Financial Firms and Banks Transition to the Cloud

GlobalOne released the first, of three, CRM (customer relationship management) cloud packages to help financial service firms and banks transition to cloud computing with Salesforce.com. G1 Asset Management takes software systems commonly used in asset management and adds Salesforce.com elements like user interfaces, work flows, and libraries.

This announcement rides on the coattails of Salesforce.com’s Social Marketing Cloud Radian6 release, which provides services that builds on core CRM software.

Although financial service firms are familiar with CRM traditional uses, adopting recent cloud strategies have been incremental at best. The problem with adopting cloud resources is because they are too focused on CRM basics, technology that has been around for a while. Utilizing social media as a marketing device is still new, but luckily, by implementing these new strategies users will see cloud computing benefits immediately and soon consider other applications and projects to move to the SaaS (software as a service) model.

“It allows them to start focusing more on strategic value,” said G1 Asset Management CTO Geoff Merrick. “We end up starting the conversation much earlier in the process.”

Although banks are familiar with traditional CRM, their understanding of social media marketing is limited. That is, users would like to understand how social media aids in brand awareness and promotion, but cannot see how it will function in their business.

Social marketing’s “biggest problem is a lack of a frame of reference. People are really excited about the potential, but don’t have anything … to help understand it.” Merrick said. “CIOs don’t really have anything to fall back on. All they think is, ‘well, how is this different from email?’”

However the biggest draw for implementing social media marketing is developing new business. Crafting correspondence with advisers becomes a team effort with social media, as you are collaborating together. For example, if an adviser sells a product, the banker will see the transaction tagged in Salesforce’s chatter collaboration software, and thus, can contact the adviser about the sale.

G1 Asset Management is available worldwide. Pricing information was not available.

[Photo courtesy of CBR Computer Business Review.]