The Future of Productivity: CRM Data and Client Intelligence

The Future of Productivity: CRM Data and Client Intelligence

At OpenFin, we believe that high-quality data and actionable intelligence are two of the most important factors in helping knowledge workers maximize their productivity. This belief is reflected in both our container, which enables information to flow freely across the financial desktop, and our new Workspace solution, which allows users to prioritize and act on key notifications as they happen and without workflow disruption.

Customer relationship management (CRM) tools provide a perfect illustration of this need. Salespeople often find it tedious to update them with the most current data, meaning the information in these systems is often inaccurate or incomplete – which in turn makes users even less likely to embrace them as part of their workflow. It’s a vicious cycle that hampers efficiency and suppresses insights.

That may be changing. At FinJS New York, we sat down with three thought leaders – Brian Dolan (Barclays), Kim Prado (BMO) and Jeffery Parrish (Introhive) – who are working to revolutionize how capital markets firms approach their CRMs, transforming them from static repositories of information to true drivers of productivity and insight.

“The goal of a CRM should be to capture all interactions and bring them together to identify the next best action,” said Prado. “We live in this arms race of data, where everyone is trying to bring this data together to deliver to their businesspeople. It all comes back to: is your data clean and can you use it?”

That’s far easier said than done, but Introhive is working to make it easier for capital markets firms to get there. By automating the recording of sales activities in the CRM, Introhive makes it far easier to derive and act on insights around a particular client or prospect relationship, explained Parrish. These often involve what Parrish called the “Three Cs”: cross-selling, collaboration and continuity.

“CRMs often contain a lot of static data and backward-looking reports,” said Parrish. “There’s not a lot that can help you move forward and adjust your strategy…Our relationship mapping makes it easy for salespeople to access up-to-date information and strategize on how to grow that relationship.”

Other topics of discussion included:

• The case for designing CRMs for salespeople, not senior management
• The benefits of consolidating CRM use across disparate departments and business lines
• Why interoperability will be key to driving future adoption of CRMs
• And much more

We hope you come away from this discussion with a better understanding about how CRMs can serve as not just databases, but sources of meaningful client intelligence. Want to learn more? Drop us a line.