the way they sold their portfolio of financial products and services.

The Solution

EB&T saw Bluewolf as a like-minded entrepreneurial partner with deep credibility and strong technical skills. We worked with EB&T to design a plan that would integrate Salesforce across all of their core capabilities: wealth management, banking, and treasury management, including their legacy banking system. In order to ensure results, we focused extensively on change management: firstly, so that sales managers would adopt and endorse the new solution; and secondly, so that executives would support the new referral process with data-driven dashboards. Our consulting expertise extended beyond customer relationship management. We understood the needs of EB&T’s underlying sales processes and teams, and designed a solution that engaged the organization around a new business strategy: cross-selling products and services to current customers.

The Results

The customized solution we delivered has transformed EB&T’s business and culture. Success wasn’t simply the deployment of a new technology solution; it involved changing employee mindsets, and delivering them an experience that fueled a new type of selling behavior. By starting with the defined outcome of driving referrals, EB&T was able to focus its solution and double referrals across their main distribution channels in the first six months. Not only are employees more successful, they are able to rapidly cater to the changing needs of their customers, increasing customer engagement and their commitment to EB&T in the long run.

Sun Life Financial

admin — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 05:27:27 +0000

Increasing Employee Productivity and Customer Win Rates

Sun Life Financial

Background

Sun Life Financial (Sun Life) focuses on helping customers achieve a lifetime of financial security. They provide global clients with relevant and smart life insurance, health, dental and disability insurance, e ost of other financial security products, specifically designed for various life stages and goals.

The Problem

Like any big insurance carrier, Sun Life maintains a complex sales model and set of IT systems. Their salespeople not only had to understand how Sun Life’s products and services vary by geography, but then had to interface with multiple, disparate systems to track activities, commissions, broker contacts, and customer quotes.

Fielding requests was time-consuming. Sun Life’s employees were spending a majority of their time on administrative tasks, and less time building relationships with their customers and brokers. They needed to consolidate customer information into a single system and find a better way to prioritize which opportunities they pursued.

The Solution

Sun Life hired Bluewolf to redesign their CRM solution. Before beginning the project, we worked with Sun Life to conduct a Blueprint, during which we mapped their current IT architecture to specific phases for moving their processes to the cloud. Through multiple working sessions with stakeholders and users to isolate key requirements, we were able to build a roadmap to support Sun Life’s future business goals.

We then built a custom solution to meet Sun Life’s specific needs, including a mobile component which allowed salespeople to manage customer relationships and collaborate with their team, anytime, anywhere. We called it Bluewolf Producer360.

Change management was also a critical part of Sun Life’s transformation. Project champions were selected to lead the change and educate employees about the benefits of moving to Salesforce, building trust in the new solution.

The Results

Sun Life’s employees have transitioned from the heavy burden of manual data entry across a number of business systems to a solution that improves how they do their jobs and how they serve customers. Sun Life’s salespeople can quickly identify and focus on their most profitable producer relationships, closing more business. Integrating their core systems with Salesforce provides employees with holistic customer information, allowing them to engage producers at the right time and maximize sales opportunities. Employee collaboration is up, and as a result, they are discovering additional ways to engage each other and their customers.

Rolls-Royce & Partners Finance Builds New Customer Portal Using Salesforce Communities

admin — Wed, 09 Sep 2015 05:40:44 +0000

Customer support has greatly evolved over the last decade. Forward-thinking organizations are changing their customer support from traditional help desk models into more meaningful conversations that enhance the customer experience.

To do this, market leaders are investing in platforms that empower customers by providing them with the information they need, when they need it, via the channel that suits them. These same platforms allow organizations to collect and analyze data, and derive insights about their customers. Ultimately, these insights allow employees to provide customers with relevant information at key points along the customer journey.

Rolls-Royce & Partners Finance (RRPF) is an example of such a forward-thinking company that is creating new service channels to provide a better customer experience and gain valuable insight. A joint-venture business of Rolls-Royce Holdings plc, one of the world’s leading producers of aero engines for large civil aircrafts, RRPF provides lease finance services to buyers of aircraft engines. RRPF is the largest lessor of Rolls-Royce and IAE spare engines, and their customers include leading flag carrier airlines.

We spoke with Ben Hughes, Director of Marketing and Business Development at RRPF, to get his perspective on the new customer portal they built with Bluewolf using Salesforce’s Community Cloud.

