At its core, a client relationship management solution (CRM) for financial institutions, such as banks, which are similar to traditional ones, but these are multipurpose CRM systems for managing and building relationships with customers and employees through an organization’s tools, databases, and automated processes. At the same time, CRM’s for financial institutions differ in their unique customization for this specific industry use. Most of them focus on streamlining key financial processes and workflows while providing more advanced integration with financial accounts.

Top-of-the-line CRM solutions for financial services provide industry-specific features geared toward ensuring a smooth user experience for industry representatives. Moreover, these CRMs provide out-of-the-box functionality and processes while having industry-leading features, such as business social integration and other sales, service and even marketing options.

This list will help you choose the best financial CRM by comparing features and benefits of 4 market-leading solutions, so you can make up your own mind and choose the one that will meet your organization’s needs. Bpm’online

Bpmonline CRM is a process-driven, cloud based software that can help users boost profitability, increase customer retention, and effectively manage risks with features that are designed to meet the needs of the banking industry. Being armed with a complete set of options for managing a customer's account information, preferences, needs, and interaction history, bpm’online enables companies to cultivate more profitable relationships and keep track of internal and external processes. This helps corporate and retail banks and financial institutions in order to manage a complete customer journey and enhance customer experience.

Bpm’online provides three products that are developed to meet companies’ specific needs and requirements, these are: bpm’online bank customer center - a complete set of tools for bank front-office and contact center management; bpm’online bank sales - the ready-to-use system to manage end-to-end sales processes of financial products and services to the bank's corporate clients; bpm’online marketing - the multi-channel software, helps boost demand generation with intelligent personalized campaigns. All of the packages also include core feature such as 360-degree customer view in order to create a unified database of the potential and existing customers of your bank. It also allows Bank Sales users to manage legal entity profiles, contact data, see the entire history of interactions with your client, view the list of offered clients and the transactions that have been made with the client, which include contracts, bank accounts and cards and any other financial instruments. 360-degree customer view allows you to create the most effective communication strategy, offer customers relevant financial products and boost customer loyalty. Moreover, bpm’online’s solutions for financial institutions provide a bunch of other key features like collaboration tools, business process management, out-of-the-box processes, case management and opportunity management, synchronization and integration with email services as well as other third-party solutions for finance management.

ORACLE

Oracle Banking Platform is a transformational solution that enables banks to take the cost out of technology so as to focus investment on executing strategic tasks.

Oracle was built to help banks respond to today's business challenges and transform their business models using business processes which drive productivity improvements across front and back offices while reducing operational spending. The Oracle Banking Platform supports banks' growth agenda through efficient distribution strategies including white labeling or multi-brand to reach new markets and enterprise product origination, supporting multi-products and packages to drive the customer-to-product ratio growth. Pre-integrated enterprise apps and underlying technology stacks helps reduce IT costs by reducing in-house integration and testing efforts. The CRM solution from Oracle provides multiple options that offer banks the flexibility to frame a transformational journey based on their individual requirements while allowing them to progressively transform their business and IT operating. Oracle's FLEXCUBE, which is Oracle’s core banking solution, is addressing the need for universal, commercial banking and international operations.

Salesforce

Salesforce Lead and Referral for retail banks help funnel each lead to the right agent, advisor, or manager by delivering a connected and relevant experience throughout the consumer journey. The solution helps generate a defined master profile of the customer and effectively plan the next best actions the service agent needs to take.

Salesforce provides a centrally managed system that captures and prioritizes leads from multiple customer contact points and then routes them to the appropriate specialist or bank associate. Once stored to the system, a lead will be tracked through the whole pipeline, while outcomes of the communication will be automatically recorded. Built-in reporting dashboards allow users to view the list of assignments, make referrals and share notes with other employees within the company. Managers are provided with the option of generating reports and view statuses and sort results by employees, customers, associates. This provides a great point of accountability to ensure that leads are followed up thus avoiding the black hole in the communication process.

The solution from Salesforce integrates the processes that help incorporate all of the contacts with customers and manage duplicated contacts. Along with other features, the solution will help ensure that as the lead is passed from one specialist at the bank to the next, nothing is lost.

Microsoft Dynamics

Microsoft Dynamics CRM offers banks the option to streamline their key processes, such as account onboarding, case escalation and loan origination with automated workflows and dialogs. This helps users capitalize on cross-sell opportunities, as well as helps ensure that pricing and banking policies are aligned to the bank’s strategy, so they can increase profitability and manage risks better by identifying risk-elevating customer actions. Microsoft Dynamics CRM users can also help users slash operational costs across multiple branches, call centers, and offices by minimizing administrative tasks with productivity features. With Microsoft Dynamics CRM, banks can also become more customer-centric and win loyalty and trust thanks to personalized client services offered across multiple channels. Microsoft’s solution empowers agents to deliver faster, more informed and more effective resolutions, while their agile solution adapts to changing demands so that banks can deliver intent driven outcomes in a flexible, secure and reliable environment.

If your bank already has an implemented CRM solution or you have it in the list of strategic objectives for 2016, try not to lose sight of main basic principles and focus on specific features your organization might need so as to take the most out of the software.