Spider Spins Gold Web in Data Mine

Simon Hayes
September 14, 2004

ST GEORGE Bank is on the verge of completing the roll-out of its Spider teller platform, a key part of its ambitions to use customer relationship management to target wealthy customers with products and services.

The 3500-seat roll-out comes as the bank goes to tender for an upgraded CRM system that will give tellers a dashboard-like view of each customer's financial position.

Spider is a Java-based teller system that will replace the bank's ageing B20 and Line 1 green-screen terminals in a deployment to be completed by the middle of next month.

The system was developed by IBM on its Websphere Java platform, and is being rolled out across St George, St George Commercial and BankSA.

In addition to the software, the roll-out includes PCs, flatscreen colour monitors and new printers.

One of the main advantages of the roll-out – aside from giving tellers a more user-friendly and faster system – is that for the first time it will provide each staff member with a PC and full access to the bank's range of CRM applications.

Tellers will be able to use software, including the existing EnAct CRM tool acquired from US vendor Carreker, as well as the accompanying lead management package, and back-office applications such as the human resources system, HR Xpress, and its online training tool, e-Luminate.

Staff will have access to Microsoft Word and Excel, and the St George Novell GroupWise email system.

Previously, access to these tools and other systems such as the St George intranet were limited to a single PC in the branch's back office, limiting their use by tellers.

Chief information officer John Lobenstein said the deployment was proceeding as planned, and tellers were picking up the technology quickly.

"People have picked this up in a morning, when we thought they'd need three to four days," he said.

"It is incredibly intuitive, because it was designed by the users."

Mr. Lobenstein said the bank decided to stick with Microsoft Office applications despite the publicity surrounding open source roll-outs.

"We have an enterprise licence, and they work," he said.

"We had a look around, but the alternative didn't appeal.

"For example, when we put together a loan document we use Word as the engine, and to redo that would be an enormous amount of work.

"Linux isn't a maiden's answer, and Microsoft isn't the ogre people represent it to be."

St George, like the four main banks, has made a concerted effort to use the information stored in its data warehouse to sell products and increase wallet-share from customers.

Last year it announced Integrated Sales and Service, a move to mine a rich seam of so-called gold customers with deposits of more than $200,000, or loans of more than $300,000.

The ISS initiative incorporates training and incentives – branch managers can earn bonuses of up to 30 per cent of their base salary – with CRM tools to promote more up-selling and cross-selling.

Call centre staff use an application called Direct Desktop to view the entire customer relationship, but the software has not proved suitable for deployment across the branch WAN.

Instead, St George went to tender for a new dashboard system for its tellers, with a deployment due in the first half of next year.

The Australian
This report appears on NEWS.com.au.