MP: How do you think customer expectations have changed in the last five years?
BH: As consumers, we have all gotten used to accessing information and services easily over the internet, especially on our mobile devices. We can check our bank account balances, transfer funds, or even hire a car in just a few clicks. This is our new normal, and it sets the same expectation in a B2B setting. Our customers increasingly expect us to provide services in a similar way.

MP: Why did you feel you needed to create this channel for your customers? What problems were you hoping it would solve?
BH: We have used Community Cloud to build an easy-to-use account management service for our customers. The airline business is very competitive, and our customers are under cost and time pressures. Their expectation is that key information that can help them make decisions should be available real-time 24 hours a day. We want to exceed our customer’s expectations, so we built a service to give them access to information that they need at all times.

MP: What exactly does this new service do for your customers?
BH: The service gives customers access to their lease documents, invoices, and technical utilization data on the engines that they have on lease from us. Customers can also easily view details of other engines that we have available for lease and make requests to purchase or lease such engines. We plan to continue to build on this and provide more functionality in the near future, especially in the area of engine technical records.

MP: What are some of your favorite features of the app?
BH: I really like the design aesthetic. It’s simple, engaging, and consistent with the values of our brand. I also like how easy it is to find and download lease invoices and documents.

MP: What does Rolls Royce & Partners Finance do to create a positive experience and live up to your customers’ expectations?
BH: We listen to our customers to understand what they need from us. We don’t want to be just another financial counter-party. We want to be a trusted partner. Before we started this project, we went and talked to several customers about what information they would want to access and how they would want to access it. The feedback we received led us to make some early changes to our design. The plan is to continue to invest in the service and develop more features that will be valuable to our customers.

Ben Hughes will be speaking at Dreamforce ‘15 in San Francisco on Tuesday, September 15 at 4:00PM. To find out more about RRPF’s customer community, and to learn how to build a community within your own organization, register for his breakout session today.

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White Paper: The Financial Services Industry, Delivering Customer Engagement in the Cloud

admin — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 16:49:22 +0000

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It costs 6-7 times more to aquire a new customer than retain an existing one.

Learn the 3 strategies for increasing wallet-share in the cloud.

In the connected-customer era, there’s only one way to keep customers engaged: meet them when, where, and how they want. Cloud, social, and mobile have the potential to enable this, however the rapidly changing demands of your customers presents formidable challenges given strict regulatory environments.

Flexibility is necessary to help take advantage of every opportunity to engage and retain customers by understanding them as people, not transactions. And now innovative financial service leaders are seeing the unique opportunities the cloud represents to drive new growth.

Since 2000, Bluewolf has helped financial services companies adopt cloud, social, and mobile technologies to:

Deliver personalized customer experience based on the customer's needs
Collaborate across departments to increase cross-sell opportunities
Increase speed-to-market, reduce costs, while maintaining compliance and control

Download the Financial Services Whitepaper to learn how leading companies are increasing wallet share by being customer-centric, embracing cloud technology, and adopting an agile approach each step of the way.

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Case Study: Huntington Bank's Leadership Embraces Change with Bluewolf's Agile Business Transformation

admin — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:04:16 +0000

Challenge:
Huntington Bank was badly hurt by the financial crisis. The new CEO saw an opportunity to invest in growth by creating an effective customer referral process across 18 business units. Huntington Bank could not succeed without creating a single vision the whole organization could get behind and support. Huntington’s current processes and systems were not functioning well, as everything was done in siloes or manually on spreadsheets across five different customer databases that were not integrated. Huntington needed a system that would achieve a singular customer view throughout the entire company.

Solution:
Huntington turned to Bluewolf to establish a transformation road map with an iterative implementation process. Bluewolf helped Huntington Bank incrementally roll out the Salesforce CRM system to the entire company. Together, Bluewolf and Huntington established a series of business champions to collaborate with the business units on the small increments of change for the overall project. Huntington was able to integrate 8,200 users on the same system so that the entire company could have one holistic view of their customers.

Results:
Huntington was able to embrace cloud-based technology to allow for constant change and flexibility. The employees adopted not only the successful technology, but also a cultural shift in the organization. The impact of the implementation was huge, increasing the number of referrals from one business unit to another, the quality of referrals, and the amount of time it took to turn a referral into a customer.

