M&I Bank Selects Quadstone For Competitive CRM Edge

Quadstone, a leading provider of customer intelligence software and services for the enterprise, announced that Marshall & Ilsley Corporation (M&I) has selected and installed Quadstone's Decisionhouse software to direct and better target its marketing campaigns. M&I selected the Decisionhouse software to quickly transform its raw customer data into easily understood, predictive models of customer behavior. The result is a sustained competitive advantage by targeting the appropriate customers for its products. With thousands of different customers supported by many different branch offices, financial institutions have the daunting task of identifying the right customers for appropriate promotions and finding the most effective use of marketing dollars. While it is generally understood that the profitability of each product is different, banks are faced with identifying which subset from their thousands of customers will generate the most significant ROI on a particular marketing campaign.

Additionally, while the profitability of each product is different, the profitability of particular customers purchasing the same product can vary significantly. For example, a customer who opens $50,000 home equity line yet never uses it, is a less profitable customer than one that opens a significantly lower line of credit yet frequently uses it. To understand the hidden behavior of customers, and thus predict their profitability, M&I undertook an extensive market evaluation to identify a single solution to address these challenges.

Prior to selecting Quadstone's Decisionhouse, M&I had difficulty with its other solutions, which proved to be slow and unable to handle its large databases to produce accurate customer models. "We deal with an extremely large database with over 2.2 million accounts and over 700,000 households. Unlike other systems we tried, Quadstone is able to process the information and build a model in only an afternoon. It is this time saving that has been the biggest benefit to us. My analysts can now get done in a day or two what used to take weeks. Productivity and efficiency have improved dramatically," said Clarence Masshardt, vice president, Database Marketing & Statistical Analysis, M&I Bank.

Quadstone's Decisionhouse allows M&I the opportunity to directly promote products to those customers who are most likely to be interested. In comparison to similar offerings, Decisionhouse provides the most comprehensive view of customer data and delivers analysis at least 20 times faster than its competitors.

With Quadstone's Decisionhouse M&I delivered more targeted marketing campaigns that yielded their highest ROI to date. Mark Smith, president of Quadstone said, "By using Quadstone's Decisionhouse, M&I is building immediate, profitable and meaningful relationships with its customers. The banking industry is a prime focus for our company and we are committed to providing fast, scalable solutions."

About Marshall & Ilsley Corporation

Marshall & Ilsley Corporation, headquartered in Milwaukee, Wis., has $24.9 billion in assets. The Corporation has 26 affiliate banks with more than 200 offices in Wisconsin. The Corporation also has a bank in Phoenix, Ariz. with 13 offices, a bank in Nevada with offices located in Illinois and Florida and trust companies in Wisconsin, Arizona and Florida. M&I, a diversified financial services company, also owns and operates 49 offices throughout the country that provide trust and investment management, equipment leasing, mortgage banking and data processing.

About Quadstone

Quadstone provides the most powerful customer behavior modeling and analysis software currently available. Quadstone's products allow operational and marketing executives to instantly and easily employ predictive modeling techniques to produce sophisticated analyses that visually represent customer behavior from every marketing channel - web, direct marketing, sales, call centers, and operations. Because these tools can be installed and deployed to produce results within one week - faster and more precise than any other offering available - executives can quickly measure and influence more profitable customer behavior while decreasing marketing's reliance on IT or statisticians. Quadstone's international clients are market leaders in the etail /retail, banking, insurance, and telecommunications sectors and include CVS.com, Barclays Bank, Plus Communications, GUS, and now Marshall & Ilsley Bank, among others. Quadstone was named "Best Business Start-up" by the Financial Times (1998) and earned Deloitte & Touche's "Fast 50" award in 1999. Founded in 1995 in Edinburgh, Scotland, Quadstone has U.S. headquarters in Boston, MA, and a European Operations Center in London, England.