It’s become a mantra: “Salesforce has a cloud solution for everything.” And as a Salesforce partner and champion, we’ve reviewed, discussed, and dissected almost every Salesforce solution on the Appirio Hub … except Salesforce’s Financial Services Cloud (FSC).
Retail banking companies dedicate entire budgets to acquire and retain customers while gaining the competitive edge over other banking institutions. In efforts to dedicate resources and meet today’s modern customers’ needs, many recognized financial institutions have begun implementing FSC — because it can affect change within much of the banking life cycle.
Banking customer life cycle
The banking client life cycle can be broken down into the following six strategic processes:
• Lead and Referral Process: This part of the cycle comprises the creation, routing, scoring, and nurturing of prospects. Leads can enter this process from a few different channels, but they can also enter the process as external referrals.
• Sales Process: Once leads and referrals are converted into opportunities, this process moves identified opportunities through the sales funnel.
• Customer Onboarding Process: Happening almost concurrently to the Sales process, this process consists of all the legal and compliance-related activities conducted to ensure the bank is mitigating risk, complying with regulations, and operating within its defined profile.
• Product Onboarding Process: Includes all activities required to connect the customer with the product.
• Servicing Process: Includes all things Case Management related.
• Relationship Cultivation: A critical part of the client’s banking journey — this process provides opportunities to stay connected through regular checkpoints. This phase ensures retention and explores expansion opportunities.
The Financial Services platform boosts client-facing capabilities across four of the six phases of the banking customer’s life cycle — Leads and Referrals, Sales Process, Servicing, and even some Relationship Cultivation.
Why move to FSC?
The Financial Services Cloud must have an impetus to create a strong effect on the customer experience. We’ve identified three out-of-the-box reasons for banks to grab an FSC implementation:
1 Banking Data Object model – Every mortgage, credit card, loan, and customer — as well as everything within the banking cycle — are given their own representative within the FSC ecosystem. These are called objects. The object model is how all your objects interrelate. If you build your own structure; the mortgage is one object, and the debit card goes in another. These two objects are now linked together.
2 Groupthink – Salesforce hones the power of best practices across the banking industry and constantly employees customer feedback into FSC. If there’s an issue, or if something doesn’t work, the next iteration addresses those issues.
3 Salesforce development – Salesforce’s development budget is, frankly, unlimited. Developers are continuously working within the Salesforce ecosystem, to improve on previous releases and architect new platforms. This benefits banks because every solution is scalable, buildable, and innovative.
In addition to these three transformative benefits, we can’t forget that FSC offers many advantages to the customer banking experience — as an integrated Banking Data Model, strong ties between Householding and Relationships, Intelligent Cross LoB Referrals, Retail Banker Profile and Console Applications, needs-based Selling & Servicing, Data Roll-up Frameworks, and both Salesforce Communities and Salesforce1.
Business architecture for retail
Like a sweet tire and rim package, you add to your car, FSC is an augmentary package, offered as part of the Salesforce’s multi-faceted ecosystem. Their cloud solutions are built to sit together like a train with cars interconnecting. We recommend customizing your SFDC implementation by using the train cars provided and building customizations to sit on that train framework.
The Salesforce data model has been adapted and expanded to create a foundation for industries that require a structured, flexible B2C data model. New custom fields on the Account and Contact standard objects let us model an individual client. New custom objects let us model client financials, relationship groups, and more.
Should your institution use FSC?
Many organizations are looking to further understand where FSC fits into their existing or planned Salesforce ecosystem, particularly to gain alignment on a strategic direction. Appirio can help your organization evaluate if Financial Services Cloud is right for you with a Virtuous Cycle Diagnostic.
Want to learn more about how Appirio can support the finance industry? We’ve got a Financial Services Industry Guide to Dreamforce 2018 just for you. You’ll gain “A Different Experience” of Salesforce’s ecosystem at Dreamforce 2018. Appirio has reserved space to sit down with you to help you discover how Salesforce can resolve your banking needs. You will receive priceless insights and how to boost the customer experience.