The Money Tree

Fubon Financial Holding Company markets a range of financial products and services to 5.8 million customers worldwide. The problem facing it was its focus on pushing products to the masses, instead of giving individual customers the service they needed, when they needed it. "Fubon's goal was to become more customer focused," says C.F. Lin, the company's CRM project leader. "The organization needed to both leverage our customer base to maximize the potential cross-sell opportunities and manage customers more efficiently across business units." The company evaluated data warehousing solutions from IBM and Oracle, and CRM solutions from IBM, Unica, and Epiphany. In the end, it chose Teradata for both. Fubon now uses event-based marketing and builds business rules based on certain triggers or life changes. It identified more than 400 events, each based on customer needs to target the right customers at the right time through the right channel, and Lin says the results have been "phenomenal." He estimates an 850 percent overall return on investment from acquiring and implementing the Teradata enterprise data warehouse, data consolidation, and CRM solutions. "We have seen a twenty percent improvement in telemarketing conversion rates, twenty percent improvements in assets under management, and three to five times more profitable leads," he says. "Our system scans the database each night to identify customers who signal their need for attention. We can then contact them within twenty-four hours and service their need. Not only are we more successful, but our customers feel the difference in treatment," he says. "They actually appreciate us contacting them, rather than having to complain about junk mail or annoying phone calls. We meet them when they have a need." Teradata worked with Fubon to conduct an assessment of current activities to help shift from product-based marketing to needs-based marketing, and then provided recommendations of more efficient processes along with 15 employee workshops, says Craig Morrison, CRM consulting practice team leader for the Asia Pacific Teradata division of NCR. "We built ten to fifteen campaigns within the first month of operation [and] within weeks [were] measuring results," he says. "That was a big step for Fubon and it was a steady step because we were there with them." Fubon launched 22 campaigns from May 2004 to January 2005 and attributes more than $1.8 billion to the 15 campaigns currently running. "The ROI from our very first campaigns was impressive," Lin says. "While we were used to [conversion] rates of one to five percent, our first batch of campaigns were a phenomenal success. We achieved an average of eighteen percent success, with some campaigns achieving as high as thirty to sixty percent responses." Success was measured primarily by an account opening: Fubon increased the number of Platinum cardholders by more than 40 percent. The company also found 2 percent of its customers contribute more than 90 percent of the bank's overall profit. With that knowledge Fubon uses its database marketing programs to more effectively reach those valuable clients. Morrison says Fubon was able to achieve success not only because it had a good distribution network to achieve CRM, but also because senior management was committed to moving toward a customer-focused business. "Fubon's a very good example of when there's executive support it becomes much easier to move from stage one to stage two or to move from a traditional environment to a CRM environment. They had very good direction and executive-level support right from the start. They were very open to new ideas. It was a very enjoyable project to work on because of the culture." The Payoff By implementing Teradata's data warehouse and CRM solutions, Fubon:

estimates an 850 percent overall ROI;

saw a 20 percent improvement in telemarketing conversion rates;

generated three to five times more profitable leads;

achieved 30 percent improvements in assets under management