Location Intelligence and Mobile BI: Advancing Customer Relations in the Finance and Banking Sector

A recent Bank Systems and Technology report says that many U.S. banks and other financial institutions could benefit from implementing a Business Intelligence (BI) solution.

“Banks want to use customer-level data on product holdings, channel activity and profitability to improve the targeting of online campaigns and make account application and funding processes more seamless and effective,” the report states.

A recent Bank Systems and Technology report says that many U.S. banks and other financial institutions could benefit from implementing a Business Intelligence (BI) solution.

By using a BI solution to analyze organizational data, banks can improve and streamline operational efficiencies to not only bolster sales and marketing strategies and better develop customer service programs, but also mitigate risk, by developing more appropriate risk management processes.

But what if you combined Mobile BI – the ability to receive reporting and analytics on-the-go via mobile devices – and Location Intelligence (LI) – the ability to combine location-based data and traditional metrics captured within a BI system to uncover otherwise hidden trends, patterns and relationships? What further benefits can be derived and achieved from the addition and combination of these specialist capabilities?

Customer segmentation for enhanced profitability

What can a BI platform, encompassing LI and mobile analytical capabilities, bring to a financial institution’s critical business processes and operations?

Just ask Yellowfin how, at: http://www.yellowfinbi.com/YFContact.i4

Imagine. You’re an executive working at Big Finance Brothers & Co. The district manager has called you to an emergency meeting at BFBC’s headquarters. He’s demanding that you find a way to increase your division’s profitability. You schedule a flight and make your way to the airport. You pull out your iPad and, from the back of your taxi, you’re able to design a strategy to:

Analyze, segment and serve the customers in your division according to costs, profits and services (current and potential)
Conduct effective customer profiling to develop more successful marketing and sales campaigns through detailed and accurate customer segmentation: You can analyze the data stored in the core banking CRM based on a range of customer segmentations and geographies to uncover the ideal / most profitable customer profile. You then analyze your division’s customer base to determine profitability across branches and products, and identify and develop new cross-sell and up-sell opportunities and marketing campaigns accordingly. This is crucial, because you know that research indicates that the cost of selling new banking products and services to an existing customer is five times lower than to a new customer. In addition, cross-selling strengthens customer relationships and loyalty.
Effectively tailor products and services: Better understand customer needs and sentiments regarding banking, and as a consequence, develop, implement and offer new market-leading financial products and services to gain and maintain competitive advantage
Identify and actively retain and pursue your division’s most profitable customers

By analyzing your division’s mean household income, assets, predominant employment industries and the size and variation of existing loans, you then cultivate a strategy to accurately estimate the risk of customer loans based on:

The financial assets and earning capacity of the borrower
The prevailing economic climate

Improve customer satisfaction through understanding and transparency

Nearing the airport, you realize that you can also increase customer satisfaction ratings, not just your division’s profitability, by proactively harnessing data to give clients superior insight into their individual transitional operations. Using your BI solution’s LI and mobile components, you construct a proposal for your district manager suggesting that BFBC should offer real-time customer-facing reporting and analytics via a new app for the iPhone. Customers would be able to download this application for free, and receive highly visual and interactive reports detailing spending habits (and locations), to help manage their personal finances. This will enable customers to more easily manage finances by being able to track and analyze their spending and earning patterns by having:

Real-time understanding of payments
Real-time understating of spending

The cab comes to a halt. You tuck your iPad back in its sleeve and stroll towards the terminal, smiling at the prospect of a stress-free flight.

The importance of where: Location Intelligence and Mobile BI

Gartner’s 2012 BI Magic Quadrant survey indicated that the majority (53%) of organizations will deliver some form of mobile analytics by year’s end. The same report revealed that many organizations, across a diverse range of industries, are beginning to apply BI and analytics to new business areas. As a result, respondents listed “geographic-intelligent functions” as one of the standout new product requirements for 2012.

The insight able to be leveraged by assessing location-based data on mobile devices is enormous. LI is the glue that binds organizational data assets together, generating context, meaning and exposing crucial relationships between data types. Mobile BI is the platform of the future for reporting and analytics, as executives abandon their desks, and spend more time amongst assets, employees and customers.

With the intensification of trends towards globalization, outsourcing and the instantaneous (driven by our constant connectivity courtesy of the Internet), not knowing will no longer be an excuse – no matter where you, or your company’s operations, are located.

For more on LI and Mobile BI, simply visit:

Further reading: Still not convinced?

Still not convinced? Check out some of our recent blog posts on Location Intelligence: