Last updated 21 July 1999

There's so much confusion around about some of the latest IT developments, strategies, products, directions and so on, that there's inevitably an effect on Financial Technology. Some of this is good, some of it is bad, and some of it is plain indifferent.

In this section, we explore up-to-the-minute technologies that are 'hot' issues at the moment, and how they really affect you.

Please note, opinions expressed are those of the analyst, and do not represent corporate opinion.

Note: this category of product is sometimes also called CRM (Customer Relationship Management). To avoid confusion, I'll refer to it here as ERM.

The reason I'm covering this is simple: I've just finished a conversation with an IT industry professional who told me that he didn't know what Siebel (an ERM product) did, so he looked at the web site, and he still doesn't know what it does. He wasn't the first.

Many people (press included) talk a lot about the new wave of ERM products, their success, and how they are hot property at the moment. I am sure many non-IT senior managers see this, and you can be sure it is only a matter of time before every bank wants an ERM package.

So what is ERM, and why is it so hot?

Ten to fifteen years ago, I was involved with the development of a retail banking core system. One of the design criterea, passed down from a senior executive, was that in real time, any bank officer should be able to see the complete, real-time picture of any customer's position with the bank - current, savings, overdraft, call, notice, FX trades, the lot. A complete picture of now, and a complete history - I remember his words to this day - "I want to know what my customer has for breakfast each day".

This is relationship banking, and although we were pioneering in those days, everyone else appears to be catching up in wanting to know everything about their customers in all points of contact to facilitate customer handling, up selling, cross selling, aid customer retention and so on.

It's all very well if you build this into a system from scratch, but most people don't do this. This is where the ERM comes in.

The ERM is a highly configurable suite of 'front office' applications that can be used by all points of customer contact (sales, call centres, branches, execs) to integrate customer information. EIS for all.

In both bank and non-bank institutions, this might not be as easy as it sounds. You can't present data that isn't there (not captured by source systems for instance). This makes installing and ERM potentially a large project - you can be sure that BPR and workflow will need to be involved too.

So do banks use it? The answer is yes - but not as heavily as you might expect, probably because banks were doing relationship banking before this trend arose. The ERM package market leader, Siebel, for instance, quotes Citibank, First Plus, NationsBank, Nykredit, Texas Commerce Bank, First Union and Bank of Boston as its banking customers - a smaller list than in other sectors.

If you want to take a look, Siebel, Vantive and Clarify are the market leaders. The Siebel web site is at www.siebel.com