CDC Software, a wholly-owned subsidiary of CDC Corporation (NASDAQ: CHINA) and a provider of industry-specific enterprise software and services, announced today that Evangelical Christian Credit Union (ECCU) has increased client retention and acquisition, and improved collaboration and communication after implementing Pivotal CRM for Financial Services.
"We've recognized that our success is dependent upon our ability to strengthen and retain relationships with our existing customers," says Alan Weisenberger, ECCU's vice president of technology services. "Pivotal CRM gives us a platform to help enable every interaction, from acquisition through the entire customer life-cycle to deliver consistently on our brand promise. We gain insights through the Pivotal system that allow us to understand our customers more fully, serve them better, and thus establish loyalty so we can retain them longer. Also, that same comprehensive view of the customer enhances our customer acquisition processes by helping us understand important factors like share-of-wallet and network relationships."
ECCU is a banking resource for churches, Christian schools and other evangelical ministries throughout the U.S. Although ECCU primarily serves organizations rather than individuals, many of its individual members are also part of one or more of these organizations, and many of the organizations have ties to each other. As a result of these complex, multi-layered interconnections, as well as ECCU's rapid growth, the credit union knew it needed an industry-specific technology for more effective management of their customer relationships.
After a thorough search of the CRM market, ECCU determined that Pivotal CRM for Financial Services could better support the commercial orientation of the credit union and manage the complex member relationships without significant customization. "The out-of-the-box functionality for commercial banking significantly reduced the need for customization. The rich functionality in addition to the ease and flexibility of Pivotal CRM helped us achieve almost 100% user adoption very quickly," said Weisenberger.
Furthermore, by implementing Pivotal CRM for Financial Services, ECCU has improved collaboration and communication in and among its front-line sales force, as well as a variety of sales support users making it easy for any user to go into the system and see the status of a transaction. Now, ECCU's mobile sales people can access information at their own convenience, sitting in a hotel room, for example, rather than emailing an in-house support person and waiting for a response, which might not arrive until the next morning.
Management at ECCU also benefits from Pivotal CRM. "With Pivotal CRM, our sales management has one place to go to assess the status of our sales pipeline at the enterprise level, by individual sales rep, or various other criteria. We can see trends on a chart and drill down to see the specific opportunities that make up the projected numbers," said Weisenberger.
Weisenberger concluded, "Pivotal CRM is a vital part of our credit union's future growth. Without Pivotal CRM, we believe we would be constrained in our ability to acquire new customers and provide the personalized services needed to delight and retain our current customers."