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Case Study: Manhattan Associates Achieves ROI Success by Innovating with Bluewolf

admin — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 23:58:37 +0000

Challenge:

When Manhattan Associates went live on Salesforce, they wanted to make the most out of their investment. They wanted to engage a strategic partner that could help the company continue its innovation on Salesforce, and maximize its ROI. Instead of hiring a team of developers, Manhattan wanted to bring on top-notch consultants who understood the ins and outs of Manhattan’s unique organization. Manhattan called upon Bluewolf Beyond to help them iterate on their new Salesforce CRM.

Solution:

Bluewolf Beyond acted as an extension of Manhattan’s technical staff. They helped generate and execute startegies that increased the company’s Salesforce ROI, as well as established an environment for continuous Salesforce innovation. Bluewolf helped Manhattan work through their Salesforce backlog quickly and efficiciently, and helped to establish a governance board that met each month to review major Salesforce innovations and changes. Bluewolf also customized Salesforce modules that allowed employees to collaborate more easily.

Results:

Making consistent, minor changes has given Manhattan a lot of quick wins. They continue to release minor Salesforce enhahncements each month. Bluewolf Beyond has helped Manhattan to increase communication and build trust with their internal clients. Every change Bluewolf has made to the Salesforce application has shown quantifiable revenue or productivity gains. Bluewolf continues to develop new ideas for Manhattan that is helping to transform their organization.

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Case Study: Sunnova Financial Speeds Time to Market

admin — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 23:58:06 +0000

Challenge:

Sunnova is a start-up company that provides simple and affordable leases to qualified homeowners by partnering with solar equipment providers. They had just received funding and needed to become operational fast if they were to capitalize on immediate market opportunities. The VP of Operations needed to find a technology solution and IT infrastructure that would enable the company to be operational in six weeks or less. Sunnova needed a low-cost solution to manage and track partners and customer contacts.

Solution:

Sunnova Financial selected Bluewolf for its deep Salesforce expertise and cloud implementation experience. Bluewolf understood the business need and rolled out the Salesforce CRM solution that was completely configured to meet Sunnova’s process for managing partners and customers. Bluewolf helped guide Sunnova in the right direction to set the company up for long-time success.

Results:

With Bluewolf’s help, Sunnova implemented its Salesforce CRM solution in six weeks with complete Partner Relationship Management (PRM) capabilities. They integrated their quoting tool with Salesforce, making it easy for partners to offer the company’s lease option. Bluewolf enabled Sunnova to leverage Salesforce to get the most ROI and position the company for scalable growth.

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4 Things to Consider Before Implementing Salesforce's Financial Services Cloud

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Enterprise Bank and Trust

Background

The Problem

The Solution

The Results

Sun Life Financial

Background

The Problem

The Solution

The Results

Rolls-Royce & Partners Finance Builds New Customer Portal Using Salesforce Communities

Customer support has greatly evolved over the last decade. Forward-thinking organizations are changing their customer support from traditional help desk models into more meaningful conversations that enhance the customer experience.

We spoke with Ben Hughes, Director of Marketing and Business Development at RRPF, to get his perspective on the new customer portal they built with Bluewolf using Salesforce’s Community Cloud.

MP: What are some of your favorite features of the app? BH: I really like the design aesthetic. It’s simple, engaging, and consistent with the values of our brand. I also like how easy it is to find and download lease invoices and documents.

Ben Hughes will be speaking at Dreamforce ‘15 in San Francisco on Tuesday, September 15 at 4:00PM. To find out more about RRPF’s customer community, and to learn how to build a community within your own organization, register for his breakout session today.

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White Paper: The Financial Services Industry, Delivering Customer Engagement in the Cloud

It costs 6-7 times more to aquire a new customer than retain an existing one.

Learn the 3 strategies for increasing wallet-share in the cloud.

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Case Study: Huntington Bank's Leadership Embraces Change with Bluewolf's Agile Business Transformation

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Case Study: Manhattan Associates Achieves ROI Success by Innovating with Bluewolf

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Case Study: Sunnova Financial Speeds Time to Market

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MP: What are some of your favorite features of the app?
BH: I really like the design aesthetic. It’s simple, engaging, and consistent with the values of our brand. I also like how easy it is to find and download lease invoices and documents.