The Kotak Group has initiated a group wide implementation of Siebel CRM. The solution is expected to go live in the next six to nine months.

"Kotak Life posted a hundred percent growth rate in the last financial year. We also see a huge business potential as eighty percent of India’s population is still not insured. As a result, to cope up with the increasing scale of operations we are deploying the CRM solution," says Dhiresh Rustogi, executive VP-IT, Kotak Life Insurance.

Siebel Proved To Be A Functional-Fit For Kotak

As part of strategy, instead of running multiple applications and then integrating them with the CRM, Kotak Life decided to go for a system that will not only fulfill the integration needs but also serve as a single repository for data. Additionally there is also a possibility of failure in case of integrating small applications. The application integration will not be point-to-point but through an EAI layer, changing the way different applications communicate with each other.

So how is Siebel a functional fit for Kotak? Rustogi expresses "Kotak Insurance is a part of a large group. We were looking for a CRM that can cater to non-life insurance products- services offered by Kotak Securities and Kotak Bank." Siebel will facilitate the Kotak Group to focus not only on customer prospects but also agents and external vendor prospects, thus the solution is configured to fit into any customer relationship and prospect management needs.

Coupled with this Siebel will enable Kotak to capture typical data about cold leads, existing, former and prospective customers, and Sales Force Automation. As a result the solution offers wide scope for interaction not only with the existing customer but also with former and prospective customers and agents.

Standardization Of Processes Is The Key Benefit

As of now the business processes are mapped to fit into the individual systems and applications in place. The challenge before Kotak is to chart a standard set of processes for handling customer, agent, marketing and campaigns, however the sub-processes can be different in the standard processes.

Standardization of processes will be the key benefit after the solution goes live. "The customer experience will be standardized across all the group companies. Financial benefits will start rolling out after we initiate the analysis of all the data captured in the system because we are looking at this product from a long term perspective," Said Rustogi.

"We are also looking to buy additional applications that would equip further automation, as and when the need arises they will be integrated with the CRM," concluded Rustogi.