San Francisco, CA, USA
May 5, 2005Branch
Automation Solutions: The Convergence of Teller, Platform, and CRM
Reports Published by Celent
Branch automation vendors are offering their own
scaled-down CRM today. Yet there have been many failed CRM deployments in
the past 10 years. Can these new vendors do a better job? Can a branch be
turned into a selling machine? Is technology all it takes? Celent
Communications discusses vendor visions and banker realities in this
two-part study.
In a new two-part series, Branch Automation
Solutions, Celent discusses the trends in the industry on both the
business and technical sides. It examines the technical environment
choices that make the most sense for a bank when choosing a vendor.
Finally the report analyzes the vendors using Celent’s ABCD framework
for analysis.
In the past few decades, retail bankers were focused
on ATMs, call centers, and Internet banking. Branch automation foundered.
Now, as banks see that branches are an effective vehicle to grow bank
assets and cross-sell, there is renewed interest in branch automation. In
spite of the increased interest, the main reason for replacing branch
automation solutions remains obsolescence of the previous system.
The branch automation space self-segments into banks
with assets of less than US$1 billion and banks with assets of more than
US$5 billion, with a gray area between the two. Branch automation vendors
to the smaller banks are typically the vendors of the core system, where
that vendor is the predominant vendor across all areas of that bank. The
vendor is pitching best total solution, and the key skill in the field is
the migration of core data to the new system.
Vendors to the larger banks are in a multi-vendor
environment where the branch automation vendor is integrating across
back-end systems. These vendors are introducing their own middleware
layers with prebuilt business logic that can be customized to fit the bank’s
needs. These vendors, pitching the integration of best-of-breed, are shown
in the chart below.
Vendors targeting the small and large banks are
offering their own CRM software, which Celent calls CRM Lite. It
integrates with the teller and platform solutions out of the box, and in
the case of vendors that are also providing the core software, integrates
to the core as well.
According to Bart
Narter, author of the report and senior analyst in the
banking group at Celent, "CRM Lite solutions from the branch
automation vendors are less risky to deploy since a great deal of the
integration work has already been completed. Banks are having real success
with this CRM Lite, which can be measured at the top and bottom
lines."
The vendors analyzed are ARGO, Fidelity
Information Services, Fiserv, Getronics, Harland,
Jack Henry, Open Solutions, PRODUCT4, S1, and Unisys.
A table
of contents for both reports is available online. Click here for the Part
I edition, here for the Part
II edition.